Tootsie Awards for 2020

by Lynn on December 28, 2020

in The Passionate Playgoer

As many of you know, I have been giving out Tootsie Pops for many years to people in the theatre as a way of saying ‘thank you for making the theatre so special for me.’ Instead of doing top 10 lists of the best theatre and performances of the year, I do The Tootsie Awards that are personal, eclectic, whimsical and totally subjective.

Here are this year’s winners:

PEOPLE

The Guts of a Bandit Award

Allyson McMackon

Allyson McMackon founded Theatre Rusticle in 1998.  She has been its Artistic Director and moving force since then. The company uses balletic movement to dig deeper into the meaning of classics. McMackon has a keen sense of artistry and daring. She disbanded the company this year but left us with one intoxicating, sensually provocative production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. This was the first year that the company did not receive funding. That didn’t stop her. She has the guts of a bandit. I will miss her stunning vision in all things theatre and I’m not alone.  

Maja Ardal

Maja Ardal was hired by Arkady Spivak, Artistic Producer of Talk is Free Theatre in Barrie, Ont.  (more on him below), to curate a program of plays. The result was The Plural of She Festival devoted to plays created and performed by feminine-identifying artists. The plays were bracing, funny, bold and revelatory about race, culture, dealing with sadness and trying to fit in to a world that might not be accepting. The plays were done in backyards of private homes in Barrie and each performance was sold-out. Maja Ardal is one terrific spirit.

The Jon Kaplan Mensch Award

Nina Lee Aquino (Factory Theatre)

Artistic director Nina Lee Aquino adapted quickly to having to close her theatre and adjust her season to the digital reality creating the Satellite Season.  She directed a re-imagined production of House by Daniel MacIvor staring Kevin Hanchard, filmed in his house which made us look at that play in a different light. Then she had playwright David Yee re-write his play acts of faith for the digital reality with stunning results. Aquino is offering the whole digital season to her audiences for free. As she has said, “Since we can (offer the season for free) we should.” She then created “The Bedrock Creators’ Initiative” in which playwrights are invited to develop their plays at Factory Theatre and are guaranteed a production of the play—such commitment seems a rarity. Nina Lee Aquino is leading by example.

Kim Blackwell (4th Line Theatre)

Kim Blackwell initiated a farmer’s market every Friday in the summer on the grounds of the Winslow Farm to help various vendors during the time of COVID and to give work to the folks who usually work for 4th Line Theatre. The 4th Line Theatre season was cancelled this summer. Blackwell also organized a series of 27 monologues from past 4th Line Theatre shows that supporters of 4th Line Theatre could arrange to hear by phone. For Free. The actors got paid. The ‘audience’ members were wonderfully entertained and hearing those monologues spoken with such passion by the actors, brought back vivid memories of the plays themselves. She also co-wrote with Lindy Finlan Bedtime Stories and Other Horrifying Tales, a spooky play for Halloween that took place outdoors, at night, in the fields of Winslow Farm. People flocked for the experience. The cast was terrific.

Tim Carroll and Tim Jennings (the Shaw Festival)

They came up with a plan to employ as many actors as they could who were members of the Festival who saw their shows cancelled. They programmed concerts sung by eight singers, played by musicians and employed them for as long as they could. Then they laid them off and immediately re-hired them for outreach and education for the community.

Mitchell Cushman (Outside the March)

In good times Mitchell Cushman and his inventive company, Outside the March, create theatre. In bad times—pandemic, COVID, closed theatres, Mitchell Cushman and his inventive company create theatre. He and his team fashioned The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries in which the ‘audience’ suggested the mystery and the company, in a series of phone calls over six days, solved the mystery. In each call the ‘detectives’ or investigator LISTENED intently to the ‘audience’ for clues and then ran with them in the next calls. The reach of this initiative was international. The New York Times was mighty impressed. And again, actors got paid for their labours.

