All the world’s a stage
BY Alex Molotokow
Two and a half years ago, Crate Productions cofounder Chris Reynolds received an unlikely email from administrators at Fort York. Considered little more than a historic relic by most Torontonians, the downtown location was interested in being the stage for a new production.
It was two years in the making, but this fall Crate— with actress/playwright Tara Beagan—staged The Fort at York, a collection of loosely connected stories set the night before a battle during the War of 1812.
It was the four-year-old theatre company’s third sitespecific production—plays performed in non-theatrical locations. Tape had a 10-week sold-out run in a room at the Gladstone Hotel in 2004 (and earned co-founder Kate Meehan a Dora nomination for acting). The following year, Crate put on a play in an abandoned apartment in downtown Toronto.
The Fort at York has now closed, but we may not have seen the last of it. “The bicentennial of the War of 1812 is in 2012, and the government is already planning big things for that,” says Reynolds. “That’s an option—this play certainly has legs.”
