Stormshelter at the Rendezvous With Madness Festival - Media Kit

MEDIA KIT
StoneMarrow Theatre
STORMSHELTER
Presented by Workman Arts’s
Rendezvous With Madness Festival
October 13—19, 2018
Written by Bradley Necyk | Directed by Perry Gratton
PAGE 2: Performance Info
PAGE 3: Show & Artist Info
PAGE 5: Interviews
PAGE 6: Production Photos
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

Edmonton, Alberta’s StoneMarrow Theatre in association with Workman
Stormshelter Details
Arts’ Rendezvous With Madness Festival presents
the World Premiere of
Stormshelter
SHOWS:
LOCATION:
TICKETS:
Saturday October 13 7:00 pm*
Sunday October 14 2:00 pm*
Monday October 15 6:00 pm*
Wednesday October 17 6:00 pm
Friday October 19 8:00 pm
*Discussion following performance
“The Annex”, Community Centre Building, CAMH
107 Stokes Street, Toronto
*Note: Access to “The Annex” is via the entrance to the
Community Centre located off Stokes Street.]
On sale NOW. Tickets $12 in advance, PWYC at the door
To book Media tickets contact: sara_kelly@workmanarts.com
For more info visit our FB event page or workmanarts.com
ABOUT STONEMARROW THEATRE
StoneMarrow Theatre — Co-Artistic Directors Samantha Jeffery and Perry Gratton
StoneMarrow Theatre is a brand new company from Edmonton, Alberta started by co-Artistic Directors
Samantha Jeffery & Perry Gratton with the aim of creating & producing exciting, relevant work that
challenges the status quo and creates conversations. StoneMarrow intends to create professional, high
calibre, inclusive productions that challenge audiences & theatre artists alike. We create dangerous work in
safe spaces. As a company, StoneMarrow recognizes the importance of intersectionality both in the
creation of its work and its relationship with the community.
StoneMarrow Theatre was formed on Treaty 6 territory, traditional home and gathering place of many
Indigenous and Métis peoples.
Press Contact:
For further media information and interviews please contact Samantha Jeffery
at 780-966-8312 or stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com
facebook.com/stonemarrowtheatre
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

About Stormshelter
Written by Bradley Necyk
Directed by Perry Gratton
Starring Samantha Jeffery, Michael Peng
Dramaturge: Louise Casemore
Presented by Workman Arts’ Rendezvous With Madness Festival
Produced by StoneMarrow Theatre
A mother living with bipolar affective disorder is working through trauma, illness
and healing in a psychiatric hospital. Alberta is recovering with her psychiatrist’s help,
and in the process, trying to learn how to be a parent with illness for her children.
Through the course of a manic episode, Alberta is struck by visions and insights into
her past and future. Can her altered state be the very thing that guides her back to her
children? Chronicling her stay at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health,
Stormshelter shines a light on the process of coming to terms with one’s own mental
health.
Stormshelter presents a unique opportunity to invite people who may not have
first-hand knowledge of mental illness into an unfamiliar space where mental health is
normalized and dealt with openly rather than being a taboo subject. At the same time,
for those with first-hand knowledge, the show presents a heightened and magical
space where their experiences are represented with compassion, understanding, and
hope.
Brad Necyk (playwright) is a multimedia artist in Canada whose practice engages
with issues of medicine, mental health, and precarious populations and subjects. His
works include drawings and paintings, still and motion film, sculpture, 3D imaging and
printing, virtual reality, and performance. He recently finished a residency with AHS
Transplant Services in 2015-16, works as an artist/researcher in a project on Head and
Neck Cancer, and is completing an arts-based, research-creation Ph.D. in Psychiatry.
Currently, he is a visiting artist/researcher at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
in Toronto and had a studio residency at Workman Arts, Toronto. His current work
focuses on patient experience, auto-ethnography, psychiatry, pharmaceutics, and
biopolitics.
Perry Gratton (director) is an Edmonton born-and-raised (except for when he left for
those few times) actor and director. A graduate of the University of Alberta BFA Acting
Program, selected acting credits include shows at NextFest and the Edmonton
International Fringe Festival, Freewill Shakespeare Company (Twelfth Night/Othello),
as well as Much Ado About Nothing and Midsummer Night's Dream with Thou Art
Here!, and Twelfth Night with Malachite Theatre. His directing credits include the
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

