The Birds by Yvette Nolan
This production of The Birds is a creative collaboration between theatre, dance, digital media and music students together with faculty members and guest artists in York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design. In bringing The Birds to life, AMPD’s emerging and established artists join forces to create a ground-breaking production of a seminal work of Canadian and Aboriginal theatre.
The Birds by Yvette Nolan is a powerful adaptation of one of western theatre's earliest comedies: the classical Greek play by Aristophanes. Nolan re-situates the birds in the play to Turtle Island (North America), recasting the two humans who visit the land of the birds as colonizers-come-lately, intent on remaking this Indigenous paradise in their own image. This comic fable brings a 21st century audience inside an Indigenous subjectivity, underscoring the striking realities underlying Indigenous and settler relationships.
Theatre@York's production of The Birds is a story of women. By interweaving the Roman poet Ovid's tale of Philomela and Procne as the backstory to the Nightingale in the play, Nolan places a tragic past at the heart of this comedy. Indigenous artists often create from such histories, imagining brighter futures, and this interdisciplinary performance leads numerous constituencies – students and faculty, Aboriginal and Settler – into potent engagement with Indigenous histories, creation protocols, and the work of one of Canada's most prolific and relevant Aboriginal artists.
PERFORMANCES:
March 20 (Preview) at 7:30pm
March 21 (Opening) at 7:30pm
March 22nd-24th
March 23rd at 1:00pm
March 26 at 2:00pm
March 26th (Closing) at 7:30pm
LOCATION:
Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre
Accolade East Building (York University)
4700 Keele St. Toronto
Website: http://