Then, not sitting on their laurels, the company, in collaboration with Talk Is Free Theatre and the National Arts Centre, produced Something Bubbled, Something Blue, an outdoor wedding in which all the participants were encased in their own huge plastic sphere. The audience watched as they were positioned around a roped circumference. Mitchell Cushman and company adapt, switch, change and continue as usual in a different way. Take a look at the short video and be amazed at the creativity:  

https://nac-cna.ca/en/video/gat-something-bubbled-something-blue

Arkady Spivak (Talk is Free Theatre)

When does this man sleep? As the company’s Artistic Producer, he is either busy applying for grants that will help actors in his company with paying for childcare, or with guaranteeing them a contract for three years with a minimum wage, or with budgeting so cleverly that he can offer audiences free theatre for three years if they pay a $25 deposit that will be returned to them when they see a play. Then there is the theatre he produces for his company. Often the plays are forgotten classics or musicals that were not popular but he finds intriguing and he’s right.

And there are the wild experiments such as The Curious Voyage of a few years ago when he engaged hardy audience members to commit to a scheme to go on a curious voyage of theatre that began in Barrie, Ont. and finished in London, England over three days. And there are the readings he has for actors not open to the public because he wants an excuse to put actors to work and pay them for their efforts. He is a theatre man to his toes who cherishes his ‘babies’ (his actors) while he pushes them to be as good as they can be and then challenges them to do something terrifying to challenge them i.e. Michael Torontow, a wonderful actor, was encouraged to direct his first show and he started with Into the Woods by Stephen Sondheim, a really difficult piece and the result was wonderful.

And this summer, with COVID closing theatres, Spivak got the idea of a festival of plays done outside in private backyards. Maja Ardal, an extraordinary theatre creator, came up with the name, The Plural of She, and curated the plays.

Spivak has not only produced some of the best theatre I usually see in a year, he does it in Barrie, Ont. and has a fiercely loyal, daring audience who support him. Bravo in every conceivable way.

Julie Tepperman (Convergence Theatre)

Background. Convergence Theatre composed of Co-Artistic Directors Julie Tepperman and Aaron Willis, specializes in site-specific plays. But we have a pandemic that is keeping us isolated at home so we can’t go outside to see theatre. Why should that stop the fearless Convergence Theatre? In this instance Julie Tepperman created The Corona Variations in which she wrote (for the most part) stories and scenarios that one audience member at a time listened to via several phone calls over one evening. Julie Tepperman also directed the actors presenting the stories.

The playlets depicted what one might be going through in a pandemic: loneliness, pining for loved ones or friends, the anxiety of a senior. Julie Tepperman even got the listener to engage in a playlet as well. The stories were poignant and hilarious. Julie Tepperman beautifully captured the whimsy and depth of emotion that the characters were going through, and by extension, the audience.

I loved the complex effort of the whole endeavour and Tepperman’s Herculean effort in scheduling what story was to play at what time. It all seemed effortless. This is such a bold idea—phone plays for quarantine and bravo to all of the participants for engaging with such commitment. Again Tepperman engaged the audience, hired actors who needed the work and they all did and paid them for it.

The One(s) to Watch Award

Malindi Ayienga

A gifted theatre creator. She worked with Maja Ardal to create You and I a show for toddlers for Young People’s Theatre, getting right down on the ground to engage with them at eye-level before the ‘show’ began. Grace, kindness and joy was in that performance and the children responded.

In her show, Justice for Malindi Ayienga for the Plural of She Festival for Talk is Free Theatre in Barrie, Ont. she wrote and performed her one-person show about being the child of a white mother and a black father (from Kenya) and thought about how she fit into the world. She went to Kenya to investigate her roots. The play was one of the results of her ‘journey.’

Another result was that Ayienga and a group of friends formed Diva Day International to fund-raise to buy and send Diva Cups to girls in Kenya. Ayienga found that when a girl got her period in Kenya, she was ostracized from the class and had to sit at the back on a bench covered in sand.  Ayienga and company felt the Diva Cup would be important in alleviating the embarrassment the girls experienced when they got their periods.  

Ayienga is an artist with compassion, perception, sensitivity and she gives the rest of us a lot to think about as we navigate our own lives.

Tabia Lau

Tabia Lau is a PhD candidate in Theatre & Performance Studies at York University. In her play The Antigone Play she imagines Antigone’s story as one for our time. The production was presented as a showcase for the performance students.

Lau has such a compelling voice and vision in taking this mythic Greek story and applying it to our modern world. She has a dandy sense of dialogue that is gorgeous and vivid and makes her audience feel smart when they can spot her literary references in her work. If The Antigone Play is an example of the quality of the work Lau produces while she is a student I can’t wait to see her next play.  

