VERONIKA
DECIDES
TO DIE
Based on the book Veronika Decide Morrer
by Paulo Coelho © 1998
Director: Michelle Newman
Assistant Director: Jonathan Heppner
Performers: Alex Dault, Scott Dermody, Elena Juatco*, Sasha Kovacs, Rob Lampard, Viktor Lukawski, Joanne Williams and Claire Wynveen
Set and Costume Designer: Monica Alder
Lighting Designer: Yevgeniya Falkovich
Sound Designer: Doug Brown
Stage Managers: Yevgeniya Falkovich and Julie Burelle
*appears courtesy of Canadian Actors Equity
Playing at the
Walmer Centre Theatre, 188 Lowther Ave., Toronto
June 18 to 21 & 24 to 28 at 8 pm
Tickets: $20 Adults, $12 Students/Arts Workers
June 24 PWYC
Call 416.302.1144 for Advance Tickets
One cold November day in Ljubljana, Slovenia, 24-year-old Veronika decides to die. Something is missing from her life and she doesn't know what. After swallowing a bottle of sleeping pills, she drifts into oblivion - only to awaken in Villete, a mental hospital, under the care of the eccentric Dr. Igor. He tells her that she has irrevocably damaged her heart and has no more than a week to live. However, the company of her fellow "inmates" in Villete, particularly the enigmatic Eduard, proves to have a strangely transformative effect ...
In an innovative theatrical interpretation, director Michelle Newman and the Darkroom ensemble transform Brazilian writer Paulo Coelho's acclaimed "novel of redemption" into a hypnotic multimedia remix. Inspired in part by Coelho's autobiography, Veronika Decides to Die is at once an uncommon love story and a fable for our times: a meditation on the relationship between madness, sanity, freedom and despair, and a challenge to embrace life in the face of death.
Darkroom is an ensemble of exciting new talent dedicated to the exploration of contemporary, devised and hybrid performance forms, especially fusions of theatre and film. Following a 2006 production of Sarah Kane's Phaedra's Love in Montreal, Veronika Decides to Die marks the company's Toronto debut. Darkroom's methods are anything but conventional. Their work features continuous live feed video from handheld cameras simulcast on multiple projection screens, resulting in an array of stunning reverb and visual effects.
In the spirit of merging different art forms, Darkroom is also pleased to present its inaugural art installation and show. All artworks displayed in conjunction with Veronika Decides to Die were made in response to the novel by artists from Canada, Iran, Israel and the US.
Don't miss the Toronto debut of the company that the Montreal Gazette called "hot-wired ... a compelling theatrical experience."