Latest news with #BusStopTheatre
Hamilton Spectator
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
April Hubbard delayed MAID to accept Governor General's honour: ‘Most artists never get a recognition like this in their lifetime'
April Hubbard changed the plan for her death so she could be there to celebrate her life's work at one of Canada's most prestigious arts ceremonies. The 40-year-old arts administrator and performer had pre-recorded her acceptance speech for the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards because she had expected to receive medical assistance in dying before Saturday's gala. 'It's only in the last few weeks that I said, well, maybe I can make it. Can we consider this and make it happen?' she said in a video call from her home in Halifax. 'It's a very strange experience to go back and rewrite an acceptance speech that you didn't think you'd be alive to see.' Hubbard has qualified for MAID because she has tethered cord syndrome, a degenerative disorder of the nervous system resulting from a condition she was born with, spina bifida. While the condition isn't fatal, it causes tissue to attach to the spine, restricting movement and causing severe chronic pain. The condition cut short her acting career at age 17, when she started using a wheelchair. She'd fallen in love with the theatre three years earlier after her mother voluntold her to serve as a script prompter for a community theatre production of 'Drinking Alone.' Throughout high school, she acted, stage managed and did everything she could to be in the theatre. But once she started using a wheelchair, she said she got the message that there was no longer a place for her on stage. 'Every opportunity I had in the arts in Nova Scotia to be on stage dried up when I became visibly disabled,' she said. 'At that point, I had to switch to arts administration just as a way of still being involved in some way and find a way to still have my soul fed by the arts,' she said. 'That was the only place that there was room for me: behind the scenes where I wasn't visible.' In those behind-the-scenes roles, she's fought to make Halifax's theatre scene more accessible to disabled audiences and performers alike. 'When I did get a little foot in the door in any organization, it was the drive to bring others with me who were still not being heard and still not getting through the space,' she said. '(I was) always thinking about, 'OK, I wasn't let into this space, but next year, if I'm here, who will I be welcoming in?'' Hubbard started volunteering at the Halifax Fringe Festival in 2003, and eventually became its chair. Over the years she was involved with the festival, the organization committed to only using venues that were fully accessible, and trained volunteers to be sighted guides to people who are blind or low-vision. She was also consulted when the Bus Stop Theatre co-op bought a building. They brought her on to make sure the space was accessible for both audiences and performers. At the beginning of her advocacy, she said, she was one of the only voices in the room. That's changed over time, as she's found others doing similar work. Those people have made it possible for her to rest when she needs to, she said, 'knowing there's other people out there who will still advocate as well.' Hubbard was also able to return to performance. It started in 2019, when the founders of LEGacy Circus reached out to her. They were training instructors on how to work with performers with atypical bodies and they asked Hubbard for help, she said. As soon as she touched the trapeze, she fell in love. Hubbard and her circus partner Vanessa Furlong started to work together, and soon she was performing publicly for the first time as an adult. She approached her art with thoughtfulness, in contrast to her teenage self taking whatever role came her way. 'In my circus practice, I'd make a really big part of it showing my body fully and not hiding its differences,' she said. She wanted the audience to think about how her being on stage was different from an able-bodied performer — and why it was so uncommon to see. 'It felt very much like returning home,' she said. 'And I didn't realize until I got back onstage just how much I had kind of quieted a part of my soul.' When COVID-19 hit, she didn't want to give that up. She'd been so accepted in the world of circus that she looked for another space that was welcoming to 'outsiders.' She'd done ticketing for drag shows in Halifax for years, so she was very familiar with the local scene and had long thought about becoming a drag artist herself. But at the time, she wasn't able to get onto most of the stages because of her wheelchair. So during the pandemic, when everyone was cooped up inside and drag artists started performing virtually, Hubbard developed her drag persona, Crip Tease. 'It was really amazing to get to do, to be creative at a time that everybody had those same limitations, everybody had to think about 'how am I going to make my art happen?' And it kind of evened the playing field in a lot of ways for me as a disabled artist,' she said. But since then, Hubbard's health has deteriorated. Her pain has worsened, and she's no longer able to perform. That pain led her to pursue a medically assisted death in 2023, and she qualified under Track 2, which is for people whose condition is grievous and irremediable but whose death is not imminent. That's given her some flexibility. She doesn't have a date set, she said, though she still plans to die later this year. Extending her life also means extending her pain, which she describes as a constant burning and pulling sensation. When it's at its worst, she said, it feels like her legs are being sent through a meat grinder. She's been resting up for the last several weeks to be able to make the journey to Ottawa, where she'll accept the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts in person. Others honourees include musician Jeremy Dutcher, music producer Bob Ezrin and Oscar-nominated actor Graham Greene. 'I'm very aware of the fact that most artists never get a recognition like this in their lifetime,' Hubbard said. 'They never get to experience the joy of hearing how much people appreciate them and their work. And those things are usually only said after somebody has already passed. So it feels like a real blessing to get to hear all that and to be here to experience all of those moments.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
