UBU MAYOR: Official Media Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Toronto, June 11, 2014
Media contact: Linda Litwack Publicity, 416-782-7837, lalitwack AT rogers.com
(To download this release as a Microsoft Word document, please click here.)

Ubu Mayor: A Harmful Bit of Fun

September 12-21, 2014 in Toronto
Renowned antics of Toronto's mayor meet radical spirit of
merde-filled classic in new play with live music

Just in time for Toronto's highly anticipated municipal election, “Toronto's enterprising One Little Goat Theatre Company” (New York Times) presents the world premiere of Ubu Mayor: A Harmful Bit of Fun. Written, directed and composed by Artistic Director Adam Seelig, this production is One Little Goat's first to feature live music. It combines the internationally broadcast antics, absurdities and obscenities of Toronto's mayor with the radical spirit of Ubu Roi, French writer Alfred Jarry's merde-filled masterpiece of 1896.

The Equity production opens Friday, September 12, 2014 and runs to Sunday, September 21, Tuesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m. at the Wychwood Theatre, 76 Wychwood Avenue, located in Artscape's Wychwood Barns. Tickets are $25; $20 for students, seniors and artists. Tickets go on sale this summer and may be obtained by calling One Little Goat Theatre Company at 416-915-0201 or visiting www.OneLittleGoat.org.

Director of the highly acclaimed The Charge of the Expormidable Moose ("a tour de force" –Globe and Mail) and writer of plays including Antigone:Insurgency (NNNN –Now) and Talking Masks (**** –Eye), Adam Seelig has now written his first musical.

"I'm uneasy with the idea of musicals, even if they worked for Brecht," he says, "so I prefer to call Ubu Mayor a play with music." Seelig's original, bitingly satirical songs for the play include B-b-b-b-b-bacon, Etobicokaine© , Plenty to Eat at Home and others.

Ubu Mayor combines the buffoonery of Alfred Jarry's dadaist classic with the widely reported, alleged sexist, racist, homophobic and criminal scandals of Toronto’s current mayor, along with his city councillor brother. Nevertheless, the play does not directly represent actual political figures.

"This is not journalistic theatre," says Seelig, "nor is it political or verbatim theatre. People familiar with the recent mayoral scandals will appreciate how they're woven into the play. Those who aren't will simply enjoy Ubu Mayor for what it truly is: an all-out romp of asinine absurdity. With music."

Ubu Mayor involves a mayor (Ubu) whose wife (Huhu) is having an affair with his older brother (Dudu). Ubu wants Huhu to love him again and Ubu wants what's best for the city, but both his love and his political ideals are foiled by brother Dudu's machinations. The three-person Equity cast will be announced this summer.

The design team for Ubu Mayor boasts numerous Dora nominations, with sets and costumes by Jackie Chau and lighting by Laird MacDonald.

Arranging the music and live band for the production is virtuoso bassist Tyler Emond. Emond regularly accompanies leading musicians in multiple genres, including multi-gold album artist Matt Dusk, Jessica Stuart, Mr. Something Something and Randy Brecker; and his own bands, Hylia and Tin Can Man. He is the 2007 recipient of Humber College's highest distinction in music, the Oscar Peterson Prize.

Adam Seelig is a poet, playwright, stage director, and founder of Toronto’s One Little Goat Theatre Company. Born and raised in Vancouver, Seelig has also lived in northern California, New York, England and Israel. He is the author of the novella Every Day in the Morning (slow) (New Star Books, shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award). Some of his previous plays include Antigone:Insurgency (Toronto 2007) Talking Masks (Toronto 2009; published by BookThug) and Like the First Time (Toronto 2011; published by BookThug). Seelig is the recipient of a Commonwealth Fellowship and a Stanford Golden Grant for his work on Samuel Beckett’s manuscripts. He is a 2013/2014 RBC Director at Canadian Stage.

One Little Goat, North America’s only company devoted to contemporary poetic theatre, “has done audiences a huge service” (Toronto Star) through its highly interpretive, provocative approach to new and international plays. The company's Canadian and world premieres have garnered praise from the New York Times, Globe and Mail, Economist, Now and others. More information on the company is available at www.OneLittleGoat.org.

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The Media is Invited: Fri & Sat, Sept. 12 & 13, 8 p.m.; Sun Sept. 14, 2 p.m.

For media reservations, interviews, photos and further info, contact:

Linda Litwack
416-782-7837
e-mail: lalitwackATrogers.com
www.OneLittleGoat.org

Main Pronunciations: 
Seelig – SEE-lig
Chau – Chow
Emond — eh-MON
Ubu (Mayor) – OO-boo
Huhu – HOO-hoo
Dudu – DOO-doo
Ubu Roi (French pronunciation of Jarry’s play): - Ü-bü  rwah

Auditions for One Little Goat's UBU MAYOR!

