Segal Centre to Present World Premiere of Peter Hinton's Adaptation of THE SEAGULL, 2/2-16

The Segal Centre for Performing Arts will present the world premiere of Peter Hinton's adaptation of The Seagull, starring Lucy Peacock and Diane D'Aquila. This comic and bittersweet re-imagining of Anton Chekhov's masterpiece plays in the Segal Theatre for a limited engagement from February 2nd to 16th, 2014. The Seagull is presented with the generous support of Delmar.

Lost love and lost lives inhabit Russian playwright Anton Chekhov's masterpiece brought to life in a new version at the Segal Centre by visionary director and playwright Peter Hinton. The Seagull is a snapshot of the romantic and artistic conflicts of an aspiring playwright, a successful author, an acclaimed theatre star, and a young actress gathered at the country estate of a newly retired government official. At once heartbreaking and comic, funny and bittersweet, The Seagull is a candid and unforgiving look at escapism and reality, misplaced love, youthful idealism and the surrender to old age - a modern take on a classic play for our times.

Award-winning playwright and director Peter Hinton has created his own adaptation in an effort to provide a theatrical language that is fresh and relevant for audiences today:

"For the last few years, Paul Flicker and I have talked about a production for the Segal Centre that would embody the considerable strengths of its vision and mandate. We wanted to collaborate on a production that would be unique and relevant - combining the very best of innovation and tradition, the classical and the modern, and somehow be both thought-provoking and seriously entertaining," said the former Artistic Director of Canada's National Arts Centre's English Theatre.

"I am thrilled and honoured to have Peter Hinton, one of Canada's great directors, return to the Segal Centre. It is a longtime dream to produce The Seagull. There is not another artist in the country in whom I would have more confidence to bring this modern masterpiece to our stage," responds Segal Centre Artistic Producer Paul Flicker.

In his prolific career, Mr. Hinton has translated new versions of plays by such celebrated dramatists as August Strindberg, Bertolt Brecht, and Henrik Ibsen, with his own adaptation of A Doll House produced at the Segal Centre (then Saidye Bronfman Centre) in 2006. The Seagull marks the fourth collaboration between the imaginative director and the Segal Centre as well as the Theatre's first production of a full-length Chekhov play.

"Regrettably, over the years, Chekhov in Canada has become associated with heavy handed meditations on ennui. We want this production to dispel this notion of a depressed world and instead offer the extremes of emotion and tone; a production that is as sharp and comic as it is tragic," he continues.

Hinton has assembled some of the country's finest classical and contemporary actors for this new production, crafting the text especially for the cast and their unique talents. Canadian stage veterans Lucy Peacock and Diane D'Aquila will take to the Segal stage as famous actress Irina Arkadina and her sister Sorina.

The multi-talented Lucy Peacock has performed in over 65 productions in 28 seasons at the Stratford Festival, most recently garnering critical acclaim for her incarnation of Mary Queen of Scots in Mary Stuart. Gemini Award-winning screen and stage actor Diane D'Aquila, who originated the role of Queen Elizabeth in Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex, has been featured in such films and television series as Take This Waltz, Slings and Arrows, Saving Hope and has worked with renowned directors Julie Taymor, Lemieux et Pilon, Martha Henry and Robert Wilson. They are joined by a dynamic ensemble of actors including Krista Colosimo, PatRick Costello, Shannon Currie. Danielle Desormeaux, Marcel Jeannin, Patrick McManus, Michel Perron, and Andrew Shaver.

Hailed as "one of the great plays about writing and acting" by British playwright Christopher Hampton, Hinton's version of The Seagull also provides an opportunity for inspired design. Recent META Award-winner for Best Set Design (RED) Eo Sharp returns to the Segal with a scenography influenced by American painter and printmaker Cy Twombly that contrasts the naturalness of the country home with the abstraction of the artist's creative process. Siminovitch Prize-winning lighting designer Robert Thomson (RED, La Sagouine) and composer Dmitri Marine (Waiting for the Barbarians, The Play's the Thing) complete the design team.

 

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