≈ 2 hours and 30 minutes · With intermission
Last updated: November 4, 2021
But why?
This is the play’s opening entreaty and an invitation to all of us: historians, actors, writers, audiences. Why. Why do people do the things they do?
Michael Frayn’s response to why finds its allegory in Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which essentially states that you cannot know with precise certainty where a particle will land until the moment it is observed, and further, that the act of observation also changes the particle you are observing. All you can predict is a range of probabilities – places where the particle is more likely to land than others. Superimposing this principle on to the realm of human behaviour, Frayn posits that people’s intentions are just as unknowable as the positions of tiny particles within an atom.
For actors, finding the intention of the character they will inhabit propels them into a thoughtful collection of evidence both before and during rehearsals – and for historical characters, this deep dive is a nearly endless pursuit. Actors want to know what triggers their characters, what inspires them to act, or what sometimes prevents them from acting when the situation demands it.
Prior to the advent of quantum mechanics, causality, the logic of cause and effect, was the central tenet of all science. But the new revelations of quantum mechanics changed the world as we know it. Suddenly it was possible for something to be in two realms at the same time. Suddenly it was possible to calculate that a particle could land within a range of imprecision. Through this lens, we can begin to understand that people will sometimes do the unpredictable without ever fully knowing why.
The uncertainty of human motivation is the great mystery theatre artists rigorously strive to unravel in bringing their characters to light. Frayn has given these brilliant actors you see before you a quantum playground to test these theories with their iconic characters. I hope this play cracks open the thrilling possibilities of uncertainty for you too.
Music credits
All songs written by Jason "Chilly Gonzales" Beck (PRS/SOCAN)
All songs from Solo Piano & Solo Piano II Published by EMI Publishing Ltd.
All songs from Solo Piano III Published by Gentle Threat Ltd.
Performed by Chilly Gonzales
Courtesy of Gentle Threat Ltd.
ENGLISH THEATRE
Managing Director: DAVID ABEL
Marketing Strategist: MONICA BRADFORD-LEA
ASL Interpreter Consultant: CARMELLE CACHERO
Marketing Strategist: BAR CLEMENT (on leave)
Communications Strategist: SEAN FITZPATRICK
Artistic Director: JILLIAN KEILEY
Senior Producer: ALEXANDRA LUNNEY
Senior Marketing Manager: BRIDGET MOONEY
Associate Producer, Artistic Projects: JUDI PEARL
Company Manager: SAMIRA ROSE
Production
Head Property Master: MICHAEL CALUORI
Assistant Scenic Carpenter: CHAD DESJARDINS
Assistant to the Production Director: ERIN FINN
Head Scenic Painter: DANIEL McMANUS
Assistant Scenic Painter: TILLIE MORGAN
Alternate Technical Director: CYNTHIA SHAW
Scheduler: STÉFANIE SÉGUIN
Technical Director: CRYSTAL L. SPICER
Head Scenic Carpenter: DAVID STROBER
Head Wardrobe Supervisor: MARIE SHARPE
Theatre Stage Staff
Head Flyman: ALEX GRIFFORE
Head Carpenter: CHARLES MARTIN
Head Sound Engineer: DOUG MILLAR
Assistant Electrician: MARTIN RACETTE
Property Master: MICHEL SANSCARTIER
Head Electrician: ÉRIC TESSIER
The National Arts Centre is a member of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres and engages, under the terms of the Canadian Theatre Agreement, professional artists who are members of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association.
Artists
Jillian Keiley has directed and taught across Canada and internationally. She was the founding Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud. Highlights from her 27 years with the company include In Your Dreams Freud, Under Wraps, AfterImage, The Cheat, The Chekhov Variations, and Salvage: Story of a House, Oil and Water, Between Breaths, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and I Forgive You, most of which were featured on tours across Canada including the NAC. Jillian assumed her role as NAC English Theatre Artistic Director in 2012 and finished her tenure in 2022. Other NAC productions include A Christmas Carol, Twelfth Night, Metamorphoses: Based on the Myths of Ovid and Copenhagen. She also directed Bakkhai, The Diary of Anne Frank, and As You Like It for the Stratford Festival, as well as The Neverending Story and Alice Through the Looking-Glass, both produced as collaborations between the Stratford Festival and the NAC. Tempting Providence, her collaboration with Robert Chafe for Theatre Newfoundland Labrador, toured internationally for 12 years. Her production of Tell Tale Harbour at the Confederation Centre for the Arts was a blockbuster hit at the Confederation Centre this past summer and she looks forward to opening summer productions of Richard the Second at the Stratford Festival and Come From Away in Gander, Newfoundland. Jillian holds Honorary Doctorates of Letters from both Memorial University and York University, and she was the winner of the Siminovitch Prize for Directing in 2004 and the Canada Council’s John Hirsch Prize in 1997.
