Rachel Ganz is the Artistic Director of Newborn Theatre and a good friend of Bygone Theatre; our AD, Emily Dix directed her show “Plasterface” in November of 2012, and both Emily and Producer Matt McGrath were involved in last year’s Odds and Ends Festival.
1. What is your role with Newborn Theatre and “The Odds and Ends Festival”?
Artistic Director/God and I direct one show this year
2. Give us Newborn Theatre’s history – how and why did it get started?
We have been around for over a year now, producing and supporting the works of writers who are under thirty. The whole point to the company is to give young artists the opportunity to grow and be featured amongst their peers.
3. Give us a quick run-down of “The Odds and Ends Festival”
5 shows. 5 playwrights from across the continent. 40 local cast and crew. Most of the shows are dark and one is just insane.
It’s at unit 102 from August 22-25.
Each show goes up every single night.
Super multi-cultural, super strange sexual things happening, characters of all ages, theatre in the round, glow in the dark, mud wrestling….cotton ball fights….gun shots…swords…clowns…..classical music….what am I missing??? OH YEAH THE BLACK HURRICANE KATRINA SHOW. Good times.
4. What has been your favourite part of working on “The Odds and Ends Festival”?
Working with the playwrights is always the best.
Reading and selecting from 165 works is actually a great time. I performed them all in my living room…solo. Sober.
5. Any fun rehearsal/performance stories or anecdotes you’d like to share?
The only thing I can think of is Jessica Brown loving her costume so much that she didn’t want to take it off to go get food at break. So she wore sequins underwear and a blonde wig out in Parkdale.
6. Where and when can everyone see the show?
Unit 102, Queen and Dufferin. 22-24 at 8 pm. 25th at 2 pm.
7. Anything else we should know?
It’s an extraordinarily small house…come early!
Bygone Theatre 