Sexual Misconduct Of The Middle Classes

Sexual Misconduct Of The Middle Classes

By Hannah Moscovitch

May 12 - May 14

He was on the side of the Greeks: learning is a seduction.
Sexual Misconduct Of The Middle Classes

Sexual Misconduct Of The Middle Classes

By Hannah Moscovitch

“He was on the side of the Greeks: learning is a seduction.”

Jon is a star professor and acclaimed author who finds himself at the end of his third marriage and in a slump of self-loathing. Annie is a nineteen-year-old university student, a writer with abounding talent, and a hard-to-miss red coat. Their exchange of mutual artistic admirations snowballs into a sexually tense dynamic that confronts our middle-class notions of power and perspective. Moscovitch’s play, winner of the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award, is a sharp, clever, and intense experience.


Featuring: Gianna Vacirca as Annie and John Ullyatt as Jon

Director: Marianne Copithorne

Set & Costume Designer: Tessa Stamp

Lighting Designer: Larissa Poho

Sound Designer: Darrin Hagen

Stage Manager: Tracey Byrne

Understudy - Jon: Jesse Gervais

Movement Coach: Christine Bandelow

Associate Production Designer: Andraya Diogo

Director of Production & Facilities: Brian Maxwell

Lighting Technician: Ashley Carter

Audio Technician: Jadey Capaldo

Cello: Morag Northey

Carpentry: Savannah Tysiaczny

Carpentry/Lighting: Louie Wilson and Braden Cory

Painter: Kirby Likeness

Stage Carpenter & Running Crew: Will Chichak

May 12 - May 14

Times
Fri May 12 - Sat May 13 @ 8 PM
Sun May 14 @ 2 PM
Info
The Roxy Theatre:
Nancy Power Theatre

Run Time 90 minutes
Tickets
$35.00-$40.00
incl. $2.00 fee

Biographies

Hannah Moscovitch – Playwright

Hannah Moscovitch is an acclaimed playwright, TV writer, and librettist. She  has been honoured with numerous awards and accolades, including the  Governor General’s Award for Drama, the Fringe First and Herald Angels  Awards at the Edinburgh Fringe, the Trillium Book Award, the Nova Scotia  Masterworks Arts Award and the prestigious Windham-Campbell Prize administered by Yale. 

Hannah’s music-theatre hybrid Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story (co-created with  Christian Barry and Ben Caplan) played at both 59E59 Theatres off-Broadway and  at the International Edinburgh Fringe Festival where it garnered a landslide of  critical praise, including more than fifty four- and five-star reviews, becoming a  TimeOut and New York Times Critic’s Pick and receiving six Drama Desk Award  nominations. Before the pandemic hit, Old Stock: A Refugee Love Story had been  touring internationally for two years.  

Hannah’s other writing for the stage includes Post-Democracy, Sexual Misconduct  of the Middle Classes, East of Berlin, Bunny, What a Young Wife Ought to Know,  The Russian Play, This is War, Infinity, and Secret Life of a Mother (with Maev  Beaty and Ann-Marie Kerr).  Hannah is playwright-in-residence at Tarragon  Theatre in Toronto. 

Marianne Copithorne – Director

Marianne is honored to be able to work at Theatre Network’s brand new building in its first season and to collaborate with this wonderful team of creative artists on Hannah Moscovitch’s Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. Previous directing credits with Theatre Network include What a Young Wife Ought to Know, also by Hannah Moscovitch, Communion by Daniel MacIvor, Choke by Cathleen Rootsaert, The Woman in Black by Stephen Mallatratt, and Perfect Pie, Palace of the End and Habitat by Judith Thompson. Marianne is a sessional instructor at MacEwan University and recently directed The Drowsy Chaperone and Company at the Triffo Theatre. She is a graduate of the BFA Acting and MFA Directing programs at the University of Alberta. Much love and thanks to Bradley Moss.

Gianna Vacirca – Annie

Gianna Vacirca is a dancer, actor, choreographer from Edmonton. She is also an Italian pastaia and the creator of Bell’uovo, a bespoke naturally colourful handmade pasta business based here in Edmonton (@bell_uovo). She is excited to be making her Theatre Network debut with such a brilliant team of artists. Big thanks to Marianne, John, Jesse and Tracey. And lots of love to Oscar and the cats.

Previous Credits Include: Pride and Prejudice, Jane Eyre, Miss Bennet Christmas at Pemberley, A Christmas Carol (Citadel Theatre); Noises Off (Mayfield Dinner Theatre); Vague Harvest, Ludicrous Pie, A Second Round of Seconds, Evelyn Strange, Deathtrap (Teatro Live!); Blood: A Scientific Romance (The Maggie Tree); Hamlet, Two Gentlemen of Verona, Comedy of Errors, The Winter’s Tale (Freewill Shakespeare Festival); Bears (Punctuate! Theatre/Dreamspeakers/Native Earth Performing Arts).

John Ullyatt – Jon

It’s been a while since John appeared at Theatre Network (was it Lawrence and Holloman in 1973, when the Roxy was a sod hut on the open prairie?); and now here we are in this beautiful theatre. Most recently, he was Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol at the Citadel Theatre. He has worked all across the country from Montreal to Victoria. John is co-founder of Firefly Theatre and Circus with his wife, Annie (yes, we talked about this in rehearsal); he is a notable street performer: The 21st Century Gargoyles, Crosswalk Theatre and The Human Fountain. During the pandemic, he found himself working in a distillery. Coming up is an untitled show at K-Days, Little Shop of Horrors and A Christmas Carol again.

