The Beggar's Opera

Theatre @ York's production of The Beggar's Opera

This week, Theatre @ York is bringing together professional and emerging talent in theatre, music, dance and digital media to mount an updated production of John Gay's 18th century satire The Beggar's Opera. Adapted and directed by interdisciplinary theatre artist Gwen Dobie, this modern interpretation transforms York University's Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre into the Lincoln Fields Correctional Institute, where visitors are invited to witness the "inmates" performing within.

We caught up with Dobie to find out more about this ambitious theatrical undertaking.

Theatromania: Tell us about The Beggar’s Opera. What inspired Theatre @ York to tackle this piece?

GD: John Gay's rollicking Beggar's Opera is a forerunner of the modern musical, but with a dark satirical edge. At its London premiere in 1728, it caused a sensation. Lampooning the politics and public morality of the day, it became an instant hit. Since then, it’s seen many productions, including the iconic Brecht/Weill adaptation, The Threepenny Opera, with its unforgettable songs "Mack the Knife" and "Pirate Jenny." We put The Beggar’s Opera on our playbill for two reasons. In 2012, York University’s Department of Theatre teamed up with the Departments of Music and Dance to present Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas, showcasing up-and-coming artists in all three programs. Last year, we joined forces with the Digital Media program in the Faculty of Fine Arts to produce a cutting-edge, hi-tech production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Both shows were a terrific success, and they inspired us to extend our creative collaboration across all of the performance programs in York’s Faculty of Fine Arts, integrated with digital media production.

John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, with its gripping cast of characters and wide scope of performance and production elements, is the perfect play to do this. Our modern, inter-medial adaptation brings together professional and emerging talent in our Theatre, Music, Dance and Digital Media programs. The second reason is the theme of the play. The Beggar’s Opera is not just hugely entertaining—it’s also got serious substance and purpose. The last sentence of Gay’s script says it all: “The lower sort of people have their vices as well as the rich, but the poor are always punished for them.” The play takes aim at issues around poverty, corruption, social inequality and social justice. At its core, it’s about money: the privileges for those who have it and the trials for those who don’t. These issues are as central to our society today as when John Gay put quill to paper. With this show, we want to bring them to the forefront and engage our students—and our audience!—in the conversation.

Theatromania: How would you describe Theatre @ York’s production in a few sentences?

GD: Our show goes back to the source—but with a thoroughly modern vibe. Instead of London’s Newgate Prison in the 18th century, our The Beggar's Opera is set in 2014 in the Lincoln Fields Correctional Institute, a medium-security prison in Toronto. The actors, musicians and dancers in the cast are the inmates: gang members, con artists, prostitutes and the like. The progressive Prison Warden, Beckett Benjamin Graff, is an advocate of “prison theatre” as an alternative response to conventional incarceration. The inmates put on a performance of The Beggar’s Opera in an attempt to understand the underworld of the gamblers and thieves in the play in relation to their own place in society. TV reporter Pam Parker reports live from the scene, as visitors to the prison watch the play unfold under the watchful eyes of the prison’s security team (aka digital media designers) and their surveillance apparatus—“for our own safety”. Members of York University's Osgoode Hall Law School have been invited to join the ruckus—fueling the fires of debate.

Theatromania: What are some of the challenges you’ve encountered directing this piece?

GD: The biggest challenge for me has been embracing and integrating the varied and immense talents and imaginations of 200+ students, staff and faculty from four different programs. The hours have been long and the demands of the show comprehensive, but it’s been a fabulous experience—not just for me, but I think for everyone involved. Everyone—on stage, back stage and front of house—has been enormously open and generous with their gifts. It’s inspiring to see it all come together.

Theatromania: What’s next for Theatre @ York?

GD: In February we’re hosting playGround, our annual festival of original student works, and then in late March we’re doing Jim Cartwright's The Road, directed by my colleague Mark Wilson and starring members of our 4th Year Acting Conservatory. The play is set in a small Lancashire town in 1987 in Margaret Thatcher's England. The town's inhabitants are all unemployed. Scullery, the town drunk, conducts us, the audience, on a tour of his street, introducing us to the townspeople who are attempting to escape the poverty which afflicts them. It will be a promenade production, with the audience following the action from room-to-room in the theatre as the actors walk through their midst.

Theatre @ York's The Beggars Opera runs from January 28 to February 1 at Sandra Faire & Ivan Fecan Theatre, Accolade East Building, York University (4700 Keele Street, Toronto). Visit finearts.yorku.ca/beggarsopera for more information and to buy tickets.