In the Press
Anna Karenina
Curtain Rises on a Dream
After years of teaching, Gabrielle Soskin puts her dramatic flair on stage
by DONNA NEBENZAHL
The Montreal Gazette - September 9, 2000.
Gabrielle Soskin arrived in Montreal in 1970, a 20-something transplant from London who knew one thing for certain: with her training at the Bristol Old Vic and her love of drama, she would make a life in theatre.
That's just what she's done. She has taught drama for 30 years, taking her experience and love for the adventure of acting to children of all ages.
For 10 years, Soskin taught an after-school drama program at Roslyn School in Westmount, and spun off from that a theatre group for youngsters. For more than 20 years, she has taught acting in the theatre department at John Abbott College, where she also directs plays.
But all this summer, you would have found Soskin with a group of dedicated actors, many of them ex-drama students, as she honed the current production of Anna Karenina, her take on Helen Edmundson's dramatization of the novel by Leo Tolstoy.
The play opened on Thursday night at the Calixa Lavallee Theatre in Lafontaine Park.
"It's a dream," she says of her decision to create her theatre company, Persephone Productions. A dream she has realized now that her children are independent teens.
Soskin is slender as a reed, sharp-eyed, full of almost girlish enthusiasm about her craft.
She leans close when she speaks; with her English accent, her gestures, she's so -theatrical.
She describes theatre as her "spiritual life."
"I think that theatre is magic," she says. "Nothing can replace live interaction on the stage. It's risky. You're vulnerable. It can evoke such enormous emotion and response."
The actors, all young professionals, have volunteered their talent for the production. She's invested a bit of her own money in the project, with the hope that ticket sales and a grant will sustain them.
For Soskin, the struggle is part of the experience, like the hard work she put in to become a drama teacher. Persephone, after all, in the Greek myth, spends part of her life in the darkness of the underworld, and the other part among the gods on high.
She hopes in particular that her work is a lesson to young women, who need to be encouraged, she believes, to take on positions in the theatre like artistic director and stage manager.
Life, when she was growing up, was totally gender-structured, she says. She met her husband, also English, on a flight back to England, when she was in her mid-30s.
"I told my husband," she says, 'I can't marry you and be a traditional wife. We can be partners, but I cannot subjugate myself!' "
Reprinted from The Gazette, Saturday, September 9, 2000
After years of teaching, Gabrielle Soskin puts her dramatic flair on stage
by DONNA NEBENZAHL
The Montreal Gazette - September 9, 2000.
Gabrielle Soskin arrived in Montreal in 1970, a 20-something transplant from London who knew one thing for certain: with her training at the Bristol Old Vic and her love of drama, she would make a life in theatre.
That's just what she's done. She has taught drama for 30 years, taking her experience and love for the adventure of acting to children of all ages.
For 10 years, Soskin taught an after-school drama program at Roslyn School in Westmount, and spun off from that a theatre group for youngsters. For more than 20 years, she has taught acting in the theatre department at John Abbott College, where she also directs plays.
But all this summer, you would have found Soskin with a group of dedicated actors, many of them ex-drama students, as she honed the current production of Anna Karenina, her take on Helen Edmundson's dramatization of the novel by Leo Tolstoy.
The play opened on Thursday night at the Calixa Lavallee Theatre in Lafontaine Park.
"It's a dream," she says of her decision to create her theatre company, Persephone Productions. A dream she has realized now that her children are independent teens.
Soskin is slender as a reed, sharp-eyed, full of almost girlish enthusiasm about her craft.
She leans close when she speaks; with her English accent, her gestures, she's so -theatrical.
She describes theatre as her "spiritual life."
"I think that theatre is magic," she says. "Nothing can replace live interaction on the stage. It's risky. You're vulnerable. It can evoke such enormous emotion and response."
The actors, all young professionals, have volunteered their talent for the production. She's invested a bit of her own money in the project, with the hope that ticket sales and a grant will sustain them.
For Soskin, the struggle is part of the experience, like the hard work she put in to become a drama teacher. Persephone, after all, in the Greek myth, spends part of her life in the darkness of the underworld, and the other part among the gods on high.
She hopes in particular that her work is a lesson to young women, who need to be encouraged, she believes, to take on positions in the theatre like artistic director and stage manager.
Life, when she was growing up, was totally gender-structured, she says. She met her husband, also English, on a flight back to England, when she was in her mid-30s.
"I told my husband," she says, 'I can't marry you and be a traditional wife. We can be partners, but I cannot subjugate myself!' "
Reprinted from The Gazette, Saturday, September 9, 2000
I Dream of Anna
Persephone Productions debut with Tolstoy's Karenina
by AMY BARRETT
The Montreal Mirror - September 2000.
"I haven't done theatre for a while without a mask," admits Anana Rydva1d, who is about to appear, barefaced, as the title character in Persephone Productions'Anna Karenina.
Rydvald is one of the founders of Mask On!, a company that has done very well at the last two Fringe Festivals. She was also there at the inception last January of Persephone Productions, founded by her former teacher (at John Abbott College), Gabrielle Soskin.
It's the kind of initiative the English theatre scene is seeing more and more of, the most high-profile example being the Montreal Young Company, founded last year by Bill Glassco.
"We -Glassco and myself- see our students and wonder what's going to happen to them," says Soskin. "We want them to be able to work, to be able to stay in Montreal."
Soskin admits to feeling "not jealous, but envious" when she first heard of Glassco's project, but says it gave her the push she needed to carry out a dream she had harboured for decades: starting her own company. One that would draw heavily on the talents of students who had passed through the doors of her classroom over the years.
The choice of a first play wasn't difficult. Soskin had been wanting to work on Anna Karenina ever since reading British playwright Helen Edmundson's adaptation of the Tolstoy novel, 18 months before.
Like the novel, the play has two contrasting storylines, represented by Anna and Levin. The two serve as narrators and participants in the action which, in the play, is non-chronological. There is no attempt at scenery in this production. Instead, the script "asks the actors to create the place, the weather, everything," says Soskin.
Rydvald jumped at the chance to play Anna Karenina, the actress says, even though it scared her.
"Sometimes I feel like it's me standing up there. It's so raw. And then the style is so minimalist compared to what I've done."
Persephone Productions, assuming that Anna Karenina is enough of a success for them to go on, can be expected to present plays with strong women characters and possibly even a feminist slant. Edmundson's play brings that perspective to Tolstoy, says Soskin. "When Anna falls in love, she not only discovers her sexuality, she discovers what she really is. It unlocks what she would like to be in life, whereas up until then she had been locked into a role dictated by her gender."
Persephone Productions is named after the Greek goddess who spent half of the year in the Underworld, causing the onset of winter. It's a good metaphor for the process of making theatre: you work away in the "dark"-the rehearsal period is a mystery to most people- and then emerge into the light to reveal what you've become.
Reprinted from The Montreal Mirror, September 2000.
Persephone Productions debut with Tolstoy's Karenina
by AMY BARRETT
The Montreal Mirror - September 2000.
"I haven't done theatre for a while without a mask," admits Anana Rydva1d, who is about to appear, barefaced, as the title character in Persephone Productions'Anna Karenina.
Rydvald is one of the founders of Mask On!, a company that has done very well at the last two Fringe Festivals. She was also there at the inception last January of Persephone Productions, founded by her former teacher (at John Abbott College), Gabrielle Soskin.
It's the kind of initiative the English theatre scene is seeing more and more of, the most high-profile example being the Montreal Young Company, founded last year by Bill Glassco.
"We -Glassco and myself- see our students and wonder what's going to happen to them," says Soskin. "We want them to be able to work, to be able to stay in Montreal."
Soskin admits to feeling "not jealous, but envious" when she first heard of Glassco's project, but says it gave her the push she needed to carry out a dream she had harboured for decades: starting her own company. One that would draw heavily on the talents of students who had passed through the doors of her classroom over the years.
The choice of a first play wasn't difficult. Soskin had been wanting to work on Anna Karenina ever since reading British playwright Helen Edmundson's adaptation of the Tolstoy novel, 18 months before.
Like the novel, the play has two contrasting storylines, represented by Anna and Levin. The two serve as narrators and participants in the action which, in the play, is non-chronological. There is no attempt at scenery in this production. Instead, the script "asks the actors to create the place, the weather, everything," says Soskin.
Rydvald jumped at the chance to play Anna Karenina, the actress says, even though it scared her.
"Sometimes I feel like it's me standing up there. It's so raw. And then the style is so minimalist compared to what I've done."
Persephone Productions, assuming that Anna Karenina is enough of a success for them to go on, can be expected to present plays with strong women characters and possibly even a feminist slant. Edmundson's play brings that perspective to Tolstoy, says Soskin. "When Anna falls in love, she not only discovers her sexuality, she discovers what she really is. It unlocks what she would like to be in life, whereas up until then she had been locked into a role dictated by her gender."
Persephone Productions is named after the Greek goddess who spent half of the year in the Underworld, causing the onset of winter. It's a good metaphor for the process of making theatre: you work away in the "dark"-the rehearsal period is a mystery to most people- and then emerge into the light to reveal what you've become.
Reprinted from The Montreal Mirror, September 2000.