April Hubbard delayed MAID to accept Governor General's honour: ‘Most artists never get a recognition like this in their lifetime'
April Hubbard changed the plan for her death so she could be there to celebrate her life's work at one of Canada's most prestigious arts ceremonies. The 40-year-old arts administrator and performer had pre-recorded her acceptance speech for the Governor General's Performing Arts Awards because she had expected to receive medical assistance in dying before Saturday's gala. 'It's only in the last few weeks that I said, well, maybe I can make it. Can we consider this and make it happen?' she said in a video call from her home in Halifax. 'It's a very strange experience to go back and rewrite an acceptance speech that you didn't think you'd be alive to see.' Hubbard has qualified for MAID because she has tethered cord syndrome, a degenerative disorder of the nervous system resulting from a condition she was born with, spina bifida. While the condition isn't fatal, it causes tissue to attach to the spine, restricting movement and causing severe chronic pain. The condition cut short her acting career at age 17, when she started using a wheelchair. She'd fallen in love with the theatre three years earlier after her mother voluntold her to serve as a script prompter for a community theatre production of 'Drinking Alone.' Throughout high school, she acted, stage managed and did everything she could to be in the theatre. But once she started using a wheelchair, she said she got the message that there was no longer a place for her on stage. 'Every opportunity I had in the arts in Nova Scotia to be on stage dried up when I became visibly disabled,' she said. 'At that point, I had to switch to arts administration just as a way of still being involved in some way and find a way to still have my soul fed by the arts,' she said. 'That was the only place that there was room for me: behind the scenes where I wasn't visible.' In those behind-the-scenes roles, she's fought to make Halifax's theatre scene more accessible to disabled audiences and performers alike. 'When I did get a little foot in the door in any organization, it was the drive to bring others with me who were still not being heard and still not getting through the space,' she said. '(I was) always thinking about, 'OK, I wasn't let into this space, but next year, if I'm here, who will I be welcoming in?'' Hubbard started volunteering at the Halifax Fringe Festival in 2003, and eventually became its chair. Over the years she was involved with the festival, the organization committed to only using venues that were fully accessible, and trained volunteers to be sighted guides to people who are blind or low-vision. She was also consulted when the Bus Stop Theatre co-op bought a building. They brought her on to make sure the space was accessible for both audiences and performers. At the beginning of her advocacy, she said, she was one of the only voices in the room. That's changed over time, as she's found others doing similar work. Those people have made it possible for her to rest when she needs to, she said, 'knowing there's other people out there who will still advocate as well.' Hubbard was also able to return to performance. It started in 2019, when the founders of LEGacy Circus reached out to her. They were training instructors on how to work with performers with atypical bodies and they asked Hubbard for help, she said. As soon as she touched the trapeze, she fell in love. Hubbard and her circus partner Vanessa Furlong started to work together, and soon she was performing publicly for the first time as an adult. She approached her art with thoughtfulness, in contrast to her teenage self taking whatever role came her way. 'In my circus practice, I'd make a really big part of it showing my body fully and not hiding its differences,' she said. She wanted the audience to think about how her being on stage was different from an able-bodied performer — and why it was so uncommon to see. 'It felt very much like returning home,' she said. 'And I didn't realize until I got back onstage just how much I had kind of quieted a part of my soul.' When COVID-19 hit, she didn't want to give that up. She'd been so accepted in the world of circus that she looked for another space that was welcoming to 'outsiders.' She'd done ticketing for drag shows in Halifax for years, so she was very familiar with the local scene and had long thought about becoming a drag artist herself. But at the time, she wasn't able to get onto most of the stages because of her wheelchair. So during the pandemic, when everyone was cooped up inside and drag artists started performing virtually, Hubbard developed her drag persona, Crip Tease. 'It was really amazing to get to do, to be creative at a time that everybody had those same limitations, everybody had to think about 'how am I going to make my art happen?' And it kind of evened the playing field in a lot of ways for me as a disabled artist,' she said. But since then, Hubbard's health has deteriorated. Her pain has worsened, and she's no longer able to perform. That pain led her to pursue a medically assisted death in 2023, and she qualified under Track 2, which is for people whose condition is grievous and irremediable but whose death is not imminent. That's given her some flexibility. She doesn't have a date set, she said, though she still plans to die later this year. Extending her life also means extending her pain, which she describes as a constant burning and pulling sensation. When it's at its worst, she said, it feels like her legs are being sent through a meat grinder. Weekly A weekly look at what's happening in Winnipeg's arts and entertainment scene. She's been resting up for the last several weeks to be able to make the journey to Ottawa, where she'll accept the Ramon John Hnatyshyn Award for Voluntarism in the Performing Arts in person. Others honourees include musician Jeremy Dutcher, music producer Bob Ezrin and Oscar-nominated actor Graham Greene. 'I'm very aware of the fact that most artists never get a recognition like this in their lifetime,' Hubbard said. 'They never get to experience the joy of hearing how much people appreciate them and their work. And those things are usually only said after somebody has already passed. So it feels like a real blessing to get to hear all that and to be here to experience all of those moments.' This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 12, 2025.
