Montreal actor returns from Toronto for solo performance!

Claudia is a pre-teen, still reeling from her parents’ divorce. Her father is getting remarried, she has a science fair project coming due, and she is in the physical and emotional throes of puberty. Claudia speaks to us from inside the boiler room of her school, where she stores all the things that are secret and dear to her. Incensed and incredulous at the adult world around her, she is irrepressibly funny about it at the same time. Some important adults in Claudia’s life - her grandfather Douglas, her father’s new girlfriend Leslie and the school custodian Drachman - shed light on her situation. I, Claudia will be the first production to be presented in The Segal Centre’s new studio space!

BEHIND THE SCENES

The play’s title is a take on I, Claudius - the memoir of an elderly statesman, meant to be read after his death. The connection lies in the fact that they are both secret accounts of the inner workings of a character and that, in both cases, the events they present for our scrutiny are not necessarily what we would see from any other point of view. The masks used in the play were designed to be used by actors in training programs to develop non-psychological approaches to characterization and improvisation. “When it came time to write the show, I improvised with the masks and transcribed my improvisations,” Thomson says. “Then I read my transcriptions until a story emerged.”

DID YOU KNOW?

The filmed version of the play, directed by Chris Abraham, was voted one of Canada’s top ten movies of 2004 by the Toronto International Film Festival Group. Playwright and actor Kristen Thompson picked up the 2003 ACTRA Award for Outstanding Performance in I Shout Love, a short film from actor-director Sarah Polley. She is also a three-time Dora Award winner for her work on stage.