A look back…
Retrospective #6 in honour of Modern Times’ 30th anniversary season.
To celebrate the dawn of the new year, we’d like to travel back to 2015 and our production of “Blood Wedding” by Federico Garcia Lorca, the result of our fantastic artistic union with our friends at Aluna Theatre.
We’re so proud to see this show has been recently named one of Now Magazine’s The 10 best Toronto theatre shows of the 2010s decade for “creating something urgent, primal and inevitable” (Glenn Sumi).
It was indeed one of the company’s most successful productions, sold out almost every night, with rave reviews from critics and audience.
It was perhaps a work that exemplified director Soheil Parsa’s singular talent to discover the rhythmic through-line of a play and build common vocabulary in the ensemble. His interpretation of flamenco was inspired, catching the spirit of the dance without appropriating the form. Throughout the play, we experienced many of Parsa’s directorial images and metaphors that have peppered his productions over the years, brought back here not to repeat himself, but rather to explore themes more deeply, and give them new meaning.
The cast–as is the case with most of Modern Times shows–represented the best of Toronto’s diverse acting pool, the “quintessentially Canadian approach to the classics” that emphasized “the individuality of the performers” (J. Kelly Nestruck). In particular, Bea Pizano’s powerful incarnation of the Mother drew accolades such as “You can’t not watch her, every moment she is on stage” (Robert Crew, Toronto Star).
The production was nominated for eight Dora Awards (winning six) for Aluna and Modern Times and earned Pizano and Parsa Toronto Theatre Critics Awards for acting and directing respectively.
What is most important for Modern Times, however, what we’d like to celebrate here, is the ensemble, and the greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts that creates this wonderful experience.
We’re happy to share this with our incredible cast and crew: Lara Arabian, Steven Bush, Sochi Fried, Carla Melo, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, Mina James, Derek Kwan, Jani Lauzon, Sebastian Marziali, Liz Peterson, Beatriz Pizano, Chiamaka G. Ugwu, Bahareh Yaraghi. The production team included Trevor Schwellnus (Set and Lights), Angela Thomas (Costumes), Thomas Ryder Payne (Sound Design), Erika Morey (Stage Manager), Charissa Wilcox (Production Manager) and Sue Balint (Producer).
Thank you all for making this a memorable show!