Allegra Fulton is an award-winning actress whose distinguished career on stage and screen has taken her across Canada, the U.S. and Europe, where she has also worked as a director. Best known for playing iconoclasts and dangerous women, she has been praised for her portrayals of high-powered characters in both classical theatre at the Stratford and Shaw festivals and in the international modern repertoire in theatres all over. She has appeared in over 75 films and television series including Guillermo Del Toro’s Oscar® winning The Shape of Water, David Cronenberg’s Maps to the Stars, as well as Run This Town, Strange But True, The Good Doctor, Chapelwaite, Moonshine, Schitts Creek, 19-2, Suits, Fargo, Cardinal, Kim’s Convenience, and Workin’ Moms among many others. Ms. Fulton is delighted to be back at the NAC with Copenhagen once again
Jesse LaVercombe is a writer and actor based in the U.S. and Canada. WRITING WORK, Feature Films: Float (Lionsgate/Collective Pictures); Code 8: Part ll (Netflix/Collective Pictures); (Theatre) Gilgamesh & Enkidu (with Seth Bockley and Ahmed Moneka, featuring Moneka’s band) – premiere in Toronto in 2022, run at La MaMa in NYC in 2023, Winner of the 2019 Playwrights Guild of Canada Emerging Playwright Award. ACTING WORK, Film/TV: Violation (Toronto ACTRA Award/Canadian Screen Award Nomination); Murdoch Mysteries (recurring role of Jack Walker); Theatre: Tarragon Theatre; Factory Theatre; The Jungle Theater (Minneapolis, MN); Marigny Opera House (New Orleans, LA). Training, National Theatre School, Canadian Film Centre.
Rick appeared in R+J (Stratford Festival). His digital play Orestes premiered at the Tarragon Theatre this year. Recent appearances include Nurses (Corus/Global); This Life and Fortunate Son (CBC); All My Puny Sorrows and the upcoming film North of Albany (Slykid & Skykid). He played the role of Jack Layton in the CBC TV movie Jack. He recently appeared at the NAC in Why Not Theatre’s Prince Hamlet. Other recent favourites include Animal Farm, Waiting for Godot, The Accidental Death of an Anarchist (Soulpepper); Within the Glass and Enemy of the People (Tarragon Theatre). Rick has written and directed several plays and has developed projects for television. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada.
Selected Theatre: It's a Wonderful Life (Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); Chariots of Fire (Grand Theatre); Charles III (Studio 180/ Mirvish Productions); Saint Joan, Mrs. Warren's Profession, The Divine, Pygmalion, The Sea, Major Barbara, Our Betters, Misalliance, When the Rain Stops Falling, Candida (Shaw Festival); The Prince of Homburg (Talk is Free Theatre); A Christmas Carol, Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre).
Film/Television: Frontier, Workin’ Moms, Anne with an E, Locke and Key, Frankie Drake, Murdoch Mysteries.
Training: George Brown Theatre School, Banff Citadel Professional Theatre Program, Canterbury High School.
Previous designs for the NAC include The Sound of Music and Anne & Gilbert: The Musical. As a designer and educator, Roger has worked extensively throughout Canada for many companies including the Great Canadian Theatre Company, Alberta Theatre Projects, Curtain Razors, The Globe Theatre, Theatre Network, Mayfield Dinner Theatre, Keyano Theatre and Prairie Theatre Exchange. Roger has a couple Prix Rideau Award nominations and a win, some Capital Critics Circle Award nominations, a couple Betty Mitchell Award nominations, multiple Roger Sterling Award nominations and wins, and a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination from a very, very long time ago. He also once taught theatre design at the University of Lethbridge (Alberta).
