Theatre Junction Grand’s Concord Floral is a collaborative creation

Concord Floral is a place where the youth escape to in Jordan Tannahill’s play, directed by Raphaele Thiriet in collaboration with Erin Brubacher and presented by Theatre Junction Grand.

The youth are escaping a mysterious plague that they brought on themselves. Director Raphaele Thiriet has a lot to say about directing the play and the process that the production went through.

“Like my artistic collaborator Erin Brubacher, I believe that how things are made shapes what is made - that how you do something matters. Not regardless of the product but alongside it. This show is like the visible area of an iceberg and is the result of many things. Many encounters: the initial encounter in Montreal with Erin one of the original creators of Concord Floral; secondly, an encounter with a wonderful group of teens from Calgary and finally, the encounter of my artistic universe colliding with Jordan Tannahill’s wonderful script.”

Concord Floral is a little different from other plays in that “this creation is the result of a six-month process framed within the Theatre Junction High School Mentorship Student program,” Thiriet explains.

“This process stems directly from Theatre Junction’s own methodology of creation applied to our High School Mentorship Student program. [The] student program was created fifteen years ago. Concord Floral is its first professional production. It is being presented on our main stage by an entire cast coming from different high schools from across Calgary. It is exciting to offer our youth this artistic relevance and importance. Teenagers are the creators of tomorrow’s world.”

“Concord Floral uses a similar structure to the Greek tragedy, where the chorus is as important as the protagonist. It is also a text written quite viscerally, and can be interpreted on many levels, which challenges the question of truth,” Thiriet says about Tannahill’s script.

“Something in the social order needs to be healed. It’s asking questions of ethics and collective responsibility.”

Thiriet loves working with her young artistic collaborators. “As they learn with us, their passion for theatre and their vitality teaches us a great deal. They are ready to take risks and ready to send us messages from the point of view of their generation, which is extremely valuable for the future of our society in general.”

Theatre Junction Grand presents Concord Flora running until April 16th. More information is available online.

Tagged as: Concord Flora, Theatre Junction Grand