Margaret Evans as Jim Watts in Jesus Chrysler by Tara Beagan

Jesus Chrysler

Wednesday February 16 – Saturday February 19 @ 9pm in the Cabaret at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre.

Click here to read a preview of the The Rhubarb Festival and Jesus Chrysler in The Toronto Star.

Image  by Will O’Hare Photography

Margaret Evans as Jim Watts. Photo by Julien Lafleur courtesy of LabCab

presents

Jesus Chrysler

by Tara Beagan

February 16 -19 2011 @ 9pm

at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre as part of the 32nd Rhubarb Festival

performed by Margaret Evans, Christine Horne and Keith Barker

directed by Michael Wheeler

produced by Aislinn Rose

sound and lighting design by Verne Good

costume design by Scott Penner

asst. directed by Laura Nordin

stage management by Rebecca Powell

Jesus Chrysler at Rhubarb is the fourth stage of development of an evolving work centered on legendary Toronto activist and director Eugenia “Jim” Watts.

Click here to learn about our earlier iterations of this project at The Toronto Fringe, HATCH: emerging performance projects and LabCab.

"I’m no pinko: I’m a Red." - Eugenia 'Jim' Watts played by Margaret Evans in Jesus Chrysler by Tara Beagan at Lab Cab 2010

Photo by Julien Lafleur courtesy of Lab Cab.

Starring Margaret Evans, Written by Tara Beagan, Design by Verne Good, Directed by Michael Wheeler

by Michael Wheeler

In the winter of 2009 I attended a theatre history lecture at Toronto Free Gallery by Alex Fallis on The Progressive Arts Club and the theatre created by artists who were opposed to many of the anti-civil rights policies enacted by Prime Minister Bennett in the 1930s. These people proved to be so fascinating that I elected to create with Praxis Theatre a show about them, Tim Buck 2, which played at The Tranzac Club as part of the 2009 Toronto Fringe Festival.

This led to our Harbourfront Centre HATCH workshop Section 98, which expanded the scope of our work to some other instances when civil rights proved to be a contentious issue for Canadians: namely the FLQ crisis, the Air India bombing, Omar Khadr, and the treatment of Afghan detainees captured by Canadian soldiers. Both the Fringe show and our HATCH workshop were extremely useful in terms of exploring who these people were, what they were concerned about, and the complexity of balancing our country’s commitment to civil rights and concerns of national security.

Unfortunately, neither of these initial explorations did an awesome job of storytelling.  So this spring and summer we went back to the drawing board with this project and thought about how to move beyond ‘staged dramaturgy’ and into narrative-based work informed by these themes.

The most consistent positive feedback from our open source creative process revolved around curiosity and fascination with Eugenia “Jim” Watts.

Both presentations involved an online component that allowed the audience to participate with or respond to our work: Tim Buck 2 asked the audience to return to the website to learn the results of a poll conducted at the conclusion of a debate at the end of the show. These posts also generated some interesting conversations in their comments sections.

Section 98 was more intrinsically attached to the internet with Praxis Artistic Producer Aislinn Rose acting as Open Source Project Leader, sharing parts of our process online, actively seeking participation from our community, and developing an infrastructure that encouraged live feedback over the web or through texts during the workshop presentation.

There were also quite a few normal conversations, in person, with live human beings who had seen the show(s).

The first conclusion was that the core personality we had explored that generated a unique resonance with both audiences and ourselves was Eugenia “Jim” Watts, played in both productions by Margaret Evans. A core political organizer and theatre director in 1930s Toronto, she co-directed the legendary civil rights play banned by Bennett, Eight Men Speak, and later went on to be one of two women serving with the Mackenzie Papineau Brigade in the Spanish Civil War where she was an ambulance driver. She was also involved with a number of other projects; she was very busy, and interesting, and worth being the impetus for a work of art.

Margaret Evans playing Jim Watts in Section 98 as part of HATCH at Harbourfront Centre

The second conclusion was that this piece required a playwright, and a good one. This playwright would preferably be an artist who had experience creating theatre about historical events for a contemporary audience (we talked a lot about avoiding a ‘bio pic’) and a passion for social justice.

So it is with much pleasure and excitement we announce Dora-winning playwright Tara Beagan has joined Praxis Theatre in continuing our work on this latest iteration, . Tara and I worked together for two years on Crate Productions’ The Fort at York, and she also acted as an outside eye for Praxis on our Toronto Fringe 07 co-pro, Dyad, but Jesus Chrysler is her first official work with Praxis Theatre and we are thrilled to welcome her.

Jesus Chrysler will be presented at The Factory Theatre as part of Lab Cab on Saturday September 18 and Sunday September 19 at 5pm. The entire festival is free with all manner of art and experiences presented by over 50 artists throughout every nook and cranny of The Factory from noon to 6pm each day. We invite you to come check out the whole festival and save your 5pm – 5:20pm slot for us. This being a Praxis show, we’ll definitely welcome your feedback online or in person, with a particular emphasis on your thoughts about our transition to a script based work about a single individual.

Hope to see you there!

Where’s Praxis? Can you find Tara, Margaret and Michael in the Lab Cab poster? Click to enlarge

Margaret Evans plays Eugenia "Jim" Watts in Section 98

by Simon Rice and Michael Wheeler

Like any good tyrannical minority government gearing up for a fall election, Praxis is shaking it up! Nothing beats a cabinet shuffle to temporarily boost polling numbers for an independent theatre company.

Kidding… Sort of. We are making some changes at Praxis and they are lateral, but you know in the theatre world lateral means diagonal.

We wouldn’t have the wiggle room to be so obtuse if Margaret Evans, Maggie as we all know her, had not been General Manager of Praxis for the last 2 1/2 years.

Under Maggie’s tenure Praxis produced four shows, the scope of which were our largest thus far, both creatively and budget-wise. She also oversaw the creation of our board of directors, and was steward of the most successful fundraising campaigns in the history of the company.

Despite these skills and accomplishments, her greatest asset is actually as a performer.  Margaret will be retiring from her role as GM of Praxis and will be taking a more front and central role as an actor/creator in our production of Section 98, continuing her work playing Eugenia “Jim” Watts, the legendary 1930s political artist and Spanish Civil War ambulance driver and radio host.

Aislinn Rose - Praxis' new Artistic Producer

Continuing in the diagonal tradition, Aislinn Rose will be rewriting the books as Artistic Producer at Praxis. Over the past year she has acted as Script Supervisor on our 2009 Toronto Fringe production of Tim Buck 2, as well as Director of the Open Source Theatre Project for Section 98, presented as part of Harbourfront Centre’s 2010 HATCH season.  As Artistic Producer she will be handling Praxis’ day to day operations as well as developing a new creative project…  More on this soon.

We should also mention that she has a non-Praxis show running right now, Amy Zuch’s Key to Key, which she directs for this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival at the Royal St. George venue until Saturday July 1o.

Welcome everyone to their new diagonal positions!

Pretty tense going into the 3rd Period.                   Yanks sure are pouring it on.

Less than 2 minutes to go in regulation.              Less than 1 minute to go in regulation.

Less than 10 seconds to go in regulation.              Crosby scores in OT.

Stand and drink beer for your anthem.               This isn’t Margaret, but it did happen next.

This is what it was like in Vancouver.

You can see Margaret as Eugenia (Jim) Watts in the workshop presentation of Section 98 on March 13th @ 8pm as part of HATCH in The Studio Theatre at Harbourfront.

Click here to buy tickets.