PRESS RELEASE If We Were Birds

 

If We Were Birds, the winner of the 2011 Governor General’s Award for Drama, is a powerful indictment by playwright Erin Shields of the use of sexual violence against women as a weapon of war. The play’s narrative adapts the tale of Tereus, Procne, and Philomela from Ovid’s Metamorphosis, but to this mythic story Shields adds an evocative, poetic, and hard-hitting chorus of women survivors of war in Nanking, Europe, Bangladesh, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Rwanda. Although the play is not without moments of humour and human understanding, in Shields’ hands the play becomes an unflinching commentary on contemporary war and its devastating aftermath, particularly for the women who become its victims.

 

Director Ric Knowles and designers Pat Flood (sets and costumes) and Chris Clifford (lights) have set the play in the brutally austere black, white, and red (all over) world of white tiles, steel pipes, and white light that refuses to exoticize, eroticize or prettify violence, but rather exposes it to the clear-sighted gaze of a contemporary audience, demanding their attention.

 

The ensemble cast consists of students ranging from their first to final years, including Cassandra Davidson, Lily Davis, Hayley Eidelman, Lisa Gachet, Jess Myers, Curtis McGillivray, Katie Rosa, Maddie Rosenberg, and Eli Speigel. Catie Welch is Stage Manager, Erica McConomy Assistant Stage Manager, and Vanessa Spzurko Assistant Director.

 

 

 

If We Were Birds runs from November 19^th to 24^th, 2012 at 8:00 pm in the George Luscombe Theatre, MacKinnon building on the University of Guelph Campus.

 

 

Tickets: Monday, Tuesday & Wednesday $   8.00

Thursday, Friday & Saturday $ 10.00

 

Ticket information:  Michael Boterman, School of English & Theatre Studies

        8:30 am – 12:00 noon,    519-824-4120  ext. 53147