Words for the Stage

There’s a section in the bookstore that you’ve been overlooking. It’s a section that isn’t necessarily meant for cosy couch corners, warm reading socks, a quiet cup of tea, and a story brought to life inside your mind. Scripts are typically best served out loud, preferably on stage.

Many people will never read a script, and that’s why the scripts section is often tucked away upstairs, around a corner, or at the end of a bottom shelf. Rachel Peake, on the other hand, is always reading scripts. In any given year, she reads hundreds of them. More than one a day, at times. As the Grand Theatre’s artistic director, Peake decides which titles will play on the 839-seat Spriet Stage as well as the intimate Auburn Stage.  When, script after script, day after day, years on end, she puts down her pages and says that she “has absolutely fallen instantly in love” with one story in particular, we pay attention. And so, all eyes are on Primary Trust by Eboni Booth, winner of the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and next up in the Grand’s 2025/26 season.

Primary Trust is one of those stories that grabs you. The lead, Kenneth, could be any of us. And at the same time, what he has faced – and continues to face – is complex, personal, hard to believe.

For the past several months, Booth’s celebrated script has been in the hands of theatre artists recruited from across the country – director Cherissa Richards, and designers Julie Fox (set), Rachel Forbes (costume), Imogen Wilson (lighting), and Thomas Ryder Payne (sound). Together, they are leaning into magic realism, and building “a world that feels like ours, that looks like reality,” explains Peake, “but in fact, is not bound by the laws of physics or time and lives inside an active idea.”

Primary Trust whisks audiences into the styled but realistic, gritty but beautiful world of a Tiki Hut regular. “We are taken back to a time before smartphones in North America, where connection wasn't merely a click away – and interpersonal connection took some work,” shares Richards. “We lean into how Eboni Booth explores loneliness and the complicated need for connection."

One ‘happy hour’ at a time, the character of Kenneth will unfold on the stage seemingly set with a life-size diorama. “The characters will step out into a frozen photograph and bring it to life. Surreal fragmented buildings, slices of evocative settings, signalling to the audience that we are only being let in on part of the story – the rest is in your imagination,” reveals Fox. “There is a tumbleweed feel of boarded-up store fronts and empty spaces that resonates as we continue to come back from the pandemic in our own cities. In this kind of desolate, urban landscape – so typical across North America – we still manage to find beauty and connection, and the unexpectedness makes it that much more special.”

Extraordinary, ordinary, Kenneth, will be played Durae McFarlane, who is making his Grand Theatre debut after a series of theatre and TV roles. Musician and actor Lawrence Libor will perform keys on stage, adding a live soundtrack to the show. Libor is known to Grand audiences having previously been in last season’s smash-hit musical Waitress, as well as the three-times-extended run of Cabaret, which set a record as the longest-running show on the Grand’s studio stage. The cast of characters who come and go from Kenneth’s world are played by Peter N. Bailey (Stratford, Canadian Stage), Ryan Hollyman (Soulpepper, National Arts Centre, Mirvish), and Khadijah Roberts-Abdullah (Stratford Festival).

Primary Trust, directed by Cherissa Richards, will have its opening night at the Grand Theatre later this month – giving London audiences first access to one of the most exciting new scripts to grip modern theatre before the production continues on to Crow’s Theatre in Toronto. Primary Trust will run from January 20 until February 7 on the Spriet Stage at the Grand Theatre. Tickets range from $25 to $97 and are available at www.grandtheatre.com, by phone at 519-672-8800, or at the Box Office, 471 Richmond Street.

The Grand Theatre is grateful to offer Canada Life Pay What You Can pricing, presented on Sunday, January 25 at 2:00 p.m., as well as a performance with ASL Interpretation on Saturday, January 31 at 2:00 p.m. 

Header photo: Durae McFarlane as Kenneth, sitting on a bench. Photo by Mai Tilson