Clybourne Park, the multi-award-winning comedy returns to Toronto

Studio 180's Production

By Bruce Norris

Directed by Joel Greenberg

 

Part of the Off-Mirvish Series

February 12 - March 3, 2013

Panasonic Theatre

“A NASTY & BRILLIANT COMEDY.” 

- Globe and Mail

 

"EXPLOSIVE!  EXCEPTIONAL!  EXHILARATING!  This is the BEST."

 - National Post 

“CUTTING SATIRE & surgically incisive drama. The audience GASPED!” 

- Toronto Star

David Mirvish is proud to present the return of Studio 180 Theatre's highly acclaimed production of CLYBOURNE PARK by Bruce Norris.  The third offering in the new Off-Mirvish series, this savagely funny comedy is directed by Joel Greenberg, and stars: Audrey Dwyer, Michael Healey, Sterling Jarvis, Jeff Lillico, Mark McGrinder, Kimwun Perehinec and Maria Ricossa.

 

Inspired by Lorraine Hansberry’s groundbreaking 1959 Broadway hit A Raisin in the Sun (adapted into an equally successful 1961 film); CLYBOURNE PARK takes place in a suburban Chicago neighbourhood across two generations, as a battle rages over real estate. With a modern twist on race, class, property ownership and community, CLYBOURNE PARK offers a satirical look at demographics, history, home and heart.

CLYBOURNE PARK premiered in February 2010 Playwrights Horizons in New York. It had its UK premiere in January 2011 at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where it became a runaway hit and was transferred to the West End, eventually winning the London Evening Standard, Critics’ Circle, South Bank Sky Arts Theatre and Olivier awards for Best New Play. In October 2011 it was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

 

The Pulitzer board described it as, “a powerful work whose memorable characters speak in witty and perceptive ways to America’s sometimes toxic struggle with race and class consciousness.”

After transferring to Broadway in early 2012, CLYBOURNE PARK won the Tony Award for Best Play in June 2012, making this play the first of this century to be bestowed with every major award in the English-speaking theatre.

International Critical Praise

“A spiky and damningly insightful new comedy.” - NEW YORK TIMES

 

“Superb, elegantly written and hilarious.” - NEW YORKER

 

“A buzz-saw sharp new comedy of inadvertent bad manners.” - WASHINGTON POST

 

“Outrageously funny and provocative. A firecracker of a play.” – LONDON DAILY TELEGRAPH

 

“Richly comic and unexpectedly moving… as unsettlingly immediate as it is exhilarating.” - SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

 

 “With an irascible fearlessness, [Norris] flies in the face of political correctness.”- LOS ANGELES TIMES

 

 “The funniest play of the year.”  - LONDON EVENING STANDARD

The Canadian Cast & Creative Team 

Director Joel Greenberg leads the original ensemble cast: Audrey Dwyer, Michael Healey, Sterling Jarvis, Jeff Lillico, Mark McGrinder, Kimwun Perehinec and Maria Ricossa, and a creative team that includes David Boechler (original set & costume design), Jung Hye Kim (completed set design), Michelle Bailey (costumes), Kimberly Purtell (lighting design), Lyon Smith (sound design), Mary Spyrakis & Vanessa Janiszewski (props). The stage manager is Robert Harding.

About the Playwright

Originally from Houston, Texas, Bruce Norris earned a degree in theatre from Chicago’s Northwestern University and went on to a career as an actor and playwright, basing himself in Chicago for 18 years. In 1997 he moved to Brooklyn, New York, where he currently resides. As an actor he has performed on stages across the United States and his major film appearances include A Civil Action, The Sixth Sense and All Good Things. 

Bruce Norris’s other plays have received their world premieres at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre. These include: The Infidel (2000), Purple Heart (2002), We All Went Down to Amsterdam (2003, Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), The Pain and the Itch (2004, Joseph Jefferson Award for Best New Work), The Unmentionables (2006) and A Parallelogram (2010). 

Many of his plays have received subsequent productions across the world and Norris is the recipient of the 2009 Steinberg Playwright Award, the Whiting Foundation Prize for Drama and the Kesselring Prize, Honorable Mention. 

Norris’s daring and irreverent plays have earned him the reputation of being a provocateur with a penchant for sparking arguments. Speaking to Nosheen Iqbal of The Guardian about Clybourne Park’s London premiere, he said, “There is a shocking degree of openness in [the 1950s] to make crass assertions about race. To say, ‘Oh, white people are this way but black people are that way.’ Today, we have this received etiquette when we’re speaking about race, but it is every bit as rigid and ordained as the old vocabulary – we just have a new set of words to talk about similar things.”

CLYBOURNE PARK

February 12 - March 3, 2013

Panasonic Theatre, 651 Yonge Street
, Toronto

Performance Schedule: Tuesdays to Saturdays 8 PM; 

matinees Wednesdays 1:30 PM, Saturdays & Sundays 2 PM

Tickets: $45 to $79

Students Tickets $20 (for all performances except Saturday evenings)

Rush Seats $20, available day-of, in-person at Panasonic Theatre box office.

 

Ticketking 416-872-1212 or 1-800-461-3333

Online Ticket Sales www.mirvish.com

Groups of 12 or more 416-593-4142

Twitter: @mirvish

Facebook: Mirvish Productions