Winnipeg Free Press
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Winnipeg Free Press
Moscovitch's drama ‘Red Like Fruit' explores power and memory in post-#MeToo era
TORONTO – A seasoned storyteller whose work often probes the complexities of consent and shades of truth, Hannah Moscovitch seems compelled to search for deeper meanings in both her plays and real life. There's rich significance, she suggests, in bringing her latest meditation on gender and power to a renowned Toronto theatre company once inextricably linked to allegations of sexual misconduct. The celebrated playwright points out that 'Red Like Fruit' hits Soulpepper several years after its co-founder and artistic director Albert Schultz resigned amid allegations of impropriety dating back years. 'They're trying to combat their own legacy,' Moscovitch says of being presented by Soulpepper, in collaboration with the Luminato Festival. Moscovitch's two-hander centres on a journalist whose investigation into a case of domestic violence leads her to reconsider the significance of her own past experiences. Michelle Monteith plays the journalist Lauren, whose doubts about her own memory have her turning to a male character, Luke, played by David Patrick Flemming, to recount her own story back to her. The audience plays witness to Lauren's reaction to hearing someone else present details of her life, a twist on the unreliable narrator trope that raises questions about whose stories get told and whose voice gets heard. Moscovitch, who visited similar themes in her Governor General's Award-winning play 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,' notes her first-ever show at Soulpepper comes after a #MeToo reckoning that included pressure to address long-standing inequities in the theatre world. She credits current artistic director Weyni Mengesha with leading that charge. 'She's entirely changed that institution. I'm so admiring of her programming and her art and I think that she has already completely obliterated any legacy from Albert Schultz,' says Moscovitch. Four actresses sued Schultz in January 2018, claiming he groped them, exposed himself, pressed against them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. Schultz resigned and denied the allegations, saying he would defend himself. The lawsuits were settled that summer with undisclosed terms. Mengesha is equally effusive in describing Halifax-based Moscovitch as a 'brave' artist willing to tackle difficult topics. Mengesha says she flew to Halifax last year to preview 'Red Like Fruit' as it prepared for its world premiere at Bus Stop Theatre, quickly deciding it was important to bring it to Soulpepper. 'She explores things that are tough to talk about, like shame and definitely our own accountability as far as how we believe women or don't believe women,' Mengesha says. 'It's so personal and it's so honest. And what I love about her work is that it's a slow burn in some ways. It's always entertaining and really enjoyable to watch, but the effects of it – you'll be considering it days after.' 'Red Like Fruit' is directed by Moscovitch's husband, Christian Barry, who traces 'a direct line' from its themes to those of 'Sexual Misconduct,' which told of an affair between a married, middle-aged professor and his 19-year-old student. It's currently playing off-Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty. Barry suspects an advantage in being married to the playwright of such charged fare, and he confesses they each have a hard time putting their creative projects aside at the end of the day – work talk will invade conversations at the dinner table or pop up during school drop-off for their son. Such familiarity is especially handy in directing 'Red Like Fruit,' he says, recalling multiple conversations with Moscovitch about her own eureka moments over past encounters. 'There's a lot of unspoken understanding between us about the subtext of what she's writing about. And I think ultimately, when you're sharing things that are this intimately connected with lived experiences, you just want to trust that they're going to be handled with care,' says Barry, artistic director of Halifax's 2b theatre, which marks its 25th anniversary this June. 'And so she has trust in our relationship and in my ability to be able to see not just the text, but the subtext. Not just what's going on, but what it means to her personally and what it means to things that she's lived through that might be similar to what the characters are experiencing.' Moscovitch says 'Red Like Fruit' is not autobiographical but is partly informed by unsettling experiences she's had in a male-dominated creative sphere. 'Having been in the theatre community in Toronto in the 2000s, I would say that a certain amount of sexual misconduct was the price of admission,' says Moscovitch. She says it's taken years to acknowledge and unpack problematic encounters in her own past, which she'd previously laughed off as a joke when recounting to others. 'Culture was informing how we were thinking about our own experiences, and we were both diminishing them and being silenced about them. And I think it creates real confusion, or it did for me,' she says. 'Your first thought is, I'm so lucky nothing ever happened to me. And then you're like, 'Wait a second…. Every experience I've had actually, like, directly contradicts that,'' she says. 'And then you start to go into it – You're like, was that bad or wasn't it bad? Is that just part of growing up? Is that trauma or is that experience?' 'Red Like Fruit' begins with a preview Wednesday and opens Thursday. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.
