|
7 Stories
|
|
What's it About?
7 Stories by Morris Panych, is a Canadian dark comedy that features a character generically named “Man”, who stands on the seventh story ledge of an apartment building, contemplating suicide. While attempting to muster the courage to jump, Man suffers constant interruption by residents of the apartment building, each of whom have a story to tell. There’s a lawyer who is having an tumultuous affair with one of the residents, a psychiatrist, a couple of party guests, a gay man about to marry a rich heiress, an artist, a deeply religious woman and others. None of the residents, with one exception, seem to be very concerned about Man and his circumstances. It becomes obvious that Man isn’t the only one who has mental health issues; all of them have their own eccentricities and dramas. Can Man find anything in their seven stories to convince him to get off the ledge, or is the human race too far gone? Although the individuals within the stories are tragic, there is humour in their actions as they are attempt to escape the limitations of daily life. Each time a window opens, excitement builds to see who is going to pop out next and what they were going to say. This timely play recognizes that mental health plays a role in everyone’s life, and can impact us all in different ways. |
A Note from our Director, Frances Quick
In recent years, mental health has reached the forefront in the minds of our worldwide population. This timely play recognizes that mental health plays a role in everyones life, and can impact us all in different ways. COVID 19, the toxic drug crisis, housing crisis, PTSD, grief and healing of Indigenous peoples post-residential school era, has contributed to escalation of deteriorating mental health of Canadians. Our daily routines are a plethora of happiness, grief, sadness, humour and devastation. Freedom is a state of mind......
|
The Playwright
(Adapted from Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia)
Playwright, actor, and director Morris Panych is a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre. He has directed over ninety productions across Canada, and written thirty plays that have been produced around the world in a dozen languages.
Panych was born in 1952 in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton. He received a diploma in radio and television arts from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and then studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and theatre at East 15 acting school in London, England. He works primarily in Vancouver, and more recently, Montreal.
Panych claims to have no theories about theatre, only a certain need for liberation: "I sense that to illustrate through theatre a multiplicity of truths, is to allow the audience to begin to reclaim truths of its own. To look at a play and say, 'this a pretense invented out of nothing. These characters are trapped inside problems that don’t even exist,' and yet to remain committed to that reality for a time just for the hell of it, to begin to understand what the power of theatre is. Not to mention life. The power to question. . . . What’s important to me now, as always, is to keep things moving. And that’s it. My entire theory of theatre. To keep changing. Rediscovering. Questioning not only the accepted ideas of theatre, but the reversal of those ideas as well."
His plays are characterized by existential themes and "theatre of the absurd" style and sensibility. They typically set their interrogations of the meaning of life in culturally and nationally neutral locales, and they pose broad philosophical questions on human interaction and isolation, on the nature of good and evil, and on the relationship between fantasy and reality. Many are black comedies that oscillate between hope and despair.
(Adapted from Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia)
Playwright, actor, and director Morris Panych is a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre. He has directed over ninety productions across Canada, and written thirty plays that have been produced around the world in a dozen languages.
Panych was born in 1952 in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton. He received a diploma in radio and television arts from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and then studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and theatre at East 15 acting school in London, England. He works primarily in Vancouver, and more recently, Montreal.
Panych claims to have no theories about theatre, only a certain need for liberation: "I sense that to illustrate through theatre a multiplicity of truths, is to allow the audience to begin to reclaim truths of its own. To look at a play and say, 'this a pretense invented out of nothing. These characters are trapped inside problems that don’t even exist,' and yet to remain committed to that reality for a time just for the hell of it, to begin to understand what the power of theatre is. Not to mention life. The power to question. . . . What’s important to me now, as always, is to keep things moving. And that’s it. My entire theory of theatre. To keep changing. Rediscovering. Questioning not only the accepted ideas of theatre, but the reversal of those ideas as well."
His plays are characterized by existential themes and "theatre of the absurd" style and sensibility. They typically set their interrogations of the meaning of life in culturally and nationally neutral locales, and they pose broad philosophical questions on human interaction and isolation, on the nature of good and evil, and on the relationship between fantasy and reality. Many are black comedies that oscillate between hope and despair.