Oren Safdie’s play Past Ken Dryden will make its Toronto premiere on the Younger Centre for the Performing Arts on Could 15. The solo present touches on common themes of id, household, and what makes a hero, set in opposition to the risky political panorama of Québec within the Nineteen Seventies.
With an genuine sense of nostalgia — Oren’s father Moshe Safdie designed the long-lasting Habitat ’67 for Montréal’s Expo 67 — the private and the political come collectively from a toddler’s perspective.
The Play
Private recollections and political occasions are woven collectively within the play.
Not a lot was going proper at residence for younger Oren. Already within the midst of a divorce, his mother and father grappled with a devastating home hearth, and the final political instability sparked by the rising separatist motion in Québec.
Hockey turns into the thread that holds each the play and the boy collectively, particularly Safdie’s childhood awe of Montréal Canadiens goalkeeper Ken Dryden. Along with his household’s residence life in chaos, he discovered the soundness he wanted within the legendary goalie and his means to cease the puck.
Younger Oren watched town change, and the methods wherein the political tides affected family and friends.
Safdie’s stepfather is author Roch Provider, and his iconic youngsters’s e book The Hockey Sweater can also be named as a supply of inspiration.
Expertise
Actor Max Katz performs the solo present. Whereas he’s a local of New York, Katz went to high school at Montréal’s McGill College, and alongside the way in which grew to become a Habs fan himself. After his BA in Montréal, he went on to an MFA on the Drama Centre London at Central Saint Martins. He additionally educated in bodily theatre on the Boris Shchukin Institute in Moscow.
Katz has appeared on stage from London’s West Finish to the Montréal Fringe and plenty of factors in between, together with the Hudson Classical Theatre Firm, and Sheen Middle for Thought and Tradition.
He’s in all probability finest identified for his position on The Thursday Evening Membership (Amazon Prime).
Oren Safdie’s play had its world premiere, (rightfully,) in Montréal. The playwright has introduced a number of of his works to gentle first within the metropolis, together with Seamless, Gratitude, and Mr. Goldberg Goes To Tel Aviv, all three of which have been subsequently staged in New York Metropolis. His Non-public Jokes, Public Locations was staged off-Broadway and in London, and garnered glowing critiques.
The Canadian-American-Israeli started by following his father’s footsteps, and studied on the Graduate College of Structure at Columbia College earlier than making the swap to playwright.
He has additionally written for TV and movies, together with You Can Thank Me Later, which starred Ellen Burstyn, and Lunch Hour, with Thomas Middleditch and Alan Cumming). Oren teaches on the Interlochen Middle for the Arts in Michigan.
Oren Safdie: The Interview
As a play, Past Ken Dryden took a while to take form.
“I feel it began truly once I was educating a category,” Safdie says. He was educating at St. Olaf Faculty in Northfield, Minnesota, and was guiding a category in an train on turning private narrative into efficiency.
“I had by no means written a one-person present earlier than,” he says. Educating is commonly a path to studying, because it was on this case. “I’d educate for nothing, as a result of I be taught a lot.”
An earlier play dealt along with his personal teenage years. “I feel possibly whilst you become old, you look farther again,” he says. “It’s simply a type of issues that simply got here collectively.”
Naturally, his childhood recollections couldn’t be separated from the place they passed off: the politically fraught panorama of Montréal, which was combined in along with his household’s personal divisive historical past on the time.
“It was a tough time family-wise,” he remembers. It took eight years of push and pull earlier than his mother and father would conform to lastly divorce. “I do not forget that was additionally probably the most magical time in my life.”
In grade three, he remembers about half his classmates shifting out of the province after the 1976 election that put the Parti Québécois in energy. He additionally remembers particulars like being suggested to not communicate English if he went to any of the predominantly Francophone St. Jean Baptiste celebrations within the metropolis throughout these years.
On the similar time, the Canadiens have been nonetheless bringing residence the Stanley Cup, together with a straight run of 4 years between 1976 and 1979.
“It made me notice the facility of sports activities,” Oren says. “I’d say it was the one factor that held town collectively.”
The Habs gamers, as he factors out, have been largely from the province on the time, making it much more of a house group. It helped him as a toddler to really feel a part of town.
“As an English Montrealer, you all the time felt like somewhat little bit of an outsider.”
With every part concerning the world he lived in seemingly falling aside, the hockey’s unifying togetherness was an interesting escape. He says the play was enjoyable to write down, regardless of among the darker recollections.
“I do keep in mind my childhood as being fantastic — and likewise painful.” It was a special time, with a special fashion of parenting. “So many children in my class, their households have been disintegrating. We have been left to fend for ourselves,” he remembers.
“We have been very free. I don’t know if that was a very good factor.”
He remembers roaming town on his personal or with associates at an age that might be frowned upon these days. That features going to bars by the point children have been 13 or 14.
“There have been actually no guidelines in Québec.”
The play is chronological because it unfolds, however the subjects are linked by his particular ideas. He begins the story in his late 20s when he learns that the Montréal Discussion board is closing. It sparks a string of reflections that centre across the years from 1971 till 1979, the years when Ken Dryden performed for the Canadiens.
“It parallels the journey of my household,” he says of the timeline.
With a minimalist therapy, the set is, as he describes it, a man with a chair, a hockey stick, and a ball.
“I wished to maintain it like that,” he says. “I’m a theatre individual, and that’s the one factor that theatre can do.” Theatre has the flexibility to seize consideration utilizing the naked requirements with the fitting expertise.
“It’s actually concerning the actor,” Safdie says, including that he searched for a very long time to seek out the fitting individual to tackle the position. “I’m not an actor — and I can’t play 30 12 months olds,” he says.
The truth that Katz went to McGill was a key issue — he understood town, and the maintain that the Canadiens nonetheless have on the general public consciousness.
“He’s a really distinctive actor.” Katz’ coaching in bodily theatre provides to his suitability for the position. “There’s plenty of physicality within the play.”
Reception
The play premiered at Montréal Fringe, with lots of the viewers members sporting Canadiens jerseys. “It was wonderful to see the superfans.”
Safdie didn’t truly meet Dryden in individual earlier than penning the play, however his publicist suggesting sending him a replica for his response.
“Ken Dryden was actually gracious,” he says. “Inside a day, Ken Dryden wrote me again.”
The previous participant had retained minute particulars of, seemingly, each recreation he performed, and was in a position to right a couple of of the scores and different recreation particulars Safdie talked about within the play.
“It was nice,” he says. He was impressed by the hockey legend’s low key perspective. “He’s a humble individual.”
- Discover extra particulars concerning the performances of Past Ken Dryden, which runs from Could 15 to June 1 on the Younger Centre for the Performing Arts, [HERE].
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Anya Wassenberg is a Toronto Metropolis Editor at Ludwig Van. She is an skilled freelance author, blogger and writing teacher.