Xavier Lopez

Xavier Lopez is a talented actor who has distinguished himself in such plays as For Both Resting and Breathing for Talk is Free Theatre in Barrie, Ont. and No Clowns Allowed at the Grand Canyon. But he was truly blazing as Angel in Jesus Hopped the ‘A’ Train in his Soulpepper Company debut. He played a religious man who was in jail for killing a man by shooting him in the butt. Angel said he was innocent. As Angel, Lopez was full of passion, conviction, righteous indignation and went toe to toe with Daren A. Herbert’s performance as Lucius Jenkins. Electrifying.

Natasha Mumba

Natasha Mumba distinguishes herself in every performance she gives, whether it’s at the Shaw Festival, or in a production for an indie theatre in Toronto, or virtually as she did in acts of faith for Factory Theatre, her work is masterful.

In acts of faith Mumba played Faith, a young woman supposedly with prophetic gifts, and gave a thoughtful, nuanced performance. I saw the sass and resolve of Faith in this bold performance. I also see a delicacy and tenacity that pervades her characters and makes them unforgettable.  

Andrea Scott

Andrea Scott is a compelling playwright. Last year her blazingly intelligent play Every Day She Rose (co-written with Nick Green) challenged our perceptions of race, communication, friendship, respect and how we deal with uncomfortable situations and each other. This played in Toronto at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, produced by Nightwood Theatre.

The play of Andrea Scott that really intrigues me is Controlled Damage that played earlier this year at the Neptune Theatre in Nova Scotia. It’s about Viola Desmond a Black business woman who lived in Nova Scotia and experienced a racist incident that took place in 1946 that had a ripple effect for almost 70 years. Viola Desmond is the face on the Canadian $10.

It’s symbolic that the play had its premier in Nova Scotia. Naturally I am eager to see it here in Toronto. What impresses me about Andrea Scott, besides her fierce abilities as a playwright, is her determination and conviction to have Controlled Damage produced to the point that she was the moving force behind its production. She had a collaborator in the company b current, but it was Andrea Scott’s drive to find the money for the production; pitch the play to the Neptune Theatre, and make sure that the play had presence on social media. The result was that the production sold out its run. The play is now published. I think it’s a matter of time that a smart Toronto producer will produce it here. Andrea Scott is a force of theatre.

Jeremy O. Harris

He’s an exception in my list because he’s American—over the years everyone who’s received a “Tootsie” has been Canadian. And ‘exception’ is the word to describe him in every single way.

When he was a third-year student in the graduate program in playwrighting at Yale University he wrote Slave Play that looked at racism, class, slavery, sex and privilege. It was workshopped and produced Off-Broadway at the New York Theatre Workshop.

Slave Play then transferred to Broadway where Mr. Harris was listed as one of the producers. He asked for and got a commitment that tickets would be set aside at a very reasonable price (usually unheard of for Broadway) for people who looked like him: Black, students, young, working two jobs to support themselves, who wanted to see a play but couldn’t usually afford the ticket price.

He asked for and got an evening set aside only for a Black audience so that people who might have been uncomfortable being in an almost all white audience could see a play with people who looked like them on the stage and in the audience. It was a triumph.

He asked for and got, not only talk-back discussions in the theatre after the play, but also more extended talk-back discussions at another location the next day. It’s a complex play. It invites a lot of discussion.

Slave Play was nominated for 12 Tony Award nominations, unprecedented for a play in one season.

During the pandemic Jeremy O. Harris has been busy. With New York Theatre Workshop he funded two $50,000 commissions for new works for Black women playwrights.

Upon sighing a development deal with HBO Jeremy O. Harris also asked for and got a $250,000 annual discretionary theatre production fund which helped produce streamed versions of the Off-Broadway plays, Heroes of the Fourth Turning and Circle Jerk. Each attracted an audience of 10,000 people, many of whom were new to the theatre.

Mr. Harris created “The Golden Collection, named for his grandfather Golden Harris who died two weeks before the playwright learned that Slave Play had been booked at Broadway’s Golden Theatre. “The Golden Collection” was launched in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign. The collection of plays is to go to a library in a Black community in each of the 50 states, plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and Guam.

