by AMY BARRATT

Gabrielle Soskin and her company, Persephone Productions, have been doing all right lately. Their 2004 production of Eric Bogosian’s subUrbia recently shared the Montreal English Critics Circle Award for best independent production, as well as bagging best director for Soskin. Last spring, Soskin had a critical and popular success portraying Virginia Woolf in the solo piece A Room of One’s Own, which she did as a fundraiser for Persephone.

So why is this passionate teacher-director-performer sounding so nervous? Is it just run-of-the-mill pre-opening-night jitters or is it something more? Maybe Soskin is wishing she was doing another contemporary North American play like subUrbia, instead of a wordy century-old German work translated by Britain’s poet laureate, Ted Hughes.

“The language is quite a challenge,” she says a little wearily. “Young North American actors are not used to this sort of rich imagery.

“But that’s Persephone,” she says, determinedly cheerful. “Our mandate is to give opportunities to young actors, to help them grow. And they are working very hard.”

Despite being written during the reign of Queen Victoria, Spring Awakening is no stuffy parlour drama. A portrait of a group of adolescents, it deals frankly with sex, specifically with the harmful repercussions of keeping young people ignorant about it. Frank Wedekind wrote the play in 1891, but its subject matter was considered so shocking that it was not produced until 1906, and then only in a highly censored version. The first English language version appeared in 1909, but the play was not produced uncensored in Britain until 1963. Soskin remembers.

“I told my cast, in 1963, I was just graduating (from the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School) when they did the first uncensored British production of Spring Awakening at the Royal Court Theatre in London.”

Point being, sexual repression may not be the first problem we associate with teenagers nowadays, but it’s not that long since sexuality was a subject not to be broached in polite—and certainly not in mixed—company.

Then there’s also Wedekind’s satirizing of Christian teachings which raises the question whether the play could be performed uncensored even today in say, Florida or Texas.

“Wedekind rejected organized religion,” says Soskin. “But I had the feeling he would still say that in secular life there has to be a moral code.

Her actors, Soskin says, have a strong connection with their roles, even as they struggle with the text which sometimes feels like it’s in a foreign language. “It’s like a musician,” she explains. “You shouldn’t not try Bach or Mozart just because it’s difficult.”

Persephone pursuit

Persephone will produce a second show this season, Prodigy, by Canadian Nancy Huston. The story of three generations of women who share a passion for the piano, this will be a Canadian premiere. Soskin will be holding auditions for non-Equity actresses on Nov. 17. She needs a young woman who can convincingly portray a 10-year-old, and a 30 to 40-year-old to play the “central role” of her “sensitive, refined” mother. The production will be at Théâtre Ste-Catherine next March and April. For more information, contact Andree McNamara at 481-3251.

Spring Awakening Nov. 10–20 at Théâtre La Chappelle (3700 St-Dominique), $15–$22.50, 848-7738 for tickets and showtimes

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