≈ 90 minutes · No intermission
Artistic Director’s Notes
Like the National Arts Centre, the National Theatre School of Canada (NTS) is a unique multi-pronged endeavour. Its mission gathers the best and brightest from across the country through a highly competitive audition process and selects a very small cohort each year to study playwriting, acting, direction, design or production in either English or French. The student to teacher ratio is small, and direct access to current practitioners is one of the biggest assets of the school. Jeff Ho is a graduate of that program, and he worked on the development of trace at NTS with Yael Farber, a titan of a theatre creator who is known around the world for her incredible insight and mastery.
The solo theatre project at NTS asks students to write what they know. Mani Soleymanlou’s international smash Un came out of a similar initiative on the French side of NTS, and Ted Dykstra made an early iteration while there of what became Two Pianos Four Hands before creating the famous version with Richard Greenblatt. Many Ottawa theatregoers will remember the powerful Brotherhood by Sebastian Heins that played at Undercurrents, or Anita Majumdar’s Fish Eyes that played at GCTC, two further examples of far-reaching projects borne of this same educational self-exploratory initiative. In trace, Jeff also writes what he knows. This story, told through the windows of Jeff’s female lineage (and assigning all the roles of adult men to the piano), offers us a unique way to connect with this artist.
When he started the solo show project in his second year at NTS, Yael asked him, “What do your ancestors demand you speak?” Lucky for us, Jeff took this question as a provocation and put words into the mouths of his ancestors directly, reinterpreting their hopes and intentions in each brutal, life‑altering decision they enacted to make his own life better.
Thank you for taking this opportunity to spend a few hours with the women in Jeff’s family, and for welcoming this truthful, beautiful work into your world.
Playwright’s Notes
trace is a composition of love – a tapestry of memories and myths. Particularly, it is a celebration of the women in my family, the core pillars that have persisted and survived against all odds.
My Great Grandma is this legendary figure in our family – a single mother who fled from China to Hong Kong during the Japanese Invasion of WWII. Without her iron will to survive, our entire bloodline would not be here today.
In stories recounted by Ma, my Aunts and Uncles, Great Grandma stands as this lioness, ferocious when the family was threatened, yet equally tender and caring. She also held a deep secret, only known to us through whispers, one that drove my initial impulse to write this piece.
Similarly, my Ma too is a lioness. She was a single mother who brought my brother and me from Hong Kong to Canada, single-handedly transplanting our familial roots in the pursuit of “the better life.” A trace of my Great Grandma is evidently found in my Ma.
With everything they’ve passed on to me, with every capacity for expression I was raised with, I trace their parallels, their battles, their dreams, their nightmares and their sacrifices, through this play.
Thank you for joining us, and I encourage you to reflect on the traces of your own ancestral past, with me, here.
Last updated: October 31, 2019
A Factory Theatre (Toronto, ON) production
trace was first produced by Factory Theatre in association with b current performing arts in Toronto, Canada, November 2017.
trace is presented by arrangement with Ian Arnold, Catalyst TCM Inc.
Factory
Thank you from Factory
Sherry Bie, Sehar Bhojani, Jodi Essery, Yael Farber, Darrel Gamotin, Darcy Gerhart, Catherine Hernandez, Jani Lauzon, Adam Lazarus, Richard Lee, Eponine Lee, Anita Majumdar, Michael Man, Jajube Mandiela, Brian Quirt, Jenna Rodgers, Miquelon Rodriguez, Lisa Truong, Iris Turcott, Bob White, Nigel Shawn Williams, Alison Wong and David Yee.
Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, Toronto Arts Council, The Wuchien Michael Than Foundation, BMO, the Government of Canada, TD Bank, b current theatre, the Banff Centre Playwrights Lab 2015, the Stratford Playwrights Retreat 2016, fu-GEN, and Summerworks.
Staff
Artistic Director | Nina Lee Aquino
Managing Director | Jonathan Heppner
Philanthropy & Partnerships Manager | Mark Aikman
Interim Production Manager | Alanna McConnell
Company Dramaturg | Matt McGeachy
Marketing & Audience Development Manager | Lauren Naus
Patron Services Manager | Himanshu Sitlani
Board of Directors
Len Racioppo (Chair), Greg Power (Vice Chair), Noha Yahia Abji (Treasurer), Jonathan Odumeru (Secretary), Stewart Adams, Charmain Emerson, Grazyna Krupa, Brian Rintoul, Ebony Rose, Susan Sutton
Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)
Jeff Ho is a Toronto-based theatre artist, originally from Hong Kong. Favourite acting credits include Ophelia in Prince Hamlet (Why Not Theatre National Tour: Canadian Stage, PuSh Festival, National Arts Centre); Hana’s Suitcase (Young People’s Theatre Tour: Toronto, Montreal, Seattle); Kim’s Convenience (CBC); The Handmaid’s Tale (Hulu); Orphan Black (BBC America).
