Shakespeare in the Ruff is thrilled to welcome renowned actor and teacher Irene Poole to the Playground. In this three-day intensive, participants will explore ways of making Shakespeare’s language and poetic images personal and playable. By using a variety of techniques to find meaning, clarity of thought, and the emotional journey, participants will strive to get to that magic place where poetic image is married to situational truth.
Read More
One of the defining pillars of Ruff is that we get to call the beautiful Withrow Park home. We are fortunate to have a rich, vibrant and natural stage from which we perform our work and build our community.
For this year’s fundraiser, we invite our friends, family and community to connect with the more-than-human world of Withrow Park by forest bathing in Withrow Park.
Your guide to forest bathing will be Melanie Hazell – an ANFT certified Forest Therapist and long-time friend of Ruff. Melanie’s story can be found here.
Read More
A month-long fundraising celebration of the wild and beautiful intersections of the Ruffians.
Overview:
Friday, October 14th – Restorative Meditation and Creative Writing with PJ Prudat
Sunday, October 16th – 1:1 Coaching Sessions with Christine Horne
Saturday, October 22nd – Introduction to Kung Fu in Withrow Park with Jeff Yung
Saturday, October 29th – Non- Dancer Music Video Choreography with Patricia Allison
For Forest Bathing on Sunday, October 16th CLICK HERE
This season, Ruff has been working with consultants Alex Bulmer, Elizabeth Morris, Jeff D’Hondt, and Angela Sun to explore new accessibility options for our production of Otîhêw. We acknowledge that these offerings won’t make the show accessible for everyone, but our hope is that this is a first step towards achieving greater and more comprehensive accessibility each season.
Read More
Our 2022 production of Otîhêw has been a big, beautiful undertaking, and one that we realized pretty early on in the process hadn’t been given enough time to fully bloom. Out of a desire to give our creative team and crew more time to breathe and create, we are adjusting our performance schedule.
August 19th and 20th, originally planned as preview and opening, will now be rehearsal evenings. You are still welcome to join us! The process is open to witnesses from 7-10pm, and our front-of-house team will have chairs and cushions ready for you if you’d like to drop by. All are welcome, and in fact we’d love to have you there.
Read More
When we were brainstorming our first season at Ruff, and the new initiatives we wanted to launch, I was super excited about two things: Ruff Reads (our monthly book club), and Rufflings Story Time, which I imagined as a weekly gathering in the park, adjacent to rehearsals, where members of the mainstage company and the Young Ruffian Apprenticeship Program could gather park kids and read them stories, play games, etc.
Read More
For our final installment of Ruff Reads for the season, we’re discussing a piece that has been called “a decolonization of the novel” and a “fierce reclamation of Anishnaabe aesthetics”. We can’t wait to get into it.
Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Thursday July 28th at 8pm on Zoom
DM us or contact ruffreads@shakespeareintheruff.com for the Zoom link. (Don’t have time to read the book but still interested in the conversation? Join us anyway!)
Read More
Friends, we are excited to invite you to a FREE Shakespeare in the Ruff Community Event on June 29th from 6pm – 8pm in between the tress (Jack and Diane) where we seasonally perform.
Listen here:
Turning away from Shakespeare’s original and towards our summer production, Ruff Reads delves into a book that has had great influence on playwright PJ Prudat and Otîhêw, her Indigenous, fur trade-era reimagining of Othello.
Read More
Otîhêw
Written by PJ Prudat
Directed by Philip Geller
Shakespeare in the Ruff presents Otîhêw, an Indigenous reimagining of Shakespeare’s Othello by PJ Prudat.
Set during the fur trade era, Otîhêw is the story of an Indigenous woman warrior bound in the historical “custom-of-the-country” to Desmond, a fur-trader under HBC conquest. Otîhêw will be directed by Philip Geller.
Seeking:
Composer/Musician – Proficient with strings and drums. Familiar with composing atmospheric and non-diegetic sound. Will accompany every performance live. First Nations, Métis, and Inuit artists will be prioritized.