Soskin swaps roles for Persephone's next stage. Indie theatre company director will perform in benefit shows
MATT RADZ, The Gazette
Published: Saturday, April 14, 2007
Gabrielle Soskin named her independent theatre company Persephone Productions, after the ancients' goddess of spring, a daughter of the mighty Zeus.
After 10 acclaimed shows in seven years, it's growing time once again for the company the veteran drama educator founded out of long-running frustration.
Starting at Dawson, "when it was the first CEGEP in Montreal" and then for 27 years at John Abbott College, Soskin, who came to Canada from England in 1970 "for an adventure" and never left, has taught "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of theatre students.
"Training all these students with such a passion and such a commitment, I felt frustrated that there was so little for them to do after they graduated," she said during a recent interview at her Westmount home. "It was as simple as that."
So Soskin launched Persephone in order to give theatre school graduates their initial opportunities as young professionals.
Four years ago she quit her day job at John Abbott College. Persephone had become successful, which in indie terms means it was near to breaking even. It was getting very exciting, and demanding full-time attention.
"I am proud of our repertoire," Soskin emphasized. After a string of memorable and award-winning efforts like Steven Berkoff's West, A Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind or Eric Bogosian's Suburbia, which earned Soskin a 2004 MECCA for best direction, Persephone is about to take another big leap forward.
To help finance its vision, Soskin, who studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, has enlisted her old friend Shakespeare and is hitting the stage. Starting Wednesday, she'll put on five benefit performances of Susannah York's solo piece The Loves of Shakespeare's Women, at Theatre Ste. Catherine.
"I will be very resplendent," Soskin promised, with a nod to Yves Jean Lacasse, the couturier who is designing what she calls her multipurpose costume. "I play boys, queens, maids and housewives," she said. In the show, she will weave the story of her own theatrical vocation, embraced at age 8, between delivering the famous soliloquies by Juliet, Portia, Lady Macbeth and the other great Shakespeare women.
Soskin is banking on a bigger budget than the typical $23,000 Persephone now manages on per show, to stage the Montreal English-language premiere of Unity 1918, a historical drama by Vancouver playwright Kevin Kerr about the effects of the post-war flu epidemic on a small Prairie town.
Kerr's play has a late-September date at Monument National, but Soskin is ready now to put her long-range plans in motion. She needs administrative and fundraising help, so she's recruiting new members for an expanded and a more active board of directors for the company. She's keen to establish a three-play season, with subscribers, aiming to put on original plays by Montreal authors and to give a chance to up and coming directors.
"I started off very tentatively with (an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel) Anna Karenina," Soskin said recalling Persephone's 2000 debut. "I was very apprehensive. I didn't know how it would turn out.
"And then I said to myself, and this is my yardstick, if I break even, if I get 60 to 65 percent audience every time I do something, then I can keep going.
"If I get 20 or 22 people, then it's not worth it. Nobody wants it and I'll do something else. So I have lived, literally, from show to show.
"And then I thought if I could only get just a few more really enthusiastic people with me, then we may be able to do a bit more.
"I won't give up," Soskin vowed after noting proudly that she belongs "to that generation in which women were just not thought of as directors." Or, she might have added, founders of companies with a decisive impact on a new cultural growth industry like Montreal's independent theatre scene.
mradz@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006
Published: Saturday, April 14, 2007
Gabrielle Soskin named her independent theatre company Persephone Productions, after the ancients' goddess of spring, a daughter of the mighty Zeus.
After 10 acclaimed shows in seven years, it's growing time once again for the company the veteran drama educator founded out of long-running frustration.
Starting at Dawson, "when it was the first CEGEP in Montreal" and then for 27 years at John Abbott College, Soskin, who came to Canada from England in 1970 "for an adventure" and never left, has taught "hundreds and hundreds and hundreds" of theatre students.
"Training all these students with such a passion and such a commitment, I felt frustrated that there was so little for them to do after they graduated," she said during a recent interview at her Westmount home. "It was as simple as that."
So Soskin launched Persephone in order to give theatre school graduates their initial opportunities as young professionals.
Four years ago she quit her day job at John Abbott College. Persephone had become successful, which in indie terms means it was near to breaking even. It was getting very exciting, and demanding full-time attention.
"I am proud of our repertoire," Soskin emphasized. After a string of memorable and award-winning efforts like Steven Berkoff's West, A Spring Awakening by Frank Wedekind or Eric Bogosian's Suburbia, which earned Soskin a 2004 MECCA for best direction, Persephone is about to take another big leap forward.
To help finance its vision, Soskin, who studied acting at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, has enlisted her old friend Shakespeare and is hitting the stage. Starting Wednesday, she'll put on five benefit performances of Susannah York's solo piece The Loves of Shakespeare's Women, at Theatre Ste. Catherine.
"I will be very resplendent," Soskin promised, with a nod to Yves Jean Lacasse, the couturier who is designing what she calls her multipurpose costume. "I play boys, queens, maids and housewives," she said. In the show, she will weave the story of her own theatrical vocation, embraced at age 8, between delivering the famous soliloquies by Juliet, Portia, Lady Macbeth and the other great Shakespeare women.
Soskin is banking on a bigger budget than the typical $23,000 Persephone now manages on per show, to stage the Montreal English-language premiere of Unity 1918, a historical drama by Vancouver playwright Kevin Kerr about the effects of the post-war flu epidemic on a small Prairie town.
Kerr's play has a late-September date at Monument National, but Soskin is ready now to put her long-range plans in motion. She needs administrative and fundraising help, so she's recruiting new members for an expanded and a more active board of directors for the company. She's keen to establish a three-play season, with subscribers, aiming to put on original plays by Montreal authors and to give a chance to up and coming directors.
"I started off very tentatively with (an adaptation of Tolstoy's novel) Anna Karenina," Soskin said recalling Persephone's 2000 debut. "I was very apprehensive. I didn't know how it would turn out.
"And then I said to myself, and this is my yardstick, if I break even, if I get 60 to 65 percent audience every time I do something, then I can keep going.
"If I get 20 or 22 people, then it's not worth it. Nobody wants it and I'll do something else. So I have lived, literally, from show to show.
"And then I thought if I could only get just a few more really enthusiastic people with me, then we may be able to do a bit more.
"I won't give up," Soskin vowed after noting proudly that she belongs "to that generation in which women were just not thought of as directors." Or, she might have added, founders of companies with a decisive impact on a new cultural growth industry like Montreal's independent theatre scene.
mradz@thegazette.canwest.com
© The Gazette (Montreal) 2006