#FridayReads

Doug Mertz has received his August book bag curated by Jim Guedo.

Bingo by Daniel MacIvor: Five classmates come together for their thirtieth high-school reunion. Some see it as a welcome trip home, while others see it as an obligation, and a few never even left. But as the night wears on, the one-time classmates start to reconnect and reminisce. And the more alcohol that’s consumed the closer the friends come to confronting their darkest secrets. Once again, Daniel MacIvor proves to us that just because we’re all grown up doesn’t mean we have everything figured out. His characters are sometimes naive, often crass, but always honest. As they try to reclaim their high-school glory days, these five friends charge headfirst into the secrets they all tried to run so far from.

It’s All True by Jason Sherman: New York 1937. Art and politics collide when the government padlocks the doors of the theatre on the opening of the Marc Blitzstein’s “The Cradle Will Rock”. The director, Orson Welles, marches the actors and most of the audience down Seventh Avenue and finds another theatre, and in one brilliant stroke makes theatre history. As much a play for our times as it is about and historical event.

Uncle Vanya (Chekhov) a new version by Annie Baker: This intimate, immersive new adaptation of Chekhov’s classic from critically-acclaimed playwright Annie Baker, author of Body Awareness, Circle Mirror Transformation, and The Flick, brings colloquial language to this internationally beloved story of human relationships and yearning. Written with the “goal of creating a version that sounds to our contemporary American ears the way the play sounded to Russian ears during the play’s first productions in the provinces in 1898”, Ms. Baker’s Uncle Vanya introduces 21st century audiences to Chekhov’s enduring wit, insight, and emotional depth.

Jim has been a professional director in the Canadian theatre for close to forty years. Recent directing credits: Terminus, 10 Out of 12, The Realistic Joneses, and Passion Play for Wild Side Productions; Love’s Labour’s Lost, Coriolanus and King Lear for the FreeWill Shakespeare Festival; Back to the Eighties and Folkswaggin’ at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre; 
Awards: Six Sterlings for Direction (Pentecost, The Rise and Fall of Little Voice, Mad Forest, Lion in the Streets, Road and The Wolf Within), as well as for Set Design (M.Butterfly).
Jim is Program Coordinator of MacEwan University’s Theatre Arts Program, where he has recently directed Sondheim’s Into the Woods.

~ Elise, Library Assistant