The plays selected for the collection include: Les Blancs by Lorraine Hansberry, The Colored Museumby George C. Wolfe, An Octoroonby Branden Jacobs JenkinsSweat by Lynn Nottage, A Collection of Plays(Wedding Band and Trouble in Mind) by Alice Childress, Fucking A by Suzan-Lori Parks, We Are Proud to Present a Presentation by Jackie Sibblies Drury, The Mountaintop by Katori Hall, Is God Is by Aleshea Harris, Fires in the Mirror by Anna Deavere Smith, Funnyhouse of a Negro by Adrienne Kennedy, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide / When the Rainbow Is Enufby Ntozake Shange, Bootycandyby Robert O’Hara, Dream on Monkey Mountainby Derek Walcott and Slave Play.

He pledged fees and royalties from Slave Play to fund $500 microgrants administered by the Bushwick Starr Theatre (an award-winning theater in New York) to 152 U.S. based playwrights.

He gave the proceeds from the streamed Heroes of the Fourth Turning production to the Playwrights Horizons relief fund for theatre artists. (Playwrights Horizons is the theatre that first produced Heroes of the Fourth Turning Off-Broadway).

He has sent a letter to President-elect Joe Biden urging him to revive the Federal Theater Project (“The Federal Theatre Project (FTP; 1935–1939) was a theatre program established during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal to fund live artistic performances and entertainment programs in the United States.”) He then got Seth Meyers on his show “Late Night with Seth Meyers” to promise he would spread the word to his prodigious, illustrious twitter followers and have them urge Biden to revive the FTP.

And Jeremy O. Harris is a great fan of our own Jordan Tannahill, especially his book “Theatre for the Unimpressed.”

Jeremy O. Harris is 31 years-old. He has and will change the face and the reach of theatre for the better by making it welcoming to a broader, more diverse audience.

PRODUCTIONS

In Person Productions.

The Play That Sums Up Our Lousy Year Award

Sweat

Written by Lynn Nottage.

Co-produced by Canadian Stage and Studio 180

“A group of friends who have spent their lives sharing drinks, secrets and laughs, work together on the factory floor. But when layoffs and picket lines begin to chip away at their trust, the friends find themselves pitted against each other in a heart-wrenching fight to stay afloat.” 

Yes, there are laughs, but there is anger, rage, racism, disappointment, violence done to an innocent man that left him brain-damaged and friendships and lives in ruins. In the end, a hard-worker in the bar, who many there either ignored or insulted, became the manager of the bar. He took care of the brain-damaged man and gave him a job wiping the tables, because as he said, “that’s how it oughta be.”

In the end, compassion, giving a helping hand and doing it quietly wins, because “that’s how it oughta be.”

The Wet Dream Award

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By William Shakespeare

Re-imagined and directed by Allyson McMackon.

Produced by Theatre Rusticle

This was a sexy, raunchy, dangerous and touching production full of director Allyson McMackon’s signature touches: physically robust movement with sensitive attention to the meaning of the play. It was a production that celebrated: love, marriage, fidelity, confusing emotions, jealousy, nature, super-natural worlds, misguided but sensual fairies and the huge, open heart of the theatre.

This was Allyson McMackon’s swan-song and the end of the company. Damn! What a loss.  

The Well-Earned Ache In Your Heart Award

This Is How We Got Here

Written by Keith Barker

Produced by Native Earth

Keith Barker has written a play about grief that transcends cultures, religions, beliefs and the differences between peoples and brought everyone together to appreciate and experience what his grieving, wounded characters were experiencing. Estranged parents grieve over the loss of their son who took his own life. How do you give comfort with such loss?  Barker writes beautifully and eloquently about how you don’t get over such a loss, but you do get through the grief of it. Cathartic and cleansing.

Is It Real Or Is It Memorex Award

Marjorie Prime.

Written by Jordan Harrison

Produced by Coal Mine Theatre.

Are the characters clones? Are they real? Who’s alive? Who isn’t? The play and production were provocative, complex and unsettling. But the chance to see Martha Henry act in this tiny theatre in Toronto was a gift. The rest of the cast: Sarah Dodd, Beau Dixon and Gordon Hecht was wonderful, as was Stewart Arnott’s sensitive, detailed direction.

The Oil Slick Award

Oil

Written by Ella Hickson

Produced by ARC

Ella Hickson has written a play about the lure, dangers and pervading presence of oil through the ages. Co-directors Aviva Armour-Ostroff and Christopher Stanton created a world that was claustrophobic and accentuated class and position.  Designer Jackie Chau’s design was so inventive with a rusting oil drum in the walkway into the space, oil drips along the top of the set and various appliances in the shape of mini-oil drums, we got the message. The cast was superlative. But the hold that oil has on us was frightening. The land acknowledgement came at the end and melded into an indictment of oil pipelines going through Indigenous land.

