Small Wooden Shoe stages a reading of Brecht’s LIFE OF GALILEO A New Translation
7pm Sunday May 30th, 2010
Convocation Hall
By Donation (in support of the Actors’ Fund of Canada )
Doors open at 6:30pm
For one night only, on Sunday, May 30, Small Wooden Shoe presents an extraordinary and historic reading of a timeless play. Tracy Wright reads the title role of a new Canadian translation of Brecht’s Life of Galileo, presented in a special staged reading with a cast of groundbreaking Canadian theatre artists, filmmakers and musicians.
Those joining Wright in this landmark event include Andrea Davis, Andrea Donaldson, Ann-Marie MacDonald, Brendan Gall, Cara Gee, Caroline Gillis, Christopher Stanton, Clinton Walker, Daniel MacIvor, Darren O’Donnell, David Fox, Don McKellar, Earl Pastko, Erin Shields, Evan Webber, Fiona Highet, Frank Cox-O’Connell, Gregory Prest, Guillermo Verdecchia, Kirsten Johnson, Lyon Smith, Matt Baram, Michelle Polak, Nadia Ross, Naomi Snieckus, Ravi Jain, Richard Alan Campbell, Robin Fulford, Sky Gilbert and Tony Nappo.
Toronto musicians including Laura Barrett and Matt Murphy provide the live soundtrack to this momentous event.
All proceeds go to The Actors’ Fund of Canada. With over 10,000 professional members, The Actors’ Fund provides emergency financial aid to assist cultural workers in recovering from an illness, injury or other circumstances causing severe economic and personal hardship.
Brecht’s play pushes beyond the story of Galileo that we all know – that of a great scientist prosecuted by the ignorant Church and nobly recanting in order to write his ‘world-changing masterwork’ in secret – to question the legend that has emerged around this controversial figure. Completed after the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Brecht’s Life of Galileo lays bare the notion of scientific research and progress ‘for its own sake’. It proposes a social and ethical responsibility for scientists and intellectuals that remains radical in these days of venture capital science and economic justifications. Forcefully asking what the role of the intellectual and thinker is in relation to power and the status quo, Life of Galileo stands as a vitally important drama.
“In these times, it’s easy to back away from big plays and big ideas,” says Jacob Zimmer, Artistic Director of Small Wooden Shoe. “With this new translation, and this truly remarkable cast, we come together to grapple with and re-imagine our theatrical and scientific traditions, and approach Brecht and Galileo for what they might tell us now, about our lives today.” In this new translation by Zimmer with Birgit Schreyer Duarte and directed by Zimmer with Associate Artist (and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre Artistic Director) Brendan Healy, Life of Galileo thrills and excites with its examination, reflection and provocation on contemporary issues of authority.
