The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America
Created and Performed by Julian Montague
Directed by Jordan Tannahill
The Drake Hotel
1150 Queen St. W, Toronto
May 27, 2010
The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America is a PowerPoint presentation about the complex field-guide system Julian Montague developed to identify stray shopping carts across North America. A hilarious and poignant meditation on urban blight and our human impulse for catagorization.
Insurgency 31st Rhubarb! Festival Buddies in Bad Times Theatre 12 Alexander St, Toronto February 17-21, 2010 @ 8pm
Conception and Direction: Jordan Tannahill
Project Management: Sarah Sherman
Musical Composition: Katie Stelmanis
Featuring: Simon Brand, Melani Courtemanche, Justine Kitteringham, Liam Sullivan, Miya Strauss
Insurgency asks whether Generation Z, a cohort defined by many adults as apathetic and narcissistic, has the capacity for revolution. 5 pre-teen youth are filmed embarking on an urgent uprising, though the enemy is not immediately clear. Perhaps they are simply trying to conjure some distant memory of revolt. The footage is then screened behind them onstage while they attempt to answer the question: "What would you die for, in real life?"
The Fratrilogy is a three-part performance investigation into college frat culture and its metaphoric representation of contemporary masculinity. The trilogy features raw performances by real frat boys, dramatic re-enactments, video documentation, and drunken party stunts constructed as performance art. The three performances are structured in the arc of a frat house party. Sometimes unbearably raucous, and other times painfully intimate, the piece offers no easy answers when placing the audience in the often overwhelming position of having to navigate this extreme world of alpha-masculinity. How much do they wish to engage in the fracas and to what extent are they repelled by it? From rites of initiation, hazings, keggers to candid revelations on the nature of manhood, sexuality, and fraternity, the trilogy weaves the fantasies of the subjects with the realities of their frat lives to create an equally poignant and horrifying portrait of youthful masculinity.
Act 1: Takes Two Men to Make a Brother (the pre-drink)
Harbourfront Centre’s Studio Theatre, Toronto
HATCH: emerging performance projects
April 6-7, 2009
Conception: Jordan Tannahill
Direction: Nathan Schwartz
Featuring: Cody Campanale, Lucas Carravetta, Alexander Carson, Cameron Rufelds, Jeremie Saunders
Technical Direction: Rebecca Powell
Assistant Technical Direction: Benjamin Carson
Lighting Design: Nick Rose
5 frat boys invite the audience into a recreation of their rec-room onstage to share a keg and talk about the inner-workings of their house, their dreams, fears, desires, and views on masculinity and sexuality. This play-within-a-play was created by the boys themselves. To start off the trilogy, here it is from the horses’ mouth…
Act 2: Ragnarok Out with Your Cock Out! (the party)
The Theatre Centre, Toronto
Scotiabank Nuit Blanche
October 3, 2009
Conception: Jordan Tannahill
Direction: Nathan Schwartz
Featuring: Cody Campanale, Lucas Carravetta, Alexander Carson, Cameron Rufelds, and dozens of assorted Toronto fraternity and sorority members
Technical Direction: Nick Rose
Stage Management: Acey Rowe
Five frat houses are tasked with recreating the world’s most famous performance pieces (for the pleasure of Nuit Blanche art-going crowds). This 12-hour immersive frat party-performance-social experiment oscillates raucously from the unscripted manic of cock rock bands, inter-frat house competitions, one-on-one showdowns of masculine superiority in a central sumo ring, and the odd practical joke or initiation ceremony gone terribly, terribly wrong…
Act 3: Michael Kruger, This One’s For You (the morning after)
Coming the summer of 2010
Conception and Performance by Jordan Tannahill
Based on recordings of two dozen anonymous fraternity brothers
After one of their own is found hanging by a necktie in his bedroom, dozens of anonymous fraternity brothers deconstruct the incident and reflect upon their own culpability in a series of disarmingly intimate audio recordings. These are played overtop one solo performer’s attempt to drink an entire keg of beer. The trilogy’s devastating (and inevitable) conclusion.
Rolly’s Garage (124 Ossington Ave; 3 blocks north of Queen St. West)
SummerWorks Theatre Festival
$10
Conception and Direction: Jordan Tannahill
Featuring: Adam Burgess, Sarah Finn, Tawiah M'carthy, Amelia Sargisson, and Marika Schwandt
Technical Direction: Rebecca Powell
Assistant Technical Direction: Nick Rose
Set Design: Julia Chemij
Hand-Drawn Animation: Bruce Tannahill
The Art of Catching Pigeons by Torchlight invites you into a massive blanket fort where you will come face to face with various real-life figures from Toronto ’s night shift. Through projection, shadow puppetry, and a-capella singing, the secrets, desires, and dreams of high school janitors, male prostitutes, Tim Horton’s workers, and obstetricians come to life. Part DIY-planetarium, part anthropological mystery tour… it’s a sleepover ghost story in your best friend’s basement, this time with all of Toronto invited.
Awards and Reviews The Spotlight Award (SummerWorks 2009) “NNNN” – Critics Pick, NOW Magazine (click here) “…a captivating performance” – Eye Weekly (click here) “…a unique, fascinating piece of theatre” – The Torontoist (click here)
June 27, 2009
Canadian Stage Company’s Berkley Street Theatre (26 Berkley St.)
Festival of Ideas and Creation
Free
Created by Jordan Tannahill
Co-created and Featuring: Bryde MacLean, Tawiah M'carthy, and Marika Schwandt
A performance in the form of a rock-show based on descriptions of Heaven from interviews with our families, friends, and strangers. All of the songs performed were selected by our interview subjects as the songs they would like to hear when they died.
Written by Jordan Tannahill
Performed by Natasha Greenblatt
Directed by Alisa Palmer
After Private Skyler James was found-out as a lesbian her life became a living hell at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. But when she began fearing for her life she knew she had to escape. In the middle of the night she loaded all of her belongings into a white pickup and just started driving north…
This one-woman show toured local high schools in the Greater Toronto Area as part of Roseneath Theatre's 2009-2010 season (www.roseneath.ca).
Get Yourself Home Skyler James was first performed in workshop by Bryde MacLean at CanStage's Raw! Raw! Raw! Festival on December 10th, 2009.
Written by Jordan Tannahill
Inspired by The Brant’s of Pembroke, Ontario who grew the world’s largest squash the summer of 2007
Performed in workshop by Jordan Tannahill at the 2008 Rhubarb! Festival at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.
Fraser works at the local Wal-Mart. His parent’s are growing the world’s largest squash. And he’s talking with his brother Andrew in the backyard… only Andrew is hundreds of miles away in a military prison inculcated in a friendly fire incident in Afghanistan.
August 6 - 16 2009
June 27, 2009