Jesse Gervais – Understudy (Jon)

For Theatre Network: Buddy, Little One, Let The Light of Day Through, Poster Boys, All Clear, Hello Hello

Theatre Credits (Selected) The Breathing Hole (National Arts Center); Clue, Grand Ghosts

(Grand Theatre); Dirtier Dancing (Spotlight Cabaret); Jane Eyre, Silver Arrow, Crazy For You, Alice Through the Looking Glass, One Man Two Guvnors, Measure for Measure, A Christmas Carol (Citadel Theatre); Romeo and Juliet, Love’s Labours Lost, Hamlet, As You Like it, Comedy of Errors, Coriolanus, King Lear, The Taming of the Shrew, (Free Will Players); 6.0, 4th Graders Present an un-named love suicide, Fat Pig (NLT); 10\12, Passion Play, Realistic Joneses (Wild Side Productions); Joy Ride, Black Horse (Caravan Farm Theatre) Evelyn Strange, Lost Lemoine, Eros and the Itchy Ant (Teatro Live), Film and TV Credits Tiny Plastic Men Seasons 1-4 (Super Channel); Caution May Contain Nuts (APTN); Blind Ambition: The Wop May Story. Jesse has a BFA from the University of Alberta. www.jessegervais.com

Larissa Poho – Lighting Designer

Larissa is over the moon excited to be back working with the Theatre Network team! A multidisciplinary performer, production designer, visual artist and tattooist (crown & serpent studio), she also teaches dance for the Citadel’s Young Company, and is the newly appointed Artistic Director of the Vohon Ukrainian Dance Ensemble. Select credits include: Once, All Because I’m A Woman, and Assistant Music-Direction for Jersey Boys (Citadel Theatre); Infinity (Theatre Network); VEGAS LIVE, Canada 151 (Mayfield); ren & the wake (Catch the Keys); 10 out of 12 (WildSide); Ordinary Days (Straight Edge); Assassins (Loose Ends); Dreamer’s Cantata (Plain Janes); Lighting Design for Joni Mitchell’s Songs of a Prairie Girl (Network);An Homage to Billie Holiday (Ballet Edmonton); La Raccourcie, Les Neige, Simone et le whole shebang (L’UniTheatre); and Sterling-Nominated Music Direction for the Canadian national tour of Barvinok (Pyretic Productions). Much love to Vince and Soaps. www.larissapoho.com

Darrin Hagen – Sound Designer

Darrin Hagen is an award-winning playwright, author, composer and Queer historian. He has created (or co-created) over 40 plays, and has been produced across Canada and in the U.S and Europe, many through his groundbreaking production company Guys In Disguise. Through his writing, he has followed a path of utilizing his own experience as an outsider to create art that is a window to a distinct way of viewing gender and history. 

His award-winning 1996 writing debut, The Edmonton Queen was expanded into a book- length project, published by Brindle & Glass Publishing and now in its fourth printing. Other published work includes Tornado Magnet: A Salute to Trailer Court Women and Queering The Way: The Loud & Queer Anthology, a collection of LGBTQ writing drawn from Edmonton’s decades-long Loud & Queer Cabaret. He has received 7 Sterling Awards for his work in Edmonton Theatre, and over 40 nominations in the categories of playwriting, original composition, musical director, sound design acting and producing, as well as an AMPIA for Best Male Host. He has published many articles and essays and has received 3 Alberta Magazine Publishers Association awards nominations. 

Other plays by Darrin include Witch Hunt at the Strand; The Empress & The Prime Minister; Buddy; The Neo-Nancies (Hitler’s Kickline); the international comedy hits With Bells On (currently being adapted into a musical my NYC’s own Live & in Color); BitchSlap!; Typhoon Judy; and PileDriver!; and his most recent autobiographical solo show Metronome. With Trevor Schmidt he has co-created wildly successful comedies for Guys In Disguise like Flora & Fawna’s Field Trip; Flora & Fawna Have Beaver Fever; Prepare For The Worst; Don’t Frown at the Gown; Puck Bunnies; Dragula; Psychobabble and 2 Queens & A Joker, as well as the multi-award- nominated musical Klondykes. His work has been presented in Whitehorse, Vancouver, Kelowna, Edmonton, Red Deer, Calgary, Fort MacLeod, Regina, Meacham, Winnipeg, Ottawa, Toronto, Minneapolis, Key West, Seattle, West Hollywood, and Ireland.

Christine Bandelow – Movement Coach

Christine Bandelow is an Edmonton-based choreographer and performer. Most recently she performed as a backup singer in The Story Of Linda Ronstadt Featuring Andrea House (GNR Entertainment). She has choreographed many plays and musicals in Edmonton including Peter Pan Goes Wrong, One Man, Two Guvnors and Bittergirl – The Musical (Citadel Theatre), Hello Hello (Kill Your Television/Theatre Network), Inferno (Firefly Theatre), It’s A Bird! It’s A Plane!…It’s Superman!, Working (Plain Jane Theatre), City of Angels, Legally Blonde, Company (MacEwan University), Buddy-The Buddy Holly Story, Carousel, Little Shop of Horrors, Canada 151, Top Of The Pops-The British Invasion, Hair, Sister Act (Mayfield Theatre). Christine performed and toured Rent in Canada and 26 cities in the US before she went on to choreograph productions of the show in Mexico City, Barcelona, and Montreal.

Will Chichak – Stage Carpenter & Running Crew:

Tracey Byrne – Stage Manager

Tracey is delighted to be a part of Theatre Networks’ production of Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes. She is honored to be a part of this brilliant cast and creative team. Previous credits with the Roxy include The Innocence of Trees, Woman in Black, The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, and Armstrong’s War. When she isn’t stage managing, Tracey enjoys visiting her family and grandchildren on Vancouver Island. She wants to thank her husband John for his love and support.

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