Hamilton Spectator
28-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Moscovitch's drama ‘Red Like Fruit' explores power and memory in post-#MeToo era
TORONTO - A seasoned storyteller whose work often probes the complexities of consent and shades of truth, Hannah Moscovitch seems compelled to search for deeper meanings in both her plays and real life. There's rich significance, she suggests, in bringing her latest meditation on gender and power to a renowned Toronto theatre company once inextricably linked to allegations of sexual misconduct. The celebrated playwright points out that 'Red Like Fruit' hits Soulpepper several years after its co-founder and artistic director Albert Schultz resigned amid allegations of impropriety dating back years. 'They're trying to combat their own legacy,' Moscovitch says of being presented by Soulpepper, in collaboration with the Luminato Festival. Moscovitch's two-hander centres on a journalist whose investigation into a case of domestic violence leads her to reconsider the significance of her own past experiences. Michelle Monteith plays the journalist Lauren, whose doubts about her own memory have her turning to a male character, Luke, played by David Patrick Flemming, to recount her own story back to her. The audience plays witness to Lauren's reaction to hearing someone else present details of her life, a twist on the unreliable narrator trope that raises questions about whose stories get told and whose voice gets heard. Moscovitch, who visited similar themes in her Governor General's Award-winning play 'Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,' notes her first-ever show at Soulpepper comes after a #MeToo reckoning that included pressure to address long-standing inequities in the theatre world. She credits current artistic director Weyni Mengesha with leading that charge. 'She's entirely changed that institution. I'm so admiring of her programming and her art and I think that she has already completely obliterated any legacy from Albert Schultz,' says Moscovitch. Four actresses sued Schultz in January 2018, claiming he groped them, exposed himself, pressed against them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. Schultz resigned and denied the allegations, saying he would defend himself. The lawsuits were settled that summer with undisclosed terms. Mengesha is equally effusive in describing Halifax-based Moscovitch as a 'brave' artist willing to tackle difficult topics. Mengesha says she flew to Halifax last year to preview 'Red Like Fruit' as it prepared for its world premiere at Bus Stop Theatre, quickly deciding it was important to bring it to Soulpepper. 'She explores things that are tough to talk about, like shame and definitely our own accountability as far as how we believe women or don't believe women,' Mengesha says. 'It's so personal and it's so honest. And what I love about her work is that it's a slow burn in some ways. It's always entertaining and really enjoyable to watch, but the effects of it – you'll be considering it days after.' 'Red Like Fruit' is directed by Moscovitch's husband, Christian Barry, who traces 'a direct line' from its themes to those of 'Sexual Misconduct,' which told of an affair between a married, middle-aged professor and his 19-year-old student. It's currently playing off-Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty. Barry suspects an advantage in being married to the playwright of such charged fare, and he confesses they each have a hard time putting their creative projects aside at the end of the day – work talk will invade conversations at the dinner table or pop up during school drop-off for their son. Such familiarity is especially handy in directing 'Red Like Fruit,' he says, recalling multiple conversations with Moscovitch about her own eureka moments over past encounters. 'There's a lot of unspoken understanding between us about the subtext of what she's writing about. And I think ultimately, when you're sharing things that are this intimately connected with lived experiences, you just want to trust that they're going to be handled with care,' says Barry, artistic director of Halifax's 2b theatre, which marks its 25th anniversary this June. 'And so she has trust in our relationship and in my ability to be able to see not just the text, but the subtext. Not just what's going on, but what it means to her personally and what it means to things that she's lived through that might be similar to what the characters are experiencing.' Moscovitch says 'Red Like Fruit' is not autobiographical but is partly informed by unsettling experiences she's had in a male-dominated creative sphere. 'Having been in the theatre community in Toronto in the 2000s, I would say that a certain amount of sexual misconduct was the price of admission,' says Moscovitch. She says it's taken years to acknowledge and unpack problematic encounters in her own past, which she'd previously laughed off as a joke when recounting to others. 'Culture was informing how we were thinking about our own experiences, and we were both diminishing them and being silenced about them. And I think it creates real confusion, or it did for me,' she says. 'Your first thought is, I'm so lucky nothing ever happened to me. And then you're like, 'Wait a second.... Every experience I've had actually, like, directly contradicts that,'' she says. 'And then you start to go into it – You're like, was that bad or wasn't it bad? Is that just part of growing up? Is that trauma or is that experience?' 'Red Like Fruit' begins with a preview Wednesday and opens Thursday. This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.
