≈ 2 hours and 30 minutes · With intermission
Last updated: January 18, 2019
Artistic Director’s Notes
As a director I’m used to making carefully orchestrated events happen, but I couldn’t quite pull it off on my wedding day. Moments before I walked down the aisle, I flushed the eight-foot gossamer ribbon on the back of my dress straight down the toilet. Yep. Right into the pipes. I only knew I did it because it actually pulled me backwards in the stall.
When you take a high stress event like a wedding and add all of the random possibilities that ensue by inviting 300 people to watch you eat food you don’t usually eat and wear clothes you don’t usually wear, mishaps are inevitable for the bride and groom. But what about the guests? In this three-tier-high confection by Kristen Thomson, the bride and groom are secondary characters, and it’s the invitees who turn into guest-zillas. This wide-ranging and totally unpredictable gathering of family and friends is bound to ignite some fireworks, and I can’t think of a better assembly than Chris Abraham’s brilliant cast and creative team to bring the insanity of one of our most beloved and bedeviled rituals to the national stage.
I hope you enjoy the party!
Playwright’s Notes
The Wedding Party was created for the opening of Streetcar Crowsnest Theatre in Toronto, in 2017. Four years before that, I invited some of my favourite actors – Trish Lindström, Tony Nappo, Moya O’Connell, Tom Rooney, Bahia Watson – to improvise with me around a fascination I have with weddings, witnessing and belief, and the echoes of these experiences in performance and theatre. It has been everything I could have wished for, to be surrounded and grounded by artists who “have it all”: wit, spontaneity, hilarity and heart. I hope our play can offer this to you, as well as the simple pleasure of coming together in the spirit of play and imagination. These things mean the world to me. As do the following people and organizations for their support and generosity along the way:
Chris Abraham; Arkady Spivak; Andrew Kushnir; Irene Boychuck and Donald Guloein; Jim and Sandra Pitblado; Rupert Duschesne and Holly Coll-Black; Kate Alexander and David Daniels; Amrin and Sabi Marwah; Thomas Ryder Payne; Bob White; Canada Council for the Arts; Ontario Arts Council; Jim Lisser; B & W Wine; Ellie Alice; Kristi Magraw; Kathryn Beet; Pamela Sinha; Ethel Teitelbaum; Tania Melkonian; Nan Shepherd; Virgilia Griffith; Jason Cadieux; Jane Spidell.
I owe endless personal debt to Ava Roth, Liisa Repo-Martell, Lucinda Thomson, Bob Williams and Hussain Amarshi.
This play is for siblings. My own: Marcia Thomson and Todd Thomson. And my children: Zayd, Samir and Nyla Thomson-Amarshi.
Director’s Notes
Kristen’s play is about family — its pleasures, its pains. It’s about how families get made in the wedding ritual, broken and remade again. The catalyst is the joyous/nightmarish pressure cooker we call “the wedding party” — an event that always seems to stir up buried desires or old grievances. The night catches us prepared, but unready, mercilessly opening us up to the possibility of unexpected love, loss, loneliness and too much alcohol. Kristen’s plays have always been bound up in rites of passage that tie us to family. They hilariously and heartbreakingly focus their lens on divorce, adolescence, the death of a parent, and middle age as transformative cataclysms that destroy and remake their protagonists. The Wedding Party continues this commitment to the exploration of these humane and very human themes. To make The Wedding Party, Kristen created a theatrical family of her own. Through improvisation, conversation and lots of laughter, two families emerged. I am deeply grateful to her and the team for welcoming me along for the ride. This was such fun! I also want to thank our partners, Arkady Spivak and Talk Is Free Theatre, for their spirit of adventurous collaboration, and Sandra and Jim Pitblado’s beautiful and steadfast support of Kristen’s work over many years.
Artists
For Crow’s Theatre: Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, The Master Plan, Uncle Vanya, MixTape, The Land Acknowledgement or As You Like It, Julius Caesar, Stars: Together, The Wedding Party, True Crime, Boy in the Moon, The Assembly, The Watershed, The Seagull, Winners & Losers, Someone Else, Eternal Hydra, and I, Claudia.