AUDITION NOTICE – ONE LITTLE GOAT THEATRE COMPANY – TORONTO
Production name: UBU MAYOR
Deadline to submit: June 2, 2014
Audition date: June 9, 2014
Email applications to: chadgadya at gmail.com
Contact name: Adam Seelig
Website: www.OneLittleGoat.org

One Little Goat Theatre Company is holding auditions for our September 2014 world premiere of UBU MAYOR, a play with music by Artistic Director Adam Seelig in which the internationally renowned antics of Toronto's mayor meet the radical spirit of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry's merde-filled masterpiece of 1896.

Dates: performances September 12-21, 2014; rehearsals TBD.

We are seeking actors of the highest calibre with excellent singing abilities for the following roles - actors of all vocal ranges and cultural backgrounds welcome:

UBU: a man who is mayor (age 35-45)
HUHU: a woman who is Ubu’s spouse (age 30-40)
DUDU: a man who is Ubu’s brother (age 35-45)

Please submit résumé and headshot by email to Adam Seelig, Artistic Director, chadgadya at gmail.com, by MONDAY JUNE 2. *Optional: if available, please forward a link to a sample of your singing abilities.

Only CAEA members will be considered.  Only those selected for an audition will be contacted. Actors will be engaged under a form of Equity policy.

“Toronto’s enterprising One Little Goat” (New York Times) is North America’s only theatre company devoted to contemporary poetic theatre. Acclaimed for its highly interpretive, provocative approach to international plays, One Little Goat consistently features leading Canadian theatre artists.

Job Posting: Music Consultant

One Little Goat Theatre Company is looking for a Music Consultant who can:

  • arrange music for a small rock/jazz/pop band
  • organize/source excellent musicians (rock/jazz/pop)
  • provide harmonies and direction for singing actors
  • carry out music copying/transcription

This is a paid, contract position in preparation for our September 2014 world premiere of UBU MAYOR, a satirical play with music by Artistic Director Adam Seelig in which the internationally renowned antics, absurdities and obscenities of Toronto's mayor meet the radical spirit of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry's merde-filled masterpiece of 1896 (http://onelittlegoat.org/). Work begins ASAP.

“Toronto’s enterprising One Little Goat” (New York Times) is North America’s only theatre company devoted to contemporary poetic theatre. Founded in New York in 2002, and based in Toronto since 2005, the company is acclaimed for its highly interpretive, provocative approach to international plays.

Please submit résumé and brief cover letter by email to Adam Seelig, Artistic Director, onelittleg@gmail.com. For more about One Little Goat, please visit: www.OneLittleGoat.org.

Announcing: PARTS TO WHOLE

"Toronto's enterprising One Little Goat" (New York Times), with support from Canadian Stage, is pleased to announce a workshop presentation of

PARTS TO WHOLE
a new play by Artistic Director Adam Seelig
featuring Sochi Fried & Ben Irvine

  • 8pm, Monday, February 24, 2014
  • Canadian Stage Main Rehearsal Hall | 26 Berkeley Street | Toronto
  • Free admission - no reservations required
  • Part of the RBC BASH! Director Program

Find out more: onelittlegoat.org/partstowhole/

NOW Magazine applauds MOOSE

“Poetic Moose” | NOW Magazine | Stage Scenes | May 23, 2013 | by Jon Kaplan (Belated post) 

Left to right: Jessica Salgueiro, David Christo, Ben Irvine, Lindsay Owen Pierre, Lindsey Clark. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)

Left to right: Jessica Salgueiro, David Christo, Ben Irvine, Lindsay Owen Pierre, Lindsey Clark. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)

Ever see a moose in a lyrical if sometimes manic mood?

You’ll find one in the Tarragon Extra Space, where One Little Goat Theatre, dedicated to presenting poetic drama, offers the English premiere of Quebec writer Claude Gauvreau’s play The Charge Of The Expormidable Moose, in Ray Ellenwood’s translation.

Absurdist, poetic and leaping wildly between madcap comedy and upsetting tragedy, the play was a flop in its original 1970 presentation. Regarded as a visionary writer, Gauvreau died in 1971, following years in a psychiatric hospital after the suicide of his muse.

That personal history most likely figures in the play, in which the central character, a poet named Mycroft Mixeudeim (Ben Irvine) lives in… a home? an asylum?… with four others (David Christo, Lindsey Clark, Lindsay Owen Pierre and Jessica Salguiero) who constantly play tricks on him. Unable to resist bashing down doors with his head to reach any woman he thinks is in distress, the naive Mycroft is regularly “called” by the planned shrieks of women, who then deny what they’ve done.

Are they four therapists trying to cure Mycroft’s sadness over the loss of his girlfriend, since they keep trying to pigeonhole him using various psychiatric labels? Or maybe they’re meddling, nasty friends who can’t resist playing with his head and repeating the cruel joke over and over? Gauvreau doesn’t say.

At the end of the first act, a helicopter pilot (Sochi Fried) crashes on the isolated property and becomes Mycroft’s main defender, though she’s not immune to being part of yet another attempt to cure him. And halfway through the second half, a sadistic man (Hume Baugh) takes over to make Mycroft’s life an even harsher hell.

The writing is shot through with passages of grandiose language, bits of nonsense and gibberish and is occasionally reminiscent of Beckett; at one point, Mycroft delivers a speech that stylistically echoes Lucky’s monologue in Waiting For Godot.

Director Adam Seelig’s given a lot of thought to the demanding script in this fine production. Fried makes a sympathetic figure, and her scenes with Irvine are the most moving in the production, even when they’re discussing philosophical matters. Baugh’s black-garbed, cold figure is properly powerful, hard for the others to resist.

It’s Irvine who anchors the show with a bravura performance, whether speaking monologues to a mirror, or, when Mycroft is drugged, miming various absurdist scenarios (a camel becomes an elephant, a Turkish dancer morphs into a threshing machine, an orator changes into a grasshopper). Splendid work.

Jackie Chau contributes an inventive design, including a series of pastel doors whose handles are hands, suggestive of a surreal Cocteau film. She puts the quartet of housemates in variations on tennis whites, though the games they play are aggressive and not at all fun. In Chau’s hands, the helicopter pilot becomes a vision in leather and parachute silk.

Praise for MOOSE in The Charlebois Post!

Review: (Toronto) The Charge of the Expormidable Moose | The Charlebois Post | "Gauvreau's Twisted World" | An icon of Québec-lit gets an airing in Toronto | by Beat Rice

Sochi Fried and Ben Irvine. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)

Sochi Fried and Ben Irvine. (Photo: Yuri Dojc)

One Little Goat Theatre Company’s production of celebrated French Canadian playwright Claude Gauvreau’s play, The Charge of the Expormidable Moose, is the English premiere. Gauvreau was one of the leading artists in the group known as Les Automatistes, a movement made up of artists based in Montreal. The style is surreal and highly poetic, even when translated.

The play is a whirlwind. By the end of Act one I knew not to attempt to make too much analytical sense of what I was seeing. The four young people who live in the house are sadistic creatures who thrive off of manipulating Mycroft Mixeudeim, the fifth housemate who is a poet. It is an incredibly dark play but is set in a visually contrasting and eerie world of people in bright bold colours set in front of a multi-coloured chalkboardlike wall of doors.

Sochi Friend and Ben Irvine have great chemistry onstage.

In the first act we see a group of two young men and two young women gang up to find new ways of inflicting harm and panic on their housemate, Mycroft Mixeudeim. They sneak poisons in his food that make him lose control of his actions and laugh maniacally at his suffering. There is a point when Mycroft personifies and imitates strange things in a fit, a feat of physical theatre that actor Ben Irvine powers through. It begs us to question whether the four have succeeded in unlocking an uncontrollable manic side that all of us might be suppressing. The most disturbing thing is that for a while we also enjoy how they take the mickey out of him. Are we deep down, sadists too? One day a woman by the name of Dydrame Daduve, played by the enchanting Sochi Fried, crash lands by their residence. She is manipulated to participate in their dark masochistic games and is put to the test by another unexpected guest.

Hume Baugh appears in the second act and delivers an unforgettable performance as Letasse Cromagnon, a menace in a jacket. He is invited by Lontil-Deparey and castigates the four housemates for not being true sadists, as they attempt to justify their action as teachings for Mycroft.  Sochi Fried and Ben Irvine

have great chemistry onstage. I understood everything that was going on between them, because they, as actors, clearly have an understanding. This is an extremely challenging play with some very stylized staging with actors running in and out of doors, and aggressive scenes that require precise fight choreography. Director Adam Seelig has created a solid foundation for the play. The production has just opened, and I truly believe it will grow and improve over the course of its run.

The Charge of the Expormidabe Moose run at the Tarragon Extraspace until May 26. For tickets call 416 531 1827.