Canada has produced some of the most innovative and exciting theatre artists to be performed in the UK in recent years, from the work of Robert Lepage to the plays of Michael Tremblay. Paines Plough’s International Conspiracy of theatre exchanges is pleased to share our enthusiasm and curiosity for some of Canada’s most exciting and original Quebecois and English voices in 4 Action Readings.

I Am Yours by Judith Thompson

Albertine in Five Times by Michael Tremblay

Provincetowb Playhouse, July 1919 by Normand Chaurette

7 Stories by Morris Panych

Wild Things is a snapshot of life in the secure ward of a psychiatric hospital. It follows the path of two patients who, together with their nurse and analyst, struggle within the tightly-woven confines of the label ‘mad’.

But who has the right to label them? What separates this man and woman from the staff who treat them? And how can sanity be judged in the whitewashed world of the hospital ward? Anna Reynalds has created four characters who are all balancing on the knife edge of passion, striving to keep their path between the beasts and the angels. Wild Things shows us that leaping into the arms of fulfilment can be dangerously close to sinking into the grip of despair, and that the line between criminality and madness is very fine indeed.

“I was happy. Here I was amongst the lowest of the low” Orwell.

1928. Old Etonian George Orwell chooses to live and learn amongst the urban poor. In Paris, they fantasise about the mere smell of food. In London, they dream of a sound night’s sleep. This raw, tragi-comic underworld is boldly and brilliantly staged by the award-winning Paines Plough team.

“…we were down by the shore laughing and splashing like teenagers, when he suddenly suggested burying me in the sand, as he had done on our engagement. “Just a bit of fun Win”. But he keeled over and died. I think he said “thank you”.

So I bought a round-the-world ticket, and that’s when it all really began…”

Housemaid and hysteric, Augustine was celebrated in Paris for her dramtic displays of ‘Grande Hysterie’ in the Salpetriere Hospital. Studies by Freud, she was a star in the brilliant Professor Charcot’s ‘Museum of Suffering’.

Like The Elephant Man, she became the centre of the voyeuristic attention of a civilized society, but hers was a peverse and erotic entertainment.

A highly charged testimony, Augustine (Big Hysteria) is full of humour and passion.

Interweaving live music, cinematic projections and poetic text, it is magical, startling and vivid.

Winner of Time Out award for Writing and Direction

Feasting on Air is a fairy story about a young woman told to hold her tongue, or better still bite it off. Its theme is the silence, asexuality, fasting and muteness that are the price of her rite of passage from the undersea world to the dry land of adult human sexuality. It is, partly, about anorexia nervosa. It is about how the young woman grows increasingly aware of how dangerous, but how imperative it is to lose rather than lose her tongue.

“Safe? You want to be funny and safe? You’re asking for the poxy moon!”

Alternative comedian Lucius Brodkin wants a brilliant career. Instead he gets a short, sharp shock. Elizabeth I is tottering at death’s door. Plotters are everywhere. The future looks wobbly. An International Trade Delegation is on its way to London. Who will entertain them? Lucius thinks he’ll hit the big time-but he’s reckoned without the 16th Century backstabbers and City wide boys.

“I don’t need God any more – I am God”

France: 13th century. Heresy, blood and burnings. The Doctrine of the Free Spirit celebrates pleasure, passion and freedom from guilt. A corrupt and hypocritical Pope crushes the women who live this outrage.

“We are born. We are. Our flesh is beautiful, more beautiful than cake or the stars”

One of them went on the anti-war protest, shouted their lungs out, then got horrendously and staggeringly drunk. The other stayed at home, watched TV for a bit, and thought about the future.

A touching, funny play about what happens when you hate your best friend.