Sterling Award nominated Fringe shows A Beautiful View and Letters to Laura, as well
as Inside Out (Nextfest/Fringe), and The Premonition of Jesse and Joan (Nextfest). He is
beyond stoked to be premiering this fantastic new show on his first trip to Toronto with
StoneMarrow Theatre (of which he is co-artistic director alongside the wonderful Sam Jeffery).
Samantha Jeffery (actor/producer) is an Edmonton-based actor, fighter, and intimacy
consultant. She graduated from the University of Alberta’s BFA Acting program. She is a
Sterling-nominated fight director, and also teaches & performs fights for stage and film. Sam
has also been an intimacy consultant for several shows, and continues to train in this
burgeoning field with her mentor, Siobhan Richardson. As an actor and creator, some favourite
stage credits include: Whiskey Business (Miranda Allen Entertainment), After Miss
Julie (BLT), A Beautiful View (Precipice Productions), Dead Centre of Town (Catch the Keys
Prod.), Henry V & Twelfth Night (Malachite Theatre), A Thought In Three Parts (Theatre
Outre), The Bully Project, I Am For You (Concrete Theatre), and Tamora in Titus
Andronicus(University of Alberta). She is thrilled to premiere this new show alongside two
previous partners in crime, Perry and Brad.
Michael Peng (actor) is a freelance performer, director and producer based in Edmonton. He
holds an MFA in Directing from the University of Alberta and is Co-Artistic Director of wishbone
theatre, the acclaimed independent company he founded in 2009. In Alberta, he has worked
with Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary, Workshop West Theatre, Sage Theatre, Theatre YES,
Northern Light Theatre, Studio Theatre and Fire Exit Theatre, along with many of the leading
independent companies in Edmonton. Michael, who has several Elizabeth Sterling Haynes
Award nominations, has toured twice internationally and worked in BC, Yukon Territory, and
Ontario - most recently with MT Space, Lost&Found theatre, Gwaandak Theatre and Inter
Arts Matrix. He’s also trained with Soulpepper, Ghost River Theatre and at the National Voice
Intensive, among others. Michael has worked in collective creation, new play development and
narrative based plays for over 25 years. Most recently with wishbone he helped create the text
and mise en scene for Or The Whale (a new stage adaptation of Moby Dick) and for Rig Pig
Fantasia, both written and directed by Chris Bullough.
Louise Casemore (dramaturge) is a creator, director, and Sterling Award winning writer/
performer originally from Edmonton. She is the Artistic Associate for Calgary’s Ghost River
Theatre, Artistic Director of Defiance Theatre, and recipient of the 2017 Enbridge/ATP
Playwright’s Award. Through Defiance and as a freelance artist, Louise has been involved in
almost 20 world premieres and counting, including her one woman
shows OCD, Functional (Found Fest, Ignite Festival), GEMINI (touring 2018/19) and the
upcoming cabaret exorcism that is Undressed. Additional credits include The Bereft
Project with Charles Netto and Theatre Junction’s TJLabs, teaching playwriting and
performance creation with the Writer’s Guild of Alberta, Alberta Playwright’s Network, and ATP
Raucous Caucus, and serving as a proud member of Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre
Board of Directors. Louise is a devoted to finding honesty and intimacy wherever she can, and
all things strange and unusual.
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

Thoughts from the Creative Team
From playwright Bradley Necyk:
I spent a year of research with inpatients at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health
in Toronto. While there I spent time in the Mood and Anxiety Unit, primarily with bipolar
patients in either mania or depression. I live with bipolar disorder, and this was the first
experience I have had seeing if from the outside and was deeply emotional. When I returned
home, I went manic, the worst episode of my life. Over that month, I created a body of
paintings and recorded my experiences in writing. That month of illness helped me integrate
all my experiences at CAMH into my own illness experience and over the course of the next
year I attempted to put all those pieces back together through the creation of art.
I began writing this play as a conversation with my psychiatrist, an ideal
conversation that I wish the healthcare system allowed.
I struggle to be a parent with a mental illness, how to be consistent for my children or
even stay there when I am at my worst. Over the years of my research in mental health, I
have seen that we need new mental health stories. With cancer, for example, they use war
metaphors: battles, survivors, victories. However, they get us only so far. In mental health, we
need stories, new stories, nuanced stories, affective stories, that can help us to narrate this
illness. New stories that engage the social imagination can combat stigma—stigma about
living with illness, about seeking treatment, and about potentially living a life with it.
Having this play come full circle, beginning with my residency at CAMH, reflecting on
my lived experience, then taking all that I have learnt and creating something specifically for
CAMH, is everything I could have hoped for from this experience.
From director Perry Gratton:
I have had the gift of spending much of my life alongside people living with various
mental illnesses – anxiety, depression, addiction, schizophrenia, etc – as well as those on the
autism spectrum, and through these people I have learned more about what it means to be
human and to embrace life.
I see elements of all these people in Alberta, as well as Dr Stonehocker. I love that we
see them together, navigating the twists and turns of her mind. We see her in crisis, with hope
and without, and get a glimpse of the journey she is on towards living a full life with her illness.
We also see the doctor learning who she is and how he can best help her.
It is my hope that this story reaches out to people with shared experiences as well as
those new to stories like this; that it creates a bridge of empathy and understanding that leads
to conversations about mental illness and the lives of those not considered neurotypical.
We are all on our journey. It is a beautiful thing to be able to share that journey, no
matter how difficult, with others.
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

Photography
For high resolution downloadable
images for Stormshelter: DROPBOX
All photos by Mat Simpson
Samantha Jeffery photo by Mat Simpson
Michael Peng, Samantha Jeffery photo by Mat Simpson
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com

Stormshelter
supporters and partners
This project is supported by the Edmonton Arts Council and the City of Edmonton.
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $153 million to bring
the arts to Canadians throughout the country.
Nous remercions le Conseil des arts du Canada de son soutien. L’an dernier, le Conseil a investi 153 millions de
dollars pour mettre de l’art dans la vie des Canadiennes et des Canadiens de tout le pays.
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Media Contact: Samantha Jeffery
stonemarrowtheatre@gmail.com