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2018 Fall Major Production

Demos Kratos by Marilo Nunez Devised in collaboration with students at McMaster University

What does it take to step from democracy to dictatorship? Control of public spaces, gradual shifts in the law, a missing person, a stock market crash? Across the world intolerance and bigotry are finding new voices and the threat of fascism once more looms over our liberal democracies. It may seem a distant possibility here in Canada, but history tells us that shifts of power can come quickly and unannounced. Inspired by Sophocles’ Antigone, Marilo Nunez’s new play, Demos Kratos, imagines a disturbing future that could be just around the corner. When Libertad Cortez’s ancient grandmother goes missing she has to find the courage to confront the oppressive forces challenging the freedoms of our land.

Marilo Nunez, was the 2018 recipient of the Hamilton Arts award, has been working with students as playwright-in-residence since May, funded by the Socrates Project. In Theatre and Film Studies’ spring research and development class, Nunez ran devising workshops with students and incorporated their story ideas, images, and design concepts into the writing of her play.

Poster for the play Demos Kratos

Behind the scenes with the cast and crew of Demos Kratos

Meet the cast and crew of Demos Kratos. A play by Marilo Nunez and devised in collaboration with students at McMaster University in the School of the Arts program.

Expandable List

Marilo Nunez’s play is a passion cry for democracy. It challenges us to confront forces threatening our rights and freedoms with courage and determination. It asks us to consider how easily those rights and freedoms can be taken away. I love the way the play incorporates Nunez’s personal experience with the research and development work conducted with the students in the spring.

Beginning with a desire to explore the subject of democracy and dissent, I introduced Ann Carson’s translation of Sophocles’ Antigone, and Marilo brought three paintings to act as springboards for the students’ creative imaginations. The traces of these research explorations are evident in the play you will see tonight. As in Antigone, a young woman fights to defend her freedoms against an implacable representative of the state. The chorus of the Greek original is also reimagined as a chorus of Liberties, each representing important social justice movements of our times. Delacroix’s famous painting “Liberty Leading the People” inspired great creative work from the students in the spring and remains central to the conception of Nunez’s play. It is delightful to see so much of the students’ work included in the final play, but Marilo has taken all this inspiration and crafted it into a play that is unique in form and affect: a play that combines conventions of classical theatre with the possibilities of modern technology, infused with her own form of magic realism. It has been a great experience for all of us to work with her, and I would like to express our gratitude to Rina Fraticelli and the Socrates Project for making this possible.

Our incredible cast of volunteer actors and student designers have shown great courage engaging with the challenging material in the play. Rehearsals have been long and often emotional. Issues raised have been discussed at length and in depth. For me, that work and those conversations were democracy in action, and I feel blessed to enjoy the freedom to venture into such challenging territory with such open-hearted creative artists. In these often disturbing times, they have given me great hope for the future.

– Peter Cockett

The Liberties each represent a social movement, and our original intention was to include a fifth Liberty, liberty#IdleNoMore, to represent all the important work being done by Indigenous activists to bring justice to this land. Marilo and I both felt, and still feel, that the play is incomplete without this character.

We were, however, unwilling to include the character without having an actor from the Indigenous community to develop the role and to perform it in the production. Sadly, we were not able to make this happen for this production, but Marilo would be very interested in speaking to anyone who might wish to work on this in the future: mnunez6@me.com.

Democracy is a word and a concept that I have encountered my whole life. I was born in a country that was living under a brutal military dictatorship, and my parents were forced to leave based on their political beliefs. I grew up listening to my father talk about justice, equality, rights for the working class, socialism. I was politicized in the womb, I think. My mother tells me that on the night my father was released from prison I was conceived. A year later, we were making our way out of our country on a plane to Canada.

I learned so much about democracy while writing this play with the students of the Theatre & Film Studies program at McMaster. I learned that each one of us has a different idea about democracy, differences based on gender, culture, religious belief, sexuality, and race. I learned that even in a country like Canada, this concept of democracy is so delicate, so slippery. If held in the wrong hands, we lose it completely. We need to ensure that democracy never dies.

Democracy is placing the power in the people’s hands. People Power. It is the only way for our civilization to move forward. People power is how this play came to be. No piece of theatre is ever created by one singular person. Theatre is a collaboration, and I could not have written this piece without each and every person on this project – from the third-year students who developed the first iterations of the ideas around democracy, to the designers who built the beautiful creations you will see tonight, to the
actors and stage hands who made the words and movements come alive.

I especially want to thank Dr. Peter Cockett and McMaster University for believing in my crazy magical realist ideas and making them happen.

– Marilo Nunez

PRODUCTION TEAM
Production Manager Kevin Hwang
Stage Manager Alannah Taylor
Costume Production Co-ordinator Kelly Wolf
Puppet Design and Co-ordination
Melanie Skene Projection Design and Videography Peter Riddihough
Consulting Sound Designer Ranil Sonnadara

DESIGN TEAM
Costume Design Isis Lunsky and Chelsea Villafana
Lighting Design Julia Abkarian and Micaela Molina Morales
Puppets and Prop Design Mykola Paskaruk and Annamaria Skrtic
Set Design Jake Cho
Sound Design Katrina Grist and Katarina Jurriaans
Video Projection Graeme McArthur

FACULTY OF HUMANITIES

OPERATIONS & PRODUCTION
Patrick Brennan and Taras Cymbalisty, with Grace Michael, Sean
McAndrew, Joel Affoon, Adeline Okoyo

THE SCHOOL OF THE ARTS SUPPORT STAFF
Rita Crespo, Sharon Grant, Rose Mannarino,
and Christine Speare-van Vugt

SPECIAL THANKS
Virginia Aksan, Colin Czernada, Olivia Gaudino, Catherine Graham,
Janice Hladki, Brianna Seferiades, Allyssa Lai

CAST
Jessica Quino. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Libertad
Aaron Penciner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Richard
Lenna Mohan. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Tamara
Mimi Han. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Marianne
Florencia Juarez Saborio. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Isabel
Damon St. Jules. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Jonathan
Mishka Jaiswal. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Eva
THE LIBERTIES
Afreen Ahmad. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liberty#OccupyMovement
Jet’aime Fray-Samuel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liberty#BlackLivesMatter
Connie Lam. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liberty#LGBTQ
Winnie Wu. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . liberty#MeToo
THE COMPANY
Robin Barala. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soldier/Vlogger
Amanda Harrison. . . . . . . . . . . . . Soldier/Toby Mahren/Puppeteer
Ayush Kumar. . . . . . . . . . . . . Soldier/City TV reporter/Puppeteer
Ashar Mobeen. . . . . . . . . . . Soldier/Fox News Anchor/Puppeteer
Saad Saud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Soldier/CTV Reporter
Christina Stolte. . . . . . . . . . Soldier/CBC News Anchor/Puppeteer