As a playwright, his other works include Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) and Antigone. He has held residencies with the Stratford Festival, Nightswimming, Cahoots, the Banff Playwrights Lab and Factory Theatre, and is the current Bulmash-Siegel Playwright in Residence with the Tarragon Theatre. His works are published by Playwrights Canada Press.
Jeff is grateful to have been honoured with a Toronto Theatre Critics Award for Best New Canadian Play, and to have been nominated for three Dora Mavor Moore Awards, twice for Performance, and once as a Playwright. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School.
Nina Lee Aquino
With a string of firsts in Asian Canadian theatre, Nina was the founding Artistic Director of fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, organized the first Asian Canadian theatre conference, edited the first (two-volume) Asian Canadian play anthology, and co-edited the first (award-winning) book on Asian Canadian theatre. She is the former Artistic Director of Cahoots Theatre and currently holds the same position at Factory Theatre. Awards for her work include the Ken McDougall Award 2004, the Canada Council John Hirsch Prize 2008, the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Margo Bindhart and Rita Davies Cultural Leadership Award, and three Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Direction.
Michelle Ramsay
Michelle is a lighting designer who works with dance, theatre and opera companies across Canada. Selected designs include Broken Tailbone (Nightswimming); The Russian Play (Shaw Festival); Shanawdihit (Tapestry Opera); Through the Bamboo (Uwi Collective); Lilies (lemonTree creations/Why Not Theatre); Under the Stairs (Young People’s Theatre); School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Obsidian Theatre/Nightwood Theatre); The Royale (Soulpepper); To Kill a Mockingbird (Stratford Festival); and Daughter (Quiptake/Pandemic Theatre). She has received eight Dora Mavor Moore Awards, a SATAward, and the 2008 Pauline McGibbon Award. She is on the board of the Associated Designers of Canada.
Joanna Yu
Joanna is a Toronto-based set and costume designer. Design credits include collaborations with Stratford Festival, Shaw Festival, Young People’s Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Canadian Stage, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Factory Theatre, Obsidian Theatre Company, Cahoots Theatre, fu-GEN Theatre Company, the Blyth Festival, Musical Stage Company, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Why Not Theatre, Project: Humanity, The Grand Theatre, Neptune Theatre, Mirvish Productions, lemonTree creations, Signal Theatre and Luminato. Joanna is the 2019 recipient of the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award for Costume Design and the 2017 recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award.
Matt McGeachy
Matt McGeachy is Company Dramaturg at Factory Theatre, where he was dramaturg for the world premiere of trace. Recent dramaturgy credits include: Ronnie Burkett’s Forget Me Not (Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes/Luminato Festival) and David Yee’s rochdale (SummerWorks). Upcoming: world premiere of Marjorie Chan’s Lady Sunrise as part of Factory’s 50th Anniversary Season. Matt is a member of the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas and part of the Toronto Arts Council’s Leaders Lab, in partnership with the Banff Centre.
Andrea Baggs
Select Credits: Stage Manager: 2 Pianos 4 Hands (Marquis Entertainment at Thousand Islands Playhouse and National Arts Centre); Charlotte (Theaturtle, European tour); Beautiful Man (Factory Theatre); Mary’s Wedding (Crow’s Theatre/Solo Productions); Mary Poppins (Young People’s Theatre); The Last Party (Toronto Fringe Festival); The Drawer Boy (Theatre Passe Muraille); Rumpsringa Break! (Next Stage Theatre Festival); Freedom Singer (National Tour); Charlotte (Theaturtle International Tour: Luminato/World Stage Design Festival); Banana Boys (Factory Theatre); The Sound of Music (Opera on the Avalon); Assistant Stage Manager: Sisters (Soulpepper Theatre Company), Constellations, Hamlet/All’s Well That Ends Well, Botticelli in the Fire/Sunday in Sodom, Domesticated, The Tragedy of Caesar/A Comedy of Errors (Canadian Stage Company).
Factory
Founded in 1970, Factory was the first theatre company in the nation to devote itself to producing 100% Canadian content. Fifty years later, Factory continues to lead in the development and sharing of Canadian stories, having produced more than 300 productions from a diverse source of Canadian playwrights and launched the careers of countless theatre professionals.
Factory would like to thank the government funding bodies, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, the Toronto Arts Council, and the Government of Canada, our Corporate Sponsors BMO and TD, as well as our generous donors who make developing, producing and presenting Canadian theatre possible.