lear: a retrospective
photo credit: Guntar Kravis
LEAR: A Retrospective was performed April 3-9, 2017 at World Stage, at Harboufront Centre in Toronto.
It was performed and created by Clare Coulter and Philip McKee, directed by Rose Plotek, with music performed and arranged by Holger Schoorl.
"Between 2011 and 2014, Canadian theatre legend Clare Coulter performed the role of Shakespeare’s King Lear three times. Each time she was directed by Philip McKee, and each time both of them thought it would be the last; because, in their effort to tell King Lear’s story of generational inequality, of the struggle to both give and receive a legacy, they ended up living it instead.
Intimate, sculptural, and immediate, the original production of LEAR was developed through Harbourfront Centre’s HATCH performance residency program and premiered at World Stage 2013. LEAR: A Retrospective propels the improbable collaboration of this work into a new form. It is a performance that attempts to examine conflicts without succumbing to them, one that escapes the orbit of Shakespeare by using attachment theory and autobiography in an intergenerational dialogue about what is most inevitable"
photo credit: Guntar Kravis