Daniel MacIvor's CAKE AND DIRT Begins Tonight at Tarragon Theatre

Tarragon Theatre presents the world premiere of Cake and Dirt, written by one of Canada's most prolific and acclaimed playwrights, Daniel MacIvor, a Tarragon Playwright-in-Residence and a Governor General's Literary Award-winner. This darkly comic look at life in Toronto through a fractured family of privilege opens March 11 and runs to April 12, 2015 (previewing from tonight, March 3) in Tarragon's Mainspace.

Amiel Gladstone, making his Tarragon debut, directs a star-studded cast: Maggie Huculak, Bethany Jillard, Patrick Kwok-Choon, Laara Sadiq, David Storch and Maria Vacratsis. Money, sex, lies and power collide in the aftermath of a champagne-fueled birthday party in a downtown penthouse residence. Cake and Dirt is a mystery of consequences and causes, a parable of deceit, and an urban ghost story where a small act of evil may indeed create a great good.

MacIvor says, "I've been wanting to write a play with bite - because that's how I've been feeling - and a few years ago, in one of the communities that I am a part of, there was a scandalous event. There was a huge outrage from most everyone - posting rants, finger-pointing, stating opinions as facts - and it made me think about outrage and realize what an ultimately selfish behaviour it is. That made me think again about a book I had read some years before that, Dark Age Ahead by Jane Jacobs. Jacobs was an urban planner who had made Toronto her home and came to love it - just as I had. But she was concerned about where we were headed, not just in Toronto but in cities all over North America. The central problem she identifies is a kind of selfishness. Cake and Dirt came out of that thinking and my feelings around the reaction to that event."

ABOUT THE CAST:

Maggie Huculak - Tarragon's Faust, Lion in the Streets; Necessary Angel's Divisidero, Tout Comme Elle, Half Life (national/international tour), Seven Lears, Tamara; Soulpepper's Antigone, Travesties, A Christmas Carol; Nightwood's Age of Arousal; the sole narrator for CBC's epic documentary Canada: A People's History and narrator of the dramatizations of Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion and The English Patient.

Bethany Jillard - Tarragon's The Little Years, How It Works; Theatre PANIK's My Name is Rachel Corrie; Theatre Gargantua's fibber; Stratford Festival's A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, The Little Years, Dangerous Liaisons, Peter Pan; 2012 Peter Donaldson Guthrie Award.

Patrick Kwok-Choon - The National Theatre of London / Mirvish Productions' War Horse (the foal Joey and a soldier); Canadian Stage / The Citadel's Rock N' Roll; Canadian Stage's The Tempest; Theatre Smash's A Boy Called Newfoundland.

Laara Sadiq - No Exit for Electric Company / American Conservatory Theatre / Nightwood / Theatre Calgary; St Carmen of the Main for Canadian Stage / National Arts Centre; in Vancouver: Touchstone Theatre's Eternal Hydra, Palace of the End (Jessie Award); Arts Club Theatre's The Penelopiad, The Age of Arousal, The Matka King (Jessie Award); Noises Off, Guys and Dolls (Vancouver Playhouse), Leo Award for feature film Excited.

David Storch - Tarragon's In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play, Misanthrope, White Biting Dog; Buddies in Bad Times' Arigato, Tokyo; Soulpepper's Road to Mecca, Speed-the-Plow, Glengarry Glen Ross; Canadian Stage's Misery, Palace of the End, Doubt, Frost/Nixon.

Maria Vacratsis - Tarragon's Slavs!; Nightwood's Her2; Soulpepper's Endgame, Home, The Crucible; Necessary Angel's Tout Comme Elle, The Piper, King Lear; The Company Theatre's Through the Leaves; Dora Award for MacIvor / Daniel Brooks' The Lorca Play; VideoCabaret's 2nd Nature - Dora Award; several seasons at Stratford and Shaw.

Amiel Gladstone is a West Coast-based writer and director who directed the National Arts Centre tour of the hit Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata (Toronto's Factory Theatre/Acting Up Stage and more) and has worked with such other companies as the Alberta Theatre Projects, Belfry, Caravan Farm Theatre, Firehall, the Guild in Whitehorse, Pacific Opera Victoria, Vancouver Opera, Theatre Conspiracy, Vancouver Playhouse and Arts Club Theatre.

Daniel MacIvor is originally from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and currently lives in Toronto and Avondale, Nova Scotia. From 1987 to 2007 with Sherrie Johnson he ran da da kamera, a respected international touring company that brought his work to Australia, Israel, Europe, the UK, and extensively throughout Canada and the United States. MacIvor has written numerous award-winning theatre productions including See Bob Run, The Soldier Dreams, You Are Here, In On It and His Greatness; and his work has been translated into French, Portuguese, Spanish, Czech, German and Japanese. With Daniel Brooks, he created the solo shows House, Here Lies Henry, Monster, Cul-de-sac and, most recently, This Is What Happens Next. He received the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in 2006 for his collection of plays I Still Love You and in 2008 he was awarded the Elinore and Lou Siminovitch Prize for Theatre. He is also the recipient of an Obie Award and a GLAAD Award for his play In On It. He is currently playwright-in-residence at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto where he premiered the plays Communion, Was Spring and where his plays How It Works and The Best Brothers were produced. Also a filmmaker, he is the writer/director of Past Perfect, Wilby Wonderful, the co-writer of Whole New Thing and the writer of Marion Bridge and Trigger and the upcoming How We Got Home to be directed by Bruce McDonald.

Costume design is by Charlotte Dean, set and lighting design is by Kimberly Purtell and sound design is by Verne Good. The stage manager is Marcie Januska.

Opens March 11 and runs to April 12, 2015 (previews from March 3) Tarragon Theatre's Mainspace, 30 Bridgman Avenue, Toronto, M5R 1X3 Tuesday-Saturday at 8pm; Sunday at 2:30pm and select Saturdays at 2:30pm: March 14, March 21, March 28. Tickets can be purchased through Patron Services at 416.531.1827 or by visiting www.tarragontheatre.com. Regular Tickets: $50-$55; Previews: $27 (Discounts for seniors, students, arts workers and groups). Rush Tickets: For every performance excluding opening night, specially priced $15. Rush Tickets will be sold (subject to availability) in person at the Box Office two hours before show time. Follow Tarragon on Twitter @TarragonTheatre for updates on rush ticket availability and special ticket offers.

ABOUT TARRAGON THEATRE - Tarragon Theatre is one of Canada's most important arts institutions. For 44 years, Tarragon Theatre has created, developed and produced new plays by home-grown artists as well as significant works from the world stage, vitally contributing to the important legacy of a Canadian culture. Since its founding, over 190 works have premiered at Tarragon and over 500 scripts have been created and workshopped, receiving 34 nominations and 11 wins for the Governor General's Literary Award. Tarragon received the 2012 Premier's Award for Excellence in the Arts in recognition of producing and developing leading edge and thought-provoking Canadian Theatre, both nationally and on the world stage. Richard Rose has been the Artistic Director since 2002. For more information visit www.tarragontheatre.com.

Photo by Guntar Kravis.