Other Theatre: Much Ado About Nothing, Tartuffe, The Taming of the Shrew, Midsummer Night’s Dream, Othello, The Matchmaker, The Little Years, For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again (Stratford Festival); One Man, Two Guvnors, Cyrano de Bergerac (Shaw Festival); Seeds (Crow’s and Porte Parole); and Macbeth (Bard on the Beach, Vancouver).
Film/TV: Shakespearean Coach for Station Eleven on HBO; Gemini Award-winning film adaptation of I, Claudia.
Upcoming: Rosmersholm and Wights at Crow’s Theatre.
Education/Training: University of Toronto, National Theatre School of Canada.
More: Artistic Director of Crow’s Theatre since 2008, leading the company through major milestones including building Streetcar Crowsnest and last season’s record-breaking 40th anniversary; recipient of the Elinor and Lou Siminovitch Prize in Theatre; served as co-director of the National Theatre School’s renowned directing program.
Theatre Credits: Rent, Hamlet-911 (Stratford Festival); Rosmersholm, Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, The Master Plan, Red Velvet, Uncle Vanya, The Wedding Party (Crow’s Theatre); Once (Thousand Islands Playhouse); Peter’s Final Flight (Ross Petty Productions); Alice in Wonderland (Bad Hats Theatre); Wizard of Oz, The Inheritance, Public Enemy, Is God Is (Canadian Stage); De Profundis, Three Sisters, The Guide to Being Fabulous, Sizwe Banzi is Dead, (Soulpepper); Candida, Just to Get Married, Trouble in Mind (Shaw Festival); Things I Know to be True (Company Theatre/Mirvish); Hansel & Gretel (Canadian Opera Company); The Color Purple (Citadel Theatre/RMTC); Life After (Musical Stage). Digital: Alice in Winterland (Ross Petty Productions); New Monuments (Luminato/Canadian Stage); Identity, Savitri (Against the Grain). Upcoming: Fat Ham (Canadian Stage), After The Rain (Tarragon), Kim’s Convenience, A Strange Loop (Soulpepper). Awards: 2021 Virginia & Myrtle Cooper Award laureate, 2022/2023 Dora Award winner. ONLINE: www.mingwongdesign.com
Kimberly is a Toronto-based lighting designer for theatre, opera, and dance. Her designs have been critically acclaimed across Canada, the U.S., the U.K., China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mongolia, as well as in Prague and Moscow. She has designed for the Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Canadian Stage Company, Soulpepper Theatre, Mirvish Productions, National Arts Centre, and the NAC Orchestra, as well as Pacific Opera Victoria, Opera Philadelphia, Arena Stage in Washington D.C., Tapestry Opera, Hamilton Opera, Edmonton Opera, Theatre Calgary, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Citadel Theatre, and Place des Arts, among many others. She has also designed productions for the Pan Am Games and the Vancouver and Beijing Cultural Olympiads.
Kimberly has been nominated for numerous awards for excellence in lighting design and has received three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, the Pauline McGibbon Award, a Montreal English Theatre Award, a Sterling Award, a Toronto Theatre Critics Award, and an Ottawa Critics Circle Award.
Thomas Ryder Payne is a composer and sound designer for theatre, dance and film.
For Crow’s Theatre: Bad Roads, The Master Plan, Perceptual Archaeology, Red Velvet, Uncle Vanya, Orphans For The Czar, MixTape, Julius Caesar, A&R Angels, Boy In The Moon, Wedding Party, The Watershed, Someone Else.
Other Theatre: Designs for Stratford, Festival Shaw Festival, Mirvish, Productions Soulpepper, Canadian Stage, Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraiile, Young People’s Theatre, Modern Times Stage Company, Aluna, Theatre Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Theatre Gargantua, Nightwood Theatre, Toronto Dance Theatre, National Arts Centre, Centaur Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Great Canadian Theatre Company, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, and many others.
Film/TV: Plain View, 7A, Blood Harvest, Hero.Traitor.Patriot, Alegra & Jim, Robert’s Circle.
Education/Training: Studied composition with James Tenney, Honours BA, York University.
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees