This is the year for Fringe fundraisers and readings – several have come to my attention lately. Please let me know if you are aware of more and I’ll happily promote them through this blog and my various social media streams. Thanks to Yule Heibel for the link to Julian Cervello of Scrumpy Productions.
Photo: David Lowes
Julian presents Canterbury Cocktails as a fundraiser Wednesday July 27th at Merlin’s Sun Theatre in Fairfield. This intimate theatre venue might be just the perfect location to experience an evening of Chaucer, in the original Middle English.
This piece had its genesis as an assignment for a voice class at the University of Toronto. When classmates reacted positively to his portrayal of The Nun, Julian went on to study more of Chaucer’s works, ultimately creating “Canterbury Cocktails”. He enlisted the help of David Burke, a local theatre artist, as director.
The physical language of this show is more important than the text itself, because without it a lot of the text would be incomprehensible. With so many words lost to modern English, hundreds of intricate gestures are needed to get ideas across. Therefore the most archaic words yield the richest creative opportunities.
Most of us remember Chaucer from English Lit classes. I’m intrigued to explore his works again with this show.
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Premiering at the 2011 Victoria Fringe Festival
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