Nardi - Two letters-- and counting!

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Front Cover Image: Mr. Multipants Francis Ellington Nardi

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First edition.

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Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012953445

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Nardi, Tony

TWO LETTERS And Counting! / Tony Nardi.

(Essential drama series ; 34)

