Ensemble Theatre Company's Summer Repertory Festival returns for 2022, with two powerful dramas
Marjorie Prime and Pass Over anchor the fest at ETC’s new home at Waterfront Theatre; film screenings added
Chris Francisque (left) and Kwasi Thomas in Ensemble Theatre Company’s Pass Over. Photo by Emily Cooper
Ensemble Theatre Company presents Summer Repertory Festival from June 15 to July 2 at Waterfront Theatre
FOLLOWING THE PANDEMIC freeze on in-person performing arts, Ensemble Theatre Company’s upcoming Summer Repertory Festival marks an especially jubilant return to the stage: not just because it’s been a while, but also because it’s not just any stage. The local arts group has just moved into its new digs at the Waterfront Theatre on Granville Island. And as the ensemble expands in new directions, it’s pulling back in other respects, all while artistic director Tariq Leslie is taking a broader, more holistic eye to the genre he’s so passionate about.
First, the practical matters: For many years, ETC had what Leslie calls a “wonderful” experience at its former home at the Jericho Arts Centre. Despite the historical venue’s support, however, it was time for the company to move on, to try to build new and larger audiences; being in a more central location with more walk-by traffic would be a big help.
At the purpose-built Waterfront Theatre, the ETC team can focus purely on the production at hand. It also happens to sit adjacent to the Granville Island Picnic Pavilion, providing an ideal space for the fest’s Sunday Readings by Ensemble members. The company will even have a banner flying from the Granville Street Bridge and oversized posters placed throughout the urban peninsula, thanks to the CMHC, which runs Granville Island. It feels good to be in the new space, Leslie says.
“It’s a building that has some history in a district and in a city that’s well associated with theatre,” Leslie tells Stir by phone.
During the pandemic, ETC members made some strategic decisions about how to move ahead. The upshot is that they’re beefing up the fest’s ancillary programming—notably with the introduction of film screenings—while reducing the number of main-stage shows to two from its usual three.
“My mantra has been: ‘narrow the focus and improve the quality,’” Leslie says. This gives the creatives on-stage and behind the scenes more breathing room. And how’s this for a bonus? For the first year, everybody across the board is receiving a livable wage, a salary that’s in line with industry standards, Leslie says.
Bronwen Smith (left) and Tariq Leslie in Ensemble Theatre Company’s Marjorie Prime. Photo by Emily Cooper
Anchoring the festival are the two main-stage shows. Jordan Harrison’s Marjorie Prime, a finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize, explores family, aging, memory, self-identity, grief, depression, and our relationship with technology by telling the story of an ailing 86-year-old woman who spends her final days interacting with a computerized version of her deceased husband.
“It’s one of those plays that addresses fairly both the good and the negative about technology–how it can be a blessing and how it can also sometimes be less than a blessing,” Leslie says. “There’s an aspect of Marjorie Prime of how whenever we use technology to fill a void, very often it doesn’t work. We actually feel more alone, more isolated after trying to fill that void.”
Directed by Shelby Bushell, the cast for Marjorie Prime features Leslie himself along with Gai Brown, Carlen Escarraga, and Bronwen Smith.
Pass Over, by Antoinette Nwandu, sets Beckett’s Waiting for Godot in Chicago’s South Side, where two young African-American men endure a long night under the constant threat of violence, confronting racism and police brutality. Variety described the play as “surreal and morbidly funny existential drama”. Omari Newton directs, with the cast including Chris Francisque, Kwasi Thomas, and Alex Forsyth.
“I read it, and it was a bit hard to say I fell in love with it because of the subject, but I loved everything about it,” Leslie says. “It really addresses so much about systemic racism and brutality toward African-Americans by police when that’s left unchecked, and it does it all very cleverly. It really does a fantastic job of holding a mirror up to these things. I would argue that for a lot of us who are white, it will hold a mirror to us as well.”
The film screenings are something Leslie has long wanted to fold into the festival. Like the Sunday Readings, each of the movies connects to the play’s themes.
To go with Marjorie Prime is a reading of Isaac Asimov’s sci-fi short story “The Life and Times of Multivac” and the screening of Spike Jonze’s her starring Joaquin Phoenix. The movie is about a man left heartbroken after the dissolution of his marriage who becomes fascinated with a new operating system that is said to develop into an intuitive entity in its own right; he ends up falling in love with “Samantha”, voiced by Scarlett Johansson.
Accompanying Pass Over is the viewing of Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing and the reading of two essays from These things happen in all our harlems by James Baldwin: Baldwin’s “A Report from Occupied Territory”, which illustrates life in Harlem in the 1960s, and “The First White President” by Ta-Nehisi Coates, about how the U.S. punished itself for having allowed a black man to become president.
“It’s really about having things to remind people that these themes are everywhere,” Leslie says.
All of the works tie into ETC’s overarching goal, which is to take a deep dive into stories about the human condition.
“There’s a saying I like attributed to Oscar Wilde that ‘people don’t change; only hats and adjectives change,’” Leslie says. “I do feel at times that’s very true of our history on this planet. Our fashion changes, but the motivators and drivers of us haven’t changed a lot. The same things tend to lead us to anger, strife, greed, and love, and so that’s why we tend to get to the focus of who we are as human beings, whether that was 300 years ago or plays that are less than 10 years old.
“I’ve been doing this for 20 years,” Leslie adds. “I really care more and more about doing something that is very civic-minded….Running a non-profit theatre company in a very real sense is a public trust; when you’re a non-profit you’re in a sense responsible to the people. We try to embody that in our work.”
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