A very short play I wrote is being produced by the Alumnae Theatre Company as part of the Nuit Blanche festivities on Oct. 4, 2008. It should play on the main floor, “Fran’s Cafe” for the evening, sometime between 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m. It’s a vampire story with a late night waitress, an innocent young thing, a sophisticated dame and vegetarian innuendo.
Nuit Blanche is a big visual arts festival in Toronto with sister festivals in other cities. I will be spending most of Nuit Blanche hanging around the Alumnae Theatre and helping out where I can. I’m no actor but I can wield the coffee pot or help people to whichever of the three “spaces” they are interested in exploring. The ‘Alum’ is a lovely theatre, a renovated fire house with lots of history and, apparently, at least one ghost. The theme the Alumnae chose for Nuit Blanche is Nessun Dorma (No One Sleeps).
The evening’s entertainment runs the gamut from “Wit” by Margaret Edson on the main stage, to story-telling with Scheherazade upstairs, to an all-night cafe/ sometimes cybercafe downstairs.
One of the plays on the 1:00 a.m.+ shift will feature late night computer users and their autonomous avatars who move through the audience and the world outside the theatre as if they were real. Don’t you love artistic experiment? It’s like Second Life and World of Warcraft, exported out of cyberspace onto the streets of Toronto.
To find out more about Nessun Dorma at the Alumnae Theatre, click here.
I’m not a night owl but I’m determined to stay up and take advantage of Nuit Blanche this year. If you’re in Toronto and interested in the visual arts or theatre, there will be lots of things to see and do.
Happy viewing!