November Production
Six Times a Day by Rick Chafe
Director: Mary Kelly Campbell
Local playwright Rick Chafe (he recently co-penned Danny Schur’s “Strike!”) writes a clever character piece about two wedding models. Michael and Rita have to dress up in wedding clothes and recite vows six times a day. With the developments of a screwball comedy, Michael and Rita go back and forth between love and hate….. They’re a bit like Tracy and Hepburn – lite…… Six Times a Day is a wedding cake without too many layers, but a lot of icing. Fun stuff.”
January Production
All My Sons by Arthur Miller
Director: Paul Gray
All My Sons is based on a true story about a successful businessman who knowingly sold defective airplane parts to the government during World War II and explores the consequences of that choice and its effects on his family, his community, and the young men who fought and lost their lives in the war.
March Production
The Marlboro Man by Claire Dowling
Director: Brendan Carruthers
Setting: Set in the mid-1990’s in the cramped second-rate married quarters of the Irish Army Curragh Camp, Co.Kildare. What is it that women’s dramatic literature explores and interrogates? This question was posed as the central theme of a recent Irish book fair, drawing together a broad range of Irish female writers, each addressing their responses to Ireland’s continually changing social scene. Dublin writer and playwright, Clare Dowling is one of a number of ‘new’ voices addressing diffi cult social questions with no easy answers. Her recently acclaimed book, Going it Alone looks at modern Irish marriage, motherhood and mid-life crises.
So too her 1994 play, THE MARLBORO MAN, is set in the unlikely location of the Irish Army Curragh Camp, in Co.Kildare. Her focus on a marriage beset with unresolved expectations and disappointments, is revealing, sometimes funny and poignant. Clare Dowling leaves audiences wondering what lies ahead for the couple, Wanda & Mick, as they embark on a potentially life changing day together. The outcome of this special day promises a new chapter in their lives, but will it be a new beginning or something very different?
This play was first presented at Dublin’s Project Theatre in Temple Bar, and had it’s North American debut at the Milwaukee Irish Fest 1998. The first Canadian production of the play was in Toronto, 2006. The Tara Players are delighted to bring this thought provoking modern Irish play to Winnipeg audiences, and hope it will spark many after-performance discussions.
April Production
The Patrick Pearse Motel by Hugh Leonard
Director: Linda Kalturnyk
Our April production is the Tara Players Official Entry to the 2009 Acting Irish International Theatre Festival, to be held in Winnipeg this year and featuring Irish productions from around the world. The play was first presented in Dublin in 1971. The playwright Hugh Leonard simply sets up his situation and lets the dominoes fall. The dialogue is funny, the jokes are in character, and they are aimed at ecumenical targets: the Irish and the English, church and state, husbands and errant wives, patriots and hypocrites. An upwardly mobile couple live in a suburb intended to be the Dublin equivalent of Scarsdale The husband is in partnership with a friend in a chain of Mother Island Motels, which sells Irish chauvinism: each room is decorated with a portrait of a national hero. The wife is plotting a tryst with an old flame famed for his rudeness. Soon the stage is filled with mistaken identities, dropped trousers, and false accusations.