An award-winning lighting designer, writer and performer, Itai is Artistic Director of the Elbow Theatre in Vancouver. His one-man show How to Disappear Completely (The Chop, directed by James Long) has been remounted 30 times in 26 cities, and continues to tour. Itai has designed over 300 shows across North America and Europe. He has been awarded six Jessie Richardson Awards, Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award, a Winnipeg Theatre Award, the Jack King Award, Victoria’s Spotlight Choice Award and the Design Award at the 2008 Dublin Fringe Festival. He was shortlisted for the Siminovitch Prize in 2018.
Sound design credits include The Neverending Story (NAC/Stratford Festival); Anne and Gilbert, A Christmas Carol (NAC); Bakkhai, The Diary of Anne Frank, As You Like It (Stratford Festival); The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Oil and Water, Under Wraps, Afterimage, Fear of Flight (Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland); Ann and Seamus (Shallaway); Rick Mercer's Show Me the Button, I'll Push It. Film/TV: Boom Operator: Republic of Doyle, Random Passage (CBC); Love and Savagery (Morag); Rare Birds. Production sound: Danny (NFB); Misery Harbour (UIP Denmark). Producer/engineer: Hunter Hunter, Spectators (Amelia Curran); Dardanelles, The Eastern Light (Dardanelles); The Once, We Win Some We Lose (The Once); All Will Be Well (Fortunate Ones). Musician: Boy on Bridge (Alan Doyle). Awards: JUNO for Hunter Hunter; East Coast Music Award for The Once, Duane Andrews; MUSIC NL - Industry Professional of the Year.
Mikaela Lily Davies is an actor, director and creator. She is a 2020 graduate of the prestigious CBC Canadian Film Centre's Acting Conservatory. She has performed in eight shows with Soulpepper Theatre (Two Dora Mavor Moore nominations for Best Ensemble) and spent four seasons at The Stratford Festival, playing Katherine of France in Breath of Kings, Irma in The Madwoman of Chaillot and Beatrice-Joanna in The Changeling. She is a graduate of the Michael Langham Workshop for Classical Direction and the inaugural recipient of the Jon Kaplan Canadian Stage Performer Award. She holds a Elizabeth Sterling Hayes Award nomination for Outstanding Comedic Performance for the titular role Miss Bennet at The Citadel Theatre and a Montreal English Theatre Award nomination for Outstanding Supporting Performance for her work as Bess in The Last Wife at The Centaur Theatre. She has directed and created a handful of plays with Polly Phokeev including the award-winning How We Are, and The Mess. You can see her on this season's Murdoch Mysteries and hear her on Audible, voicing Lila in Camilla Gibb's beautiful novel, The Relatives. Most recently, she directed and co-created a new original musical adaptation of Master and Margarita created with Phokeev and Hailey Gillis, that received a workshop production at Crow's Theatre.
Brian is happy and grateful to return to the NAC. Thank you’s to Jillian, Andy, Samira, the Copenhagen Company, and all the staff at NAC English Theatre. Previous productions at the National Arts Centre include the just-before-the-pandemic-hit The Neverending Story, Alice Through The Looking-Glass (both produced in association with the Stratford Festival) and Frida K.
The original stage manager on this production of Copenhagen is Kai Yueh Chen. Brian would like to thank Kai for all of his help and assistance on this second rehearsal/performance process.
Brian lives in Stratford, Ontario.
J is a multidisciplinary theatre artist from Ottawa, Ontario. They are a graduate of the Algonquin College Theatre Arts program and wear many hats in the community with credits in stage management, performance, and design. Assistant stage management credits include Lo (Or Dear Mr. Wells); Macbeth (Great Canadian Theatre Company); and The Blizzard of Oz (Ottawa Musicals). Stage Management credits include Honey Dew Me (theatre decentered: Undercurrents Festival 2020); and Fierce, A Christmas Carol (Black Sheep Theatre).
Michael Frayn was born in London in 1933 and began his career as a journalist on the Guardian and the Observer. Spies was long-listed for the Man Booker Prize 2002 and won the Whitbread Award for Fiction 2002. Headlong was shortlisted for the 1999 Booker Prize, the Whitbread Novel Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction. Other novels include Towards the End of the Morning, The Trick of It and A Landing on The Sun, as well as The Tin Men, Now You Know, Sweet Dreams and Celia’s Secret. His thirteen plays range from Noises Off to Copenhagen, and he has translated a number of works, mostly from the Russian. His play, Democracy, received the Evening Standard Best Play Award and transferred to the Wyndhams Theatre after a hugely successful run at the National Theatre.
International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees