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STC releases 50th anniversary season lineup

Season starts in October with one-woman show
stc
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Sudbury Theatre Centre is ready to welcome patrons back face-to-face as it announces its 2021-2022 50th anniversary season. 

“This is a significant milestone for us,” said John McHenry, STC’s Artistic Director. “50 years is significant for any theatre company to achieve but it’s especially gratifying for STC to be celebrating it.”

The season opens with Quiet! I’m Talking by Vince Grittani (Oct. 14-30). 

Grittani has created a marvelous character in Bunny Bevington-Smythe, a wealthy heiress in her ninth decade. Bunny has written a biography and has invited the media to her Muskoka cottage to regale them with her passions, philosophies and opinions on love, life and liquor. 

A straight shooter, she’s magnificent, hilarious and a hoot. Mary Pitt stars in this one-actor tour de force. She has performed across Canada including the Stratford and Shaw festivals and is making her STC debut.

Celebrate the holiday season with Dickens’ A Christmas Carol adapted by Jeremy Webb and composed by Scott Macmillan (Dec. 2-18). Enjoyed by STC audiences in 2019, the classic story is lovingly recreated for the whole family with puppets portraying the ghosts of

Christmas and a fully orchestrated musical score. 

Local actor Matthew Heiti will reprise the role of Ebenezer Scrooge and a host of other characters in this traditional telling of the holiday classic that will give you the giggles, move you to tears and fill you to the very brim of with cozy, homey Christmas cheer.

Heiti will also see his play Ever Falling Flight produced in two entirely different versions, back-to-back; in English at STC (Feb. 17 to March 5) and in French at le Théâtre du Nouvel-Ontario as Aéroportée (Feb. 16-19). 

Dashing through increasingly strange ports-of-call with her (un) trusty navigator Fred, our hero takes to the skies in this comic fantasy inspired by the final, mysterious flight of Amelia Earhart and her famous 1937 record- breaking round-the-world trip.

STC closes its main stage season with This One by Denise Mader (April 21 to May 7).

Denise is throwing a surprise birthday party for her four-year-old niece and has challenged herself to baking a pie from scratch for the first time. 

The clock is ticking before the rest of the guests arrive and she’s going to attempt to make her mother’s classic pecan pie. A slice of storytelling, a dash of theatrics, and bountiful real-life experience, This One is perfect on the palette.

STC’s Students on Stage program will begin in February 2022 and culminate with a presentation of Mining Rocks by local playwright Val MacMenemey (May 24-29). 

Nick, a Grade 8 student, must complete an assignment about mining. However, it is not until he travels down into a mine, with a yellow canary called Nugget, that life, and the assignment, becomes really interesting.

As part of its anniversary season STC is presenting One Step at a Time, written, conceived, composed and performed by Andrew Prashad, directed and dramaturged by Scott Hurst with musical direction by Jeannie Wyse (April 1-2). 

Using monologues, original songs and improvisational tap dance, Andrew shares he and his wife’s journey, of caring for a son with Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, while raising two daughters, all while maintaining his career as a professional actor, singer and dancer. This is a tour de force performance you won’t want to miss.

STC is also presenting Sudbury favourite Leisa Way and the Wayward Wind Band in Early Morning Rain: The Legend of Gordon Lightfoot (May 12-14).

Spend the evening with the incredible music of a Canadian legend and sing along to Sundown, For Loving Me, Early Morning Rain, The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, Black Day in July, Alberta Bound, Rainy Day People, Ribbon of Darkness and many more.

STC’s script reading series, The Playmine, will begin in November with Evergreen by Aaron Kyte followed in March with All the Things I Draw by Kim Fahner and The Big McCoy by Caleigh Crow, Nathan Howe and Colin Wolfe in May. The PlayMine series give writers vital development time, dramaturgical support and a chance to hear their work read aloud by professional actors in front of an audience.

Four-play subscriptions are now on sale. By becoming a subscriber, you guarantee your seats and you see one show for free.

Phone the DiBrina Box Office at 705-674-8381, ext. 21 or stop by in person at 170 Shaughnessy St. in Downtown Sudbury, Tuesday to Friday, 10 a.m. to  5 p.m.

This season takes into consideration government and health authority guidelines due to COVID-19, including all performances playing to a maximum of 50% capacity, which is 144 out of a possible 289 patrons. 

Visit sudburytheatre.com to read STC’s COVID-19 health and safety plan.


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