The Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts presents the premiere of the concert version of Theaturtle’s Charlotte: A Tri-Coloured Play with Music on Thursday, June 1, 2017 at 7:30 PM following the creation-based residency of its producing company, Theaturtle. Tickets can be purchased by calling (613) 533-2424 or online at www.theisabel.ca. The Theaturtle theatre troupe will be in residence at the Isabel developing this new work during the last week of May 2017 prior to the Kingston performance on June 1st. Theaturtle will continue to develop the work and then present it at the Luminato festival in Toronto on June 16-18, 2017.
Necessity is the mother of invention, and how necessary it was for artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943) to express herself, and her family, and to describe through her art the rabid Nazi persecution around her. Canada’s award-winning actor, director and producer Alon Nashman and his artistic team have ensured that her voice has come back in full force, as not even her atrocious death could keep her original voice from being heard. It has resurrected itself through her art, seen through the eyes of a brilliant consortium of contemporary artists – Canadian librettist Alon Nashman, Czech composer Ales Brezina, British director and scenographer Pamela Howard, Canadian music director Peter Tiefenbach, Canadian executive producer Nathalie Bonjour, and a host of outstanding artists and production professionals.
Librettist Alon Nashman states:
“Seventeen years ago, I encountered the artistic genius of Charlotte Salomon at the Art Gallery of Ontario. There I saw over 700 paintings, stunning in their complexity and beauty. I read every word of the text she offered for what was in essence a huge graphic novel, and a thinly veiled autobiography. I listened to the music Charlotte proposed as accompaniment to her images and storytelling. I fell in love with this highly intelligent and talented young artist, whose ironic take on events I thought I knew well is completely disarming. I mourned for the loss that her immediate death at the doors to Auschwitz represented. Here was a profoundly articulate witness, not only to the atrocity that was Nazism, but also to a complex stew of artistic, familial and societal transformations.
Charlotte imagined her life as a “singspiel”, a song/play, and I could not shake the notion that she wanted her work, her message in a bottle to the sea of humanity, to be performed publicly. Since then I have dreamed of adapting her Life? Or Theatre? for the stage.
We are grateful for this residency at the Isabel Bader Centre for the Performing Arts, the final step of a remarkable journey that has brought this international team of creators together with Canadian devisers and performers.”
The Isabel’s Director Tricia Baldwin states, “We are passionate at the Isabel about supporting Canadian creators in their quest for creation. I thank the Theaturtle and Isabel team for their enthusiasm for this project, their caring, expertise and hard work and their love of the whole creative process itself. The Charlotte troupe will be here at the Isabel in residency, and what a privilege it will be to see them rehearse, hone, create, rehearse some more, and then perform the premiere of the concert version of this work. We wish them the very best at their next stop at the Luminato Festival this month and then to share this work with the world.”
It takes a village to build a new creation. The Isabel thanks the Kingston supporters who have stepped forward to generously champion the creation of this new production. Thank you Regina Rosen for supporting the performance, Michael Springer for providing the accommodation at the Ramada Inn and Conference Centre in Kingston, Isaac and Lynn Dwosh and Lucille and Aubrey Groll, for their embrace of this important project. Their inspired support of innovation and creativity in Canada is very appreciated and esteemed.
