Canadian Rep Theatre to Stage ARMSTRONG'S WAR

The run continues for the Toronto premiere of Colleen Murphy's Armstrong's War, the second production in Canadian Rep Theatre's 2015 Season, and runs till December 6 at The Citadel (Parliament & Dundas). Directed by Artistic Director Ken Gass, this emotionally powerful two-hander stars Paolo Santalucia (The Dybbuk; Of Human Bondage -Soulpepper) as Corporal Michael Armstrong and Alex McCulloch, making her professional debut as Halley Armstrong.

Celebrated playwright, Colleen Murphy is having a busy fall season. Her Governor General Award Winning play The December Man (L'Homme de décembre) opens at the National Arts Centre on November 19, a day after the opening of Armstrong's War. Her controversial play, Pig Girl, which premiered at Theatre Network in Edmonton in 2013 is also being published by Playwrights Press this fall; Pig Girl also opens at Imago Theatre in Montreal in January. Colleen is currently working on three new play commissions, including one for the Stratford Festival.

Armstrong's War involves an encounter between Halley, an over-achieving 12-year-old Pathfinder (Girl Guides) eager to get Community Service badge, and Michael, a dispirited 21-year old soldier recovering in an Ottawa Rehab Hospital following a harrowing tour of duty in Afghanistan. When Halley tries to read to Michael, he shuts her down but she persists, and although it is Stephen Crane's masterpiece, The Red Badge of Courage, that brings them onto the same emotional battlefield, it is Michael's own shocking story - one that throws Halley's cherished beliefs about life and hope into question - that starts their war.

Director Ken Gass says, "Colleen Murphy is a playwright I have admired greatly for many years-her ability to take a simple premise and through detailed, carefully constructed scenes, reveal a complex and gripping social reality forcefully impacting on characters' lives. Armstrong's War is, of course, a timely play, but above all, one that deals with the universal human experience in face of adversity, and, as such, is a rich and wonderful recent addition to the Canadian canon."

Governor General Award-winning playwright, Colleen Murphy notes, "The play touches on many themes - imagination versus experience, fiction versus reality, hope versus hopelessness, honor between soldiers and the ethics of mercy killing. War provides tremendous drama because it exists inside the thin membrane between life and death, and life and death are at the core of dramatic theatre.

Whether we agree or disagree with our government sending soldiers into combat, young men and women go off to fight and they return wounded or changed, or they do not return at all. In the face of that, I wanted to create two young people who had suffered terrible losses but who remain passionate about living their lives."

Armstrong's War premiered at the Arts Club in Vancouver in December, 2013 and has also been produced at The Finnborough Theatre in London, England; Theatre Network in Edmonton and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre Warehouse in Winnipeg.