The National Arts Centre’s English Theatre artistic director, Peter Hinton, is going out with a first.
Hinton’s selected programming for the 2012-2013 season – his last with the National Arts Centre – for the first time features exclusively plays written by women.
“Part of what’s been a very interesting challenge for the National Arts Centre is defining what is national,” says Hinton, who is leaving the NAC after seven years as artistic director. “What does that mean culturally. What does that mean in terms of gender?
“Last year, we announced a season of plays that we’re doing now . . . and they just happened to all be by men and no one said anything, It pointed out that we must also represent and celebrate the great work of women.”
Hinton says he then made the conscious decision to produce a season of theatre made up of plays written only by women. He says studies show that the majority of theatre audience members are women, while less than a third of the plays produced are by female writers.
“While all of these works are by women – they’re all thematically related in some way – we really strive for a lot of diversity and variety in the programming, too.”
Hinton says the upcoming season will feature comedies, musicals, drama, as well as brand new works by Canadian artists.
The series opens in October with Canadian Wendy Lill’s The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, based on the novel by Sheldon Currie, about coal mining in Cape Breton, and continues with Jane Austen’s classic Pride and Prejudice.
Metamorphoses by American playwright Mary Zimmerman, featuring an onstage swimming pool, will open 2013.
The Canadian piece Innocence Lost by Canadian Beverley Cooper, about the conviction of 14-year-old Steven Truscott, opens in February. Big Mama!, written by American Audrei-Kairen, stars Canadian jazz singer Jackie Richardson as blues singer Willie May Thornton, and will appear in late April.
The NAC’s Studio Series opens November with Thirsty, adapted by NAC playwright-in-residence Dionne Brand and directed by Hinton.
The Edward Curtis Project, written by Métis/Dene playwright Marie Clements, follows in January. This is the second show co-produced by the NAC with the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa.
Miss Caledonia, about a rural Scottish woman trying to achieve movie star fame through a local pageant, will open in May, starring the show’s writer Melody A. Johnson.
Finally, the Family Series will include Sanctuary Song, an opera for children by Abigail Richardson-Schulte and Marjorie Chan, and Tulugak: Inuit Raven Stories.
“Each show in a way tries to speak to the vitality and significance of the plays and that’s the most important thing I think in building an audience,” says Hinton.
During his time as artistic director Hinton, now plans on focusing on his own directing and playwriting, was responsible for the re-establishment of the NAC’s Resident English Theatre Company and for the first staging of Margaret Atwood’s The Penelopiad in 2007, in conjunction with Britain’s Royal Shakespeare Company.
“Peter Hinton is a builder and he leaves the NAC in much better shape artistically with his visionary role in the creation of the Resident English Theatre Company,” said National Arts Centre CEO and president Peter Herrndorf in a press release announcing Hinton’s departure. “We will miss his passionate commitment to artists and to his audience.”
Newfoundland’s Jillian Keiley was recently appointed as Hinton’s successor. She founded and is current artistic director of theatre company Artistic Fraud in St. John’s.