I Can’t Stand Not Doing Theatre Award

Alphonse

Written byWajdi Mouawad

Co-produced by Theaturtle and Shakespeare in Action.

Alphonse is a play about isolation and uncertainty and the kind of theatre we have missed for so long. The imaginative direction of the production by Alon Nashman and the multi-layered, vibrant performance by Kaleb Alexander are pure joy giving the audience a wonderful opportunity to applaud. It was the first live play to be done in a park in the summer after the first lockdown.

The play is about Alphonse, a lost boy wandering a road who spins a series of stories, all while various people are looking for him.

I loved the open-hearted aspect of this production and everything surrounding it. Alon Nashman, the artistic director of Theaturtle, says that he so missed creating theatre that he couldn’t stand not doing it any longer so he engaged Kaleb Alexander to play Alphonse and collaborated with Shakespeare in Action to produce it. Bless them.

There is Another Stratford Festival Award

Here for Now Open-Air Theatre Festival

Fiona Mongillo is the fearless Artistic Producer of Here for Now Open-Air Theatre Festival. She has created this six-show summer festival to bring live theatre to the people of Stratford (and those who think nothing of driving from Toronto to Stratford to see live theatre) using local talent. Storytelling is the most important endeavor of the festival.

The plays are eclectic in nature and tone, varying from the true story of an abused wife who got even in Whack!; the wildly inventive Instant Theatre in which the audience provides the suggestions and the cast of four improvises the plays; The Dark Lady is a wonderful work of imagination about who ‘the Dark Lady’ was in Shakespeare’s sonnets; A Hundred Words for Snow is a story of love, devotion, and fulfilling a wish to a parent;  Infinite Possibilities is a bit of whimsy about the truth about Shakespeare and others told by Shakespeare himself and I See The Crimson Wave tells the story of Nat Love, an African-American former slave who was a cowboy at the turn of the last century, who loved words and had vivid adventures. And it was done in haiku.

So Many Variations of She Award:

The Plural of She Festival.

Maja Ardal curated this festival with the following plays: Having Hope: A Hand Drum Song Cycle, Smart, In Case We Disappear, These Are The Songs I Sing What I Am Sad, Justice for Malindi Ayienga and The Cure for Everything.

As I said when praising Maja Ardal, the plays were bracing, challenging funny, bold and revelatory about race, culture, dealing with sadness and trying to fit in to a world that might not be accepting.

Digital Productions, streamed, etc.

TO Live—Living Room Series

TO Live has produced a series of 100 short videos involving a cross-section of Toronto’s vibrant artists such as: the music of Quique Escamilla, Njo Kong Kie, the vibrant dance of Esie Mensah, Travis Knight, the poetry of Vanessa Smythe, a compelling scene enacted by Suzanne Roberts Smith, storytelling  and drumming from Yolanda Bonnell, family history and the importance of creations passed down as told by Santee Smith, the buoyant humour of Tita Collective, the marionettes of Ronnie Burkett, the glorious voice of Teiya Kasahara and so many more artists expressing their art during COVID. You can check out all 100 artists:

https://www.tolive.com/livingrooms

Home Alone in the House Award

House

Written by Daniel MacIvor

Produced by Factory Theatre.

A compelling production of a gripping play in this time of isolation.

The production of House by Daniel MacIvor was supposed to be the last production in the 50th anniversary season of Factory Theatre. COVID-19 put a stop to that and the production was cancelled. But the ever-resourceful Daniel MacIvor suggested to Nina Lee Aquino, Factory Theatre’s Artistic Director, and the director of House, that he tweak the play to reflect they are in isolation and that they do a one-off on-line version. And so they did.

The Story. Victor is a disappointed man in work, marriage and in life in general.  The production took place in Kevin Hanchard’s basement (he plays Victor in this one man show). MacIvor gave Nina Lee Aquino and Kevin Hanchard license to add subtle references to the script that reflects that Kevin Hanchard is a Black actor. It added such resonance to the production.

