William Wycherleyâs The Country Wife rounded out DalTheatreâs 2010/11 season, which took audiences âThrough the Looking Glassâ to gawk at their distorted reflections in plays like Sondheimâs Into the Woods, Ionescoâs The Bald Soprano and Jacques or Obedience, and Jean Giraudouxâs The Madwoman of Chaillot.
Now, audiences who spent the summer catching their breath can be thrust into an even more dangerous realm â that of (true?) love.
DalTheatreâs 2011/12 season is entitled âThe Marriage of True Minds,â and it deals with affairs of the heart in all their complications. The heading comes from Shakespeareâs Sonnet 116, which begins âLet me not to the marriage of true minds / Admit impediments.â
âWe were thinking a lot about this question of relationships, of love and of sex,â says Roberta Barker, chair of the theatre department. âI think that the Shakespeare sonnet⊠lays out this question thatâs kind of never disappeared across time of the longing of a love thatâs meant to be."
Timeless questions of young love
The plays which make up The Marriage of True Minds explore âthe possibility of a perfect marriage of minds and souls and bodies between people,â continues Dr. Barker. âCan this happen? In what conditions can it happen, and what is the fallout if it does happen?â
Such immortal questions will be addressed by the theatre departmentâs stagings of While Weâre Young (Don Hannah, 2008), Blood Wedding (Federico Garcia Lorca, 1932), La Ronde (Arthur Schnitzler, 1900), and Lady Windermereâs Fan (Oscar Wilde, 1892). At a glance, the four plays seem to have little in common, but as Dr. Barker puts it, they are âfour plays that all, in different ways, explore the modern age⊠the world being young, as well as people being young.â
While Weâre Young, penned by Canadian playwright Don Hannah for the students of the Department of Drama at the University of Alberta, sheds light on youthful love affairs from Confederation to the 21st century.
âThe experiences of young people are timeless and recur⊠eventually the stories start coalescing,â says Dr. Barker. Such timeless stories include cultural and religious conflict (keeping lovers apart since Romeo and Juliet and Tony and Maria), as well as the spectre of war (Passchendaele in one case, Afghanistan in another).
Seduction and lust
Blood Wedding was âwritten by Lorca in Spain just before the Spanish civil war, exploring the traditional life of Andalusia⊠itâs very elemental, poetic⊠literally, much of it written in poetry.â The play relates the story of a young woman called only âThe Brideâ (a cue picked up years later by Quentin Tarantino) and her paramour, who are kept from following their passions by a âvery rigid⊠very violent society.â
Of La Ronde, Professor Barker says, âthis is kind of the play that asks the question, âWhat are we really in search of when weâre in search of love?â Sex? Do we want to play games with the other person?â Schnitzlerâs play follows a falling-domino series of seductions between a prostitute and a soldier, then a soldier and a parlor maid, then a parlor maid and young gentleman, and so on through a number of other couplings before ending up nearly where it started at an encounter between a count and a prostitute.
âLa Ronde and Blood Wedding are a really great back-to-back pairing,â explains Dr. Barker, âdue to Blood Weddingâs focus on obsessive love and La Rondeâs quick changes between partners.â
The last show of the DalTheatre year is usually a period piece that showcases the skills developed through the year by all theatre students, including those in ±«Óătvâs unique Costume Studies program. Lady Windermere's Fan fits the bill.
Oscar Wilde is back due to popular demand; a number of people submitted requests that a Wilde play be performed in the upcoming season. According to Dr. Barker, Lady Windermereâs Fan is âa combination of late-19th century melodrama with wit⊠it explores the classic melodrama question: the woman with a past, who is she? But itâs couched in the Wilde reparteeâ.
Exploring extremes of genre
While the excitement over âThe Marriage of True Mindsâ is already palpable in the Dal Arts Centreâs nooks and crannies, ±«Óătvâs theatre community is also still basking in the glow of its most recent season.
âWhat I think I was particularly proud of in this [past] season was the great work of the students,â says Dr. Barker. âWe explored extremes of style last seasonâŠI think in this coming season, weâre going to explore extremes of genre.â