Marti Maraden to direct for CanStage

Toronto – Acclaimed Canadian director and theatre veteran Marti Maraden will direct the Toronto premiere of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize and Tony Award-winning Doubt, a Parable, which will run May 4 - 30, 2009 at The Canadian Stage Company’s Bluma Appel Theatre. Ms Maraden was formerly artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, artistic director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre and was a founder of the Magnetic North Theatre Festival. Ms Maraden has a long association with Canadian Stage, directing many plays including the Dora Award-winning production of Six Degrees of Separation (1995), and Trying (2005).

Marti Maraden is a renowned classical and contemporary theatre director and a champion of Canadian work. She has directed for various stages in North America, including The Canadian Stage Company, 16 seasons at Stratford, the Shaw Festival, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Saidye Bronfman Centre for the Arts and Chicago Shakespeare Theater. Memorable productions include The Merchant of Venice (Stratford, 1996) and Elliott Hayes’s Homeward Bound (Stratford, 1991; Canadian Stage, 1994), which went on to stages across the continent. She has directed numerous plays for Canadian Stage, most recently staging Joanna McClelland-Glass’s new play Mrs. Dexter and Her Daily for the 2007 Raw!Raw!Raw! Festival of New Plays, and Trying (2005). Ms Maraden was artistic director of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival from 2006-2008, artistic director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre (NAC) from 1997-2005, and was also one of the driving forces behind the Magnetic North Theatre Festival, the first-ever national festival dedicated to Canadian work. About joining the Canadian Stage 08.09 season Ms Maraden says, "I am very happy to return to my long partnership as a director with Canadian Stage to do this remarkable and thought-provoking play."

Heralded as the most powerful theatrical event of the decade, Doubt, a Parable is a gripping, suspense-filled tug-of-war between a popular priest and a strong-minded nun who suspects her colleague of improper conduct with a student. Set against the backdrop of a Bronx Catholic school in 1964, the controversial play dramatizes issues ripped from today’s headlines and tackles themes of religion, morality and authority. Created by American playwright John Patrick Shanley, the Academy Award-winning author of Moonstruck, Doubt, a Parable is the Broadway and West End sensation that took New York critics by storm. In addition to the Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize, the play has won Drama Desk, New York Drama Critics’ Circle, Outer Critics Circle and Obie Awards. Premiering at Manhattan Theatre Club in 2004, it was voted best new play of the year by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Time Magazine.

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