It Grabs You By the Throat Award

Les Blancs

Written by Lorraine Hansberry

Produced by the National Theatre (Great Britain) for NT LIVE

The play and the production are brilliant, timely and gut-wrenching.

The Story. Les Blancs (The Whites) takes place in a fictional South African country at the turn of the 19th  and 20th century and reflects how the white population control and rule the black population, until the blacks  have had enough and take matters into their own hands.

The Production. The production is beautifully directed by Yaël Farber, using traditional music, the Xhosa language in some cases, dance and symbolism.

Hansberry gives the many sides of the story, from the point of view of the well-meaning, to the wilfully ignorant, to the deliberately oppressive and those who are fed up and will not take that treatment anymore. Her perceptions of the politics and mindset of the colonizer are razor sharp and her dialogue in getting that across is astonishing. This is a splendid production of a blistering play that every single person should see.

Not all Black Actors Want to Play Othello Award

American Moor

By Keith Hamilton Cobb.

Produced by Red Bull Theatre (New York City)

American Moor is a stunning, poetic punch in the gut. The play examines the experience and perspective of Black men in America through the metaphor of William Shakespeare’s character, Othello.  The play is a doozy.

An African-American actor named Keith is auditioning for the role of Othello in an American production. The director is young and white.

The play takes the form of Keith quoting speeches from Othello and other Shakespeare plays as part of his audition and to the audience for context. We learn that Keith was confined by a director’s view of him, who confined him only to parts for Black characters.   

It’s a reflection of the world of Black or BIPOC actors.  A well-intentioned but tone-deaf, insensitive director is going to tell them the meaning of something they already know in their bones.

I think playwright Keith Hamilton Cobb has written an exquisitely poetic, bristling play specifically about a Black actor dealing with a blinkered white director. But from a universal perspective it’s about a Black person who has to contend with white privilege and he’s had it up to here with dealing with it.   It’s Keith Hamilton Cobb’s personal eruption of what a Black person or person of colour has to deal with when they are not seen or heard.

Until the Flood

Written and Performed by Dael Orlandersmith

Produced by the Conservatory Rep Theatre of St. Louis.

A shattering piece of verbatim performance theatre about the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Dael Orlandersmith is stunning.

In 2014 in Ferguson, Missouri Michael Brown, a black youth allegedly stole a box of cigars. The police were called and Officer Darren Wilson allegedly shot Mr. Brown several times and killed him. The details of what exactly happened were confusing. Officer Wilson said he shot in self-defence. Alleged witnesses disagreed. Officer Wilson was found innocent of any wrongdoing by a Grand Jury and was released.

Dael Orlandersmith, an American playwright, interviewed people in Ferguson, Missouri about their thoughts on the events. She culled the interviews and we hear the words of eight of them, alternating between a Black person and then a white person. Orlandersmith plays all the parts speaking in their voices.

Until the Flood is told with compassion, wit, humour, perception, and wisdom. Orlandersmith is never judgemental. She let’s her characters have their say. It’s a balanced, devastating work.

Until the Flood streams at:

https://www.centertheatregroup.org/digitalstage/digital-stage/until-the-flood-streaming-on-all-arts

The Exquisitely Beautiful Production Award that leads us into a better year.

Something Rich & Strange

Produced by Opera Atelier

Opera Atelier Co-Artistic Directors, Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg had planned to produce Mozart’s The Magic Flute and Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas to celebrate their 35th Anniversary Season this year. A pandemic put a stop to that.

In Something Rich & Strange, their first offering of their 2020/21 Season of Visions and Dreams, they created a program of music and dance  pieces from great composers from the 17th and 18th  centuries  and  fashioned the evening so that it seems a cohesive piece in which each segment focuses on dreams, secrets, desires and visions and seamlessly blends into one another.

While this is a staged production that was filmed in Koerner Hall it does not look like a film. It does look like a beautiful theatrical production come to life through technology. With an Opera Atelier production, the audience gets an exquisite education, in art, dance, music, opera, singing, painting, sculpture and what perfection looks like.

Available for streaming until June 1, 2021.

https://www.rcmusic.com/events-and-performances/opera-atelier-presents-something-rich-and-strange?src=operaatelier

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1 Maja ardal December 29, 2020 at 6:44 am

What a rich and comprehensive windup to 2020s Covid-era theatre activities! Thank you for this fantastic service you give to our community. I am proud to receive these nods xoxoxo

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