BLUENOSE
Written by Emil Sher
Directed by Tamara Brown
Touring in schools: February 6 to March 3, 2017
Show running time: 60 minutes including Q & A
To book your school for the tour please contact our School Tour coordinator Christine Rodriguez at:
Phone: 514-932-1104 ext. 228
E-mail: schooltour@blacktheatreworkshop.ca
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2 public performances February 18, 2017 at 1pm and 3pm at the Black Community Resource Centre, 6767 Chemin Cote des Neiges, Montreal H3S 2T6
Entry: Regular $ 10 / Children $6 (12 and under)
To purchase your tickets for the public performance please contact our Box Office Coordinator Jamila Joseph at:
Phone: 514-932-1104 ext 225
Email: boxoffice@blacktheatreworkshop.ca
ABOUT OUR SHOW:
Cast: Nadine Bhabha, Manouchka Elinor, Alex Laferriere, Amir Sám Nakhjavani
Technical Designer: Steve Schon
Set & Costume Designer: Sabrina Miller
Sound Designer: Chimwemwe Miller
Stage Manager: Danielle Skeene
Synopsis
Ratt, Spatt and Knat are three red-nosed pirates whose lives are predictable on the blustering seas until Ku, a confident blue-nosed pirate, washes up on deck. Despite being taken prisoner, Ku refuses to submit to the crew’s imperialistic mindset and attitudes of superiority. Eventually, Ku is able to enlighten some of the pirates, if not all. A swashbuckling, comedic tale about culture clashes and cultural assumptions, Bluenose provides a glimpse at small-scale imperialism as it unfolds on the Shark de Triomphe, a cluttered, foul-smelling ship.
About playwright Emil Sher
He doesn’t look great in a fedora (he’ll leave that to Leonard Cohen) and he keeps a safe distance from a Stetson but Emil wears many different hats as a writer, whatever the weather. On any given day he might start out wearing a children’s fiction hat, stop to walk his hatless dog, and then return to his desk with a playwright’s hat neatly strapped to his head. A few hours later the strap is untied, the dog is fed, and Emil is back at his hat rack, deciding what to wear next. He might be working on a screenplay, an essay, the lyrics for a musical. Ideas and images are often floating in his head. Hence a hat, to capture them before they drift off. Whatever the hat, whatever the story, Emil’s workday always begins the same way: he stares at the open sea of a blank page and weeps. How, he wonders, will he possibly fill this vast space with words that count, with language that might last after a page is turned? He feels stuck before he has even started. And then he repeats his daily mantra: “Write.” And so Emil writes. He writes for the young and once-were-young. He wrote the stage adaptation of Hana’s Suitcase, the beloved Holocaust children’s book by Karen Levine. Other plays for young audiences include Bluenose and Beneath the Banyan Tree. Emil founded Breadbox Theatre in 2005 to introduce early-grade schoolchildren to the joys of live theater with a story that unfolds in a breadbox filled with kitchen-utensil puppets. Several of Emil’s poems have appeared in Chirp magazine and he has also written the story for a children’s ballet performed by Ballet Jorgen. In recent years he has waded into the warm and welcoming waters of children’s fiction. His debut young adult novel, Young Man With Camera, was published in Fall 2015 by Scholastic Canada and Arthur A. Levine Books in the U.S. With two board books by Annick Press in his pocket (A Button Story, A Pebble Story), Emil is writing two picture books that will hatch in 2016 (Scholastic Canada) and 2017 (Groundwood Books).
About the director Tamara Brown
Tamara Brown is an Montreal-based actress, singer and director. Co-founder of Montreal’s Metachroma Theatre, her favourite acting credits include Blacks Don’t Bowl (Black Theatre Workshop), Inherit the Wind (Segal Centre), Humans and Lion in the Streets (Tableau D’Hote), Richard III (Metachroma), Robin Hood (Geordie Productions), Urban Tales: Ladies’ Night (Théâtre Urbi et Orbi), Intimate Apparel (Centaur), The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God (NAC), and Da Kink In My Hair (Theatre Calgary/NAC). TV credits include Helix, Quantico, The Art of More, This Life, 19-2, The Game, Gothica; LARPs, and video games for Ubisoft. As a director, her work has been seen in Toronto, Winnipeg, New York, Stratford, and Montreal. Tamara has a long history with the BTW School Tour, first as an actor in Afrika Solo, then Mella Mella, The Nutmeg Princess, and New Canadian Kid; and moved on to direct When Elephant was King.
