Buddies In Bad Times Theatre presents
The Beauty Salon

Date: June 5 - June 14, 2008
Price: $15 - $20
Info: 8pm - 10:30pm To book your appointment call 416-975-8555. See show details for specific ticket prices and show times.

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Kirsten Johnson (photo: David Hawe design: by Hope Thompson)

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Full Description for The Beauty Salon

Buddies In Bad Times Theatre presents

THE BEAUTY SALON

A PERFORMANCE EVENT
Part Musical. Part Salon. Part Video Project.

Come for the Art, Stay for the Manicure.

Conceived and Directed by Moynan King
Designed by Sherri Hay and Trixie & Beever
Sound Design by Thomas Ryder Payne Lighting Design by Adrien Whan
Choreography by Marlee Cargill
Performed by Moynan King, Ange Beever, Nathalie Claude, Sherri Hay, Kirsten Johnson, Dayna McLeod, Kim Roberts and Robin Woodward (Trixie)
Stage Manager Sandy Plunkett

Hours of Operation: 8-10:30pm, June 5 - 14, 2008
(no performances Jun 8,9,10)

To book your appointment, please call the Beauty Salon Reception: 416-975-8555 Services aussi disponibles en Français / Services available in French

Buddies in Bad Times Theatre invites you into the world of The Beauty Salon, a large-scale performance installation conceived and directed by Associate Artist Moynan King.

Descend a staircase into the world of The Beauty Salon as Buddies in Bad Times Theatre's main space is transformed into a retro salon with detailed design by Sherri Hay and Trixie & Beever. Discover a whole new you, as our skilled and courteous attendants offer up a range of treatments to choose from. Experience the voyeuristic thrill of watching others be transformed, relax in our gorgeous waiting rooms or document your own gloriousness in our video lounge. We strive to pamper our clients, helping them to feel beautiful, special and relaxed with highly effective and original beauty treatments for everyone.

SALON SERVICES FOR MEN & WOMEN

Open for business over the first two weeks of June, there's no time like now to reflect on your beauty. The Beauty Salon is part installation and part performance piece, an original style developed by Moynan King that blurrs the line between audience and performer and sees theatre as an experiential rather than expositional medium.

At the Beauty Salon the barrier between performer and audience disappears. The audience gives over to the practice when she/he realizes that it is actually a show, a story, an event about them. This work reclaims the natural vanity of human beings, their desire to be at the centre. The Beauty Salon explores the intimate relationship we have with caretakers of our vanity. What would you not divulge to the person who makes you look beautiful and feel fabulous?

BELIEVE IN BEAUTY

The theme of beauty and the significance of how we look has been running through Moynan's work since her very earliest artistic endeavours. It is the central theme in two of her plays: The Importance of Being Beautiful and Bathory, which both focus largely on the link between power and beauty, with The Beauty Salon she tackles this subject matter in a whimsical and accessible style. Moynan's recent work in relational performance with The Beauty Salon, Walk In Clinic, Mothering, and The Invitation with Sherri Hay place the audience on the frontlines of the theatrical experience. Each of these events has looked at the performative aspect of simply being people. Being the people we perform ourselves to be

THE BEAUTY SALON ATTENDANTS

Moynan King is a Toronto based writer, director and performer with over 50 professional credits in theatre, film and television. She has been an Associate Artist at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre since 2003 during which time she co-created and performed The Proust Sisters, Directed and dramaturged Keith Cole's Mine, Edwige Jean Pierre's St Bitch, directed the hit play The Monster Trilogy, presented her dance theatre duets with Eryn Dace Trudell and developed the original Beauty Salon and Walk In Clinic. In this recent stint at Buddies she is also the Director of Hysteria: A Mulitidisciplinary Festival of Work by Women, was director of the Rhubarb! Festival in 2004 and 2005 and was curator of The Creator Performer series in 2006. Her hit play Bathory was originally presented by Buddies in 1997.

Sherri Hay is an internationally exhibited visual artist, set designer and performance creator. At Buddies she designed sets for Peep Show, The Monster Trilogy and Clean Irene Dirty Maxine, as well as creating numerous short performance pieces for various Rhubarb Festivals. She collaborated with Moynan King on two recent Research projects through Nightswimming Theatre.

Trixie & Beever (Robin Woodward and Ange Beever) are the crafty geniuses behind Barbie's Basement Jewelry, their Leslieville atelier of kitsch to classy accessories. Together they have also performed extensively with the Scandelles burlesque troupe, as well as plying their Sixties and Seventies sensibilities to numerous installations at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, including The Rumpus Room, The 90's Cathouse and the Walk-In Clinic with Moynan King.

Kirsten Johnson is a Toronto actor and a respected visual artist. She has appeared in Marat/Sade, DNA's Hamlet and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre's The Monster Trilogy. Her striking paintings have been exhibited at the Zsa Zsa Gallery, the Burston Gallery and XEXE Gallery among others and her portraits were featured in the Brad Fraser film, Leaving Metropolis.

Nathalie Claude is a performance artist from Montreal, Canada. She is an actress, director, dancer, choreographer, writer, and a sometimes MC, Drag King and musician. She has created a wide range of work from physical theatre solos to Sapphic Vaudeville plays. Her work exists within very visual and pictorial universes, where the body acts equally as a carrier of meaning as does the speech, and where poetry, derision, burlesque,provocation, and a refined absurd humour reign supreme. She was presented as on of four distinguished Creator Performers at Buddies in 2006.

Kim Roberts has worked extensively in film and television. In theatre she has appeared in a variety of roles in productions by Toronto's Factory Theatre, Company of Sirens, Obsidian Theatre Company, African Theatre Ensemble and others.

Dayna McLeod is a video and performance artist who likes to poke and prod feminism, homophobia, and sexually oriented stereotypes with irony, sex toys, and funny business. She has traveled extensively with her performance work, and her videos have played from London Ontario to London England- across Europe, North America, South America, Asia and a few times on TV. She is currently working on a three-part animation with funding from le Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec about the trials and tribulations of Vagina Dentata. Dayna was first seen at Buddies in the 2005 Hysteria Festival.

Press Releases for The Beauty Salon

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  • Press release for The Beauty Salon

Show Details for The Beauty Salon

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