Award-winning playwright Jane Shepard has crafted two wonderfully entertaining one-act plays that explore with humour and empathy the need to share the human experience with another.
Commencing and Subway run until October 8 at Theatre Inconnu.
“Edgy, original and with a darkly comic humanity…Shepard writes incredibly rich and truthful female characters not often seen on stage,” notes theatermania.com.
Jane Shepard is an American playwright, filmmaker and cartoonist. She is best known for writing the Showtime original movie Freak City, which was nominated for a Writers Guild of America Award (2000) for Best Screenplay. She was a member of Circle Repertory Company before. Her play productions in New York City have included Eating the Dead, Ducks Crossing and her one-woman autobiographical comedy The Idiot’s Guide to the Brain. Her awards include: Robert Chesley Award, Berrilla Kerr Playwriting Award and Jane Chambers Award, among others.
In Commencing—directed by Wendy Gail and starring Kathy Macovichuk and Caroline Mackenzie—a flower delivery to the wrong address sets up a comedy of errors. Arlin, a gay woman, delivers flowers to Kelli, a straight woman. Kelli is expecting a visit from a straight male blind date. The clever dialogue makes the extended misunderstanding plausible as well as ridiculously outrageous; leading to both laugh-out-loud and tender moments, as they come to realize that they are both much more alike than they had initially thought.
A similar theme, with more serious undertones, is explored in Subway, directed by Sydney Hunt and starring Sophie Groves and Klara Kopeinigg. Two women—Alice and Darcy—hooked up at a gay bar and are now waiting together in a subway station, contemplating extending their passionate encounter. Will the fact that Alice is straight and Darcy is gay prevent a growing closeness between them? While they interact, layers of personality are slowly stripped away, and as they become more vulnerable with each other, it becomes apparent that what they need from each other involves much more than just a sexual encounter.
Tickets are ($14/$10) are available by phone at 250-360-0234, email at
info@theatreinconnu.com or by going online to theatreinconnu.com.