Albert Schultz, Founding Artistic Director of Soulpepper Theatre Company, today announced that the company's production of Civil Elegies will run December 3 - 24, 2009, at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. Co-created by Mike Ross and Lorenzo Savoini (with Albert Schultz), Civil Elegies features the words of Dennis Lee with music by Mike Ross.
Dennis Lee, Toronto's first poet laureate and one of Canada's best loved writers, is renowned for his work for both children and adults. In 1967, Canada's Centennial year, Dennis Lee began writing Civil Elegies, a profound meditation on what it means to be a Canadian citizen and, specifically, a resident of his home city - Toronto. That same year, Lee founded House of Anansi Press with a commitment to publish young Canadian poets. Civil Elegies won the Governor General's Award in 1972.In the late 1990's, in Charlottetown, P.E.I., a young actor/musician named Mike Ross was given a book of poems by Dennis Lee as an opening night gift. This began a decade-long musical voyage. Ross, unbeknownst to Lee, composed stunning music to many of Lee's rhyming poems spanning several collections of Lee's work.Mike Ross and Lorenzo Savoini - both graduates of the Soulpepper Academy - are two of Canada's most talented theatre artists. Ross is a composer, musician, musical director and actor who has composed music for Soulpepper's Travesties, Under Milk Wood, and As You Like It, and was musical director for Time of Your Life. As an actor he has performed in Fire (Theatre Calgary), No Great Mischief, Moliere (Tarragon) and Rock n' Roll (Grand Theatre). Lorenzo Savoini was recently named Toronto's "Best Rising Designer" by NOW Magazine. Designs for Soulpepper include set design for Of the Fields, Lately, Antigone, The Odd Couple and The Caretaker, and lighting design for Billy Bishop Goes to War. Savoini has also worked extensively at Stratford.Videos