From left: Sadie Isaak, Rebecca Durance-Hine, Jacqueline Costa. Photo credit: Bethany Scholl

Performance Dates:

Thurs., Feb. 11, 2010 at 7:30 p.m.
Fri., Feb. 12 at 1 p.m. & 7:30 p.m.
Sat., Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Location: Sean O’Sullivan Theatre, Brock University, 500 Glenridge Avenue in St. Catharines, Ontario

Tickets: $15 adults; $12 seniors & students; $10 groups; The Department of Dramatic Arts is proud to be a partner of eyeGo to the Arts, encouraging high school students to attend live performing arts through an innovative $5 ticket program.
Announcing $5 Friday! – attend the matinee performance on Fri., Feb. 12 at 1 p.m. for only $5 – available to holders of Brock ID cards.
Available at the Centre for the Arts Box Office, 905-688-5550, ext. 3257, or e-mail boxoffice@brocku.ca.

Charles Mee’s contemporary look at Aeschylus’s Greek tragedy The Suppliant Women is an astonishingly fresh take on an age-old story: love versus power.

BIG LOVE tells the story of fifty brides (all sisters) who flee from arranged marriages to fifty grooms (their cousins) who pursue them across the sea to Italy. Three of the brides seek asylum in an Italian family’s villa. When their hosts are unable to negotiate their way through the moral predicament and allow the forced marriages, the brides make a murderous pact to kill their husbands on their wedding night. One of them fails to kill. Who betrayed whom?

Director Gyllian Raby states, ”I am drawn to the play because it has the scale of a Greek tragedy, but it is dressed in the global culture of today. Mee invites a wild post-modern performativity, but his story is so deeply sourced in western culture that it is very accessible.” Designer Karyn McCallum has set our production in an installation suggestive of a temple-gymnasium where the body wrestles with the spirit. Mattel’s gendered Ken and Barbie dolls hang from the lighting grid and punch-bag mannikin forms are anchored to the stage floor. A deeply passionate movement score with choreography from Gemini nominated Director and Award winning Choreographer Allen Kaeja conveys chaotic savagery and the tenderness of love, as well as the dark endurance of the survivor.

BIG LOVE showcases the talents of students in Brock University’s Department of Dramatic Arts undergraduate acting classes: Rebecca Durance-Hine, Jacqueline Costa, Sadie Isaak, Rob MacMenamin, Corey Mehlenbacher, Trevor Ketcheson, Jen Bender, Chris Boyle, Michael Pearson, Eric Frank, Dylan Mawson and Kasey Dunn.

BIG LOVE exhibits the extremes of passion as it explores two impossibilities: love and forgiveness. Performed on stage at the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre, Brock University, performances are held on Thurs., Feb. 11, 2010 at 7:30 p.m., Fri., Feb. 12 at 1 p.m. and 7:30 p.m., and Sat., Feb. 13 at 7:30 p.m.

Such productions by the Department of Dramatic Arts are a key part of the Marilyn I. Walker School of Fine and Performing Arts’ mandate in building connections between the community and the breadth of talent and creativity at Brock University.
Media Day: Thurs., Feb. 4, 2010 at 6 p.m. held at the Sean O’Sullivan Theatre, Brock University.