2013/2014 Season
Written and Performed by Debbie Patterson
Directed by Arne MacPherson
February 27th – March 9th 2014 at the Asper Centre for Theatre and Film – 400 Colony Street (University of Winnipeg Campus). This is an accessible venue!
“When all I can do is pray, what will I pray for?”
Debbie Patterson’s bold new work intersects core- area residents with a disabled food bank volunteer in an attempt to unlock the mystery of how neighbourhoods evolve and how we cope with unstoppable processes of destruction.
Drawn from a series of first person accounts – each with their own unique perspective on the strengths and challenges of this troubled area, Sargent & Victor &Me is a haunting narrative infused with a potent honesty that illuminates Patterson’s capacity to touch difficult and often dark subject matter with humour and grace.
Sargent & Victor & Me is surprisingly funny, emotionally thorny and boldly original.
Artistic Team
Music & Sound Design: Christine Fellows and John K. Samson
Lighting Design: Hugh Conacher
Set Design: Andrea von Wichert
Dramaturge: Iris Turcott
Stage Manager – Michelle Lagassé
Production Manager: Hugh Conacher
Debbie Patterson
Playwright & Performer
Debbie Patterson is a Winnipeg playwright, director and actor. Trained at the National Theatre School of Canada, she is a founding member of Shakespeare in the Ruins (SIR) and recently served as Theatre Ambassador for Winnipeg’s Cultural Capital year. Currently she is serving as Artistic Associate at Prairie Theatre Exchange and is a member of the PTE Playwrights Unit. Playwriting credits include the musical Head (SIR), Candy From a Baby(Edmonton and Winnipeg Fringe), and Molotov Circus(Winnipeg Fringe, Gimli Aspire Theatre, SummerWorks), which was nominated for the Harry Rintoul Award and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. She has written several adaptations for of Robert Munsch stories for PrairieTheatre Exchange which have gone on to be produced at theatres across the country. Directing credits include Macbeth, Taming of the Shrew and Midsummer Night’s Dream for SIR and Saint Joan for Theatre by the River. As a performer, some of her favourite roles have included Zoya in Molotov Circus, the Nurse in Romeo and Juliet, and Jenny in Threepenny Opera. She lives in Winnipeg with her family: Arne MacPherson, Gislina Patterson and Solmund (Salty) MacPherson.
Arne MacPherson
Director
Arne has directed over thirty productions in Winnipeg, in both professional and student settings. Favourite shows include Stretching Hide, Noble Savage Savage Noble, Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Theatre Projects Manitoba), The Threepenny Opera (The Manitoba Theatre Centre and Shakespeare In the Ruins), Head, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, Macbeth, (Shakespeare In the Ruins), Magical Mystery Munsch (Prairie Theatre Exchange), Romeo and Juliet (Manitoba Theatre for Young People), Unity (1918) (PTE School).
Arne performed the title role in Shakespeare’s Dog at the Manitoba Theatre Centre and the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. He played Hamlet, Richard III, Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet, Malvolio in Twelfth Night, and Antonio in The Merchant of Venice for Shakespeare In the Ruins,. At Prairie Theatre Exchange he appeared in Unity (1918), Fox, and InQuest, at Theatre Projects Manitoba in Encore and Prok, and at the Winnipeg Jewish Theatre in Way to Heaven, Talk, The Father and Lenin’s Embalmers.
At the 2009 Winnipeg Fringe festival, he performed with his partner Debbie Patterson and their two kids Gislina and Solmund in Patterson’s play Molotov Circus, which was re-mounted for the Summerworks festival in Toronto.
He is a member of the Curatorial Committee and the board of nuna(now), an Iceland-Canada art convergence. In association with nuna(now), Arne co-created with a group of Icelandic and Canadian artists a multi-disciplinary performance work called The Island, which was shown in Reykjavik and Winnipeg.
Christine Fellows & John K Samson
Music & Sound Design
Christine Fellows: Winnipeg songwriter Christine Fellows has released five solo albums to date, and her sixth album, Burning Daylight, will be released in 2014 alongside an illustrated collection of poetry. An avid interdisciplinary collaborator, Fellows often works with visual artists, choreographers, filmmakers and musicians to create performance works, scores and spectacles.
John K. Samson: In addition to his work with The Weakerthans, Winnipegger John K. Samson is a writer whose poetry and prose has appeared in Matrix Magazine, CV2, Geist, The Believer, and Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry. Samson is also the co-founder and managing editor of Winnipeg publishing house ARP Books. His solo album, Provincial, and book, Lyrics and Poems, 1997-2012, were released in 2012.
Hugh Conacher
Lighting Designer
Hugh has collaborated with choreographers, dance companies and theatres across Canada. He enjoys working frequently with Theatre Projects, most recently in Dionysus in Stony Mountain. Other recent work includes WJT’s Angels in America, for which he designed the lighting and media, MTC’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Zone 41’s Three Sisters presented by TPM and the Royal Winnipeg Ballet’s Wonderland. He has worked around the country with such companies as Theatre Calgary, National Arts Centre, Gearshifting Performance Works and Chartier Danse, expanding his process beyond lighting design to include interactive media and photography, as seen in Hybrid Human at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Jolene Bailie’s Sensory Life, Infinite World, Freya Olafson’s Avatar and TPM’s North Main Gothic. HughConacher.com
Andrea von Wichert
Set Designer
Andrea von Wichert is a Winnipeg visual artist, writer and performer. She is the founder and part artistic director of Girls!Girls!Girls! Whether performing internationally as part of PAZZIA Collective (UK),with Michael Dudeck in Brooklyn New York, or her own spoken word rantings, her work is marked by a skewed sort of iconoclasm, laced with a cerebral sense of humour. Her one-woman show Andrea von Wichert is Overexposed premiered last year at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and was nominated for a Harry Rintoul Award for best new play. Her first novel, A Shrinking Focus, is evolving with the generous help of the Manitoba and Winnipeg Arts Councils. She has worked as a scenic artist in Winnipeg for the last two decades, painting shows for Theatre Projects and other companies.
Michelle Lagassé
Stage Manager
Michelle is looking forward to Stage Managing TPM’s production of Sargent and Victor and Me and being reunited with Arne, Debbie, and Hugh.
Some selected productions include Stretching Hide (TPM), Harvey, A Few Good Men, After Miss Julie, Top Girls (MTC); the dishwashers, Til it Hurts, Burnin’ Love (PTE); Broken Glass, Speed the Plow (WJT); Fort Mac (Theatre Vice Versa); The Millionairess, Fanny’s First Play (Shaw Festival)
Michelle has also worked for the Wpg Fringe festival, for PTE’s Carol Shield’s Festival of New Works and on the last 4 Federal Elections.
Michelle is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and has taught Stage Managing at Brock University.
Iris Turcott is one of Canada’s leading dramaturges. She was the company dramaturge at The Canadian Stage Company for the past 17 years, and is now in the same position at Factory Theatre where she is restructuring and revitalizing their New Play Development Department. She is also the company dramaturge for Ronnie Burkett’s Theatre of Marionettes. Iris has worked with playwrights from coast to coast, including Judith Thompson, Adam Pettle, Brad Fraser, Anusree Roy, Joan MacLeod, Michel Marc Bouchard, Andrew Moodie, ahdri zhina mandiela, Anosh Irani, Sunil Kuruvilla, Tomson Highway, and Daniel MacIvor. Recently, she worked on Judith Thompson’s The Thrill, which premiered at the Stratford Festival this summer, and on Daniel MacIvor’s The Best Brothers, which premiered at Stratford to rave reviews the previous summer and which will be produced at the Prairie Theatre Exchange this October.
Prior to her focus on dramaturgy, Iris was a freelance actor and director involved in the creation and production of many new Canadian plays. She was also the co-Founder and co-Artistic Director of Playbill Theatre; a company devoted to developing and producing theatre for young audiences. Iris continues to be very active in Arts Education, consulting, teaching and facilitating workshops for various arts organizations, theatre companies, schools and universities. She has been teaching at the National Theatre School in Montreal for seven years. She is also involved in a number of aspects of publishing, including scouting, editing, research and writing. She co-edited “Canada on Stage” and has written the foreword for a number of plays and works in collaboration with Playwrights’ Canada Press on various events. She served on the Board Directors for the LMDA (Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas) and continues to be very active networking scripts and playwrights both domestically and internationally.
Iris is a recipient of the George Luscombe Award for Mentorship in Professional Theatre, the NTS Sims Family Award for Teaching Excellence, and a Harold award.
