The Resistible Rise of Arturo UI: a BMO Lab and Canadian Stage collaboration

“The playwright’s caricature of a Hitler-like gangster couldn’t feel more timely.” – New Yorker, 2018                     
 
The BMO Lab in Creative Research in the Arts, Performance, Emerging Technologies and Artificial Intelligence is thrilled to announce it will be presenting a free in-person open rehearsal and two in-person public performances of Bertolt Brecht’s The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. This workshop production is an extension of the innovative BMO Lab Residency Program, run in partnership with Canadian Stage, and first launched in 2020.



The production is adapted and directed by celebrated German director and actor Johanna Schall (also Bertolt Brecht’s granddaughter) and features Canadian Stage veteran actor Carly Street in the role of Arturo Ui. Street is joined on stage by BMO Lab Residency alumni Sebastian Heins and Ryan Cunningham; performers Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah, Darcy Gerhart, and James Hyett; and University of Toronto students Teodora Djuric, Adrian Pavone, Valerio Greganti, and Sina Sasanifard. David Rokeby is Director of the BMO Lab, while the 2021-22 BMO Lab Artist in Residence is Bronwen Sharp.

“This production evolved naturally out of our ongoing collaboration with Canadian Stage. In our program we explore the potentials and challenges that new technologies present for performance practice. Arturo Ui is a particularly interesting vehicle through which to explore these questions, both because Brecht himself was very interested in the technologies of his time, and because of the way our contemporary technologies participate in the mechanisms responsible for the current political climate, mirroring as it does, in unsettling ways, the conditions that Brecht was commenting on in this play.” 
– David Rokeby, Director, BMO Lab           

Public Open Rehearsal
February 19, 2022
8:00 PM EST
Robert Gill Theatre (3rd floor, 214 College St.)
Free and open to the public.
Reserve your free tickets here.

Public Performances
February 25 & 26, 2022
8:00 PM EST
Berkeley St. Theatre (26 Berkeley Street)
Free and open to the public.
Limited tickets available here.
 
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui
by Bertolt Brecht

Two women conquer a city and – maybe - the world!
The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui by Bertolt Brecht was written in Finland in 1941 over a period of three weeks while the author and his family hoped and waited for their US-visas to escape the fast-approaching armies of Nazi-Germany. Intended for American audiences, it did not get a theatrical release there and was first produced in 1958 in Germany.
A comedy of horrors, a parable, a thriller full of surprising turns, a love story, a grandiose play on words. We meet bankers and gangsters, crooks big and small, greed and crime in a tight embrace. We observe countless murders without any consequences for the killers. We see how economic interests translate into criminal actions and how fake news transforms into political dogma. Remind you of anything? Please notice the “resistible” in the title!

For more information about the production, visit: www.canadianstage.com/show/the-resistible-rise-of-arturo-ui

Written by
Bertolt Brecht

Directed by
Johanna Schall

Technology Designer
David Rokeby

Artist-in-Residence at the BMO Lab
Bronwen Sharp

With
Ryan Cunningham
Teodora Djuric
Darcy Gerhart
Valerio Greganti
Sébastien Heins
James Hyett
Adrien Pavone
Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah
Sina Sasanifard
Carly Street

Lighting Designer
Aidan Ware

Composer
Elliot Britton

Production Designer
Snezana Pesic

Stage Manager
Seren Lannon