Nightwood Theatre is pleased to announce that we’ll be presenting an online staged reading of Karen Hines’ All the Little Animals I Have Eaten, in lieu of the live performance that was slated to open last week on March 26, but was cancelled due to COVID-19. For one night only on Friday, April 3rd, the cast will perform their roles from their individual homes over Zoom, and we will be sharing the stream live on our YouTube page. Though this will undoubtedly be different and more DIY than what the full production would have delivered, we are excited to share a reading of this timely script.
Governor General Award-nominated, powerhouse playwright Karen Hines (The Pochsy Plays; Crawlspace) serves up a biting meditation on capitalism, consumption, precarity and hope in her latest dark comedy. Set in the extraordinarily modern bistro of an all-women’s condominium, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten follows a tender-hearted young server on the most harrowing shift of her life. With a stellar cast of comedic performers, this piece examines hyper-capitalism, the commodification of feminism, neoliberalism, and the increasingly unattainable dream of snatching a piece of the real-estate pie.
Playwright and director Karen Hines, says, “All the Little Animals I Have Eaten is the third play in what I think of as my ‘shelter trilogy’, which includes Crawlspace and Drama: Pilot Episode. The three plays are concerned with precarity; with the desire to transcend one’s circumstances; with the overwhelming yearning for a place to rest, to feel at home. I have looked through dark comedic lenses as I have written these plays – as I wonder where we are going and how we got here. Dark, but in the end these plays cleave to the light because I think of comedy as a kind of duty… and that real estate is weirdly funny.”
Andrea Donaldson, Nightwood’s Artistic Director, adds: “Karen Hines is a genius. She has the incredible power of pairing comedy, poetry and social commentary. In All the Little Animals I Have Eaten she continues to draw upon her fraught relationship with real estate, and a lifelong capitalist critique, and does so with decades-perfected satire, and inimitable charm. I am so honoured to have this Canadian legend ‘premiering’ this timely work with us on this humble medium in the intimacy of our own homes.”
All the Little Animals I Have Eaten features a brilliant team of some of Toronto’s most exciting comedic performers: Amanda Cordner (Body So Fluorescent), Belinda Corpuz (Tita Collective), Lucy Hill (Bad Dog Repertory Players) Zorana Sadiq (Towards Youth; Bend it Like Beckham) and Amy Rutherford (Soulpepper’s A Streetcar Named Desire).
SHOW DETAILS
Friday, April 3 at 7:30 pm. To join the livestream, visit Nightwood Theatre’s YouTube page at:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuHxQsXjb5lRLErFBH5ihnA
This livestreamed reading is made possible at no cost for all by our donors, subscribers and those who purchased a ticket and requested a tax receipt, though we welcome donations from those who tune in. We are proud to be supporting this team by honouring their contracts through to the end of the run of the show, and we thank you for your support in return.
ABOUT KAREN HINES
Karen Hines is a two-time finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama for her Pochsy Plays and Drama: Pilot Episode, and a Dora Award-winning performer and director. Her highly theatrical stage plays and darkly comic solo shows featuring the character ‘Pochsy,’ have been presented across Canada, America and in Germany. As a director and dramaturg, her collaborations include all of Mump & Smoot’s many shows – from their productions at One Yellow Rabbit’s Little Secret Theatre 25 years ago, to such venues as Canadian Stage, Yale Repertory Theatre and La Jolla Playhouse. She also directed Alberta Theatre Projects’ premiere of Linda Griffiths’ Age of Arousal, which has gone on to a dozen productions internationally. Her solo real estate play Crawlspace premiered at Toronto’s Videofag, was remounted at Soulpepper and has continued to tour across the country. Currently, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten is being translated to French and will take the stage this May at Jamais Lu in Montreal.
Photo of Amanda Cordner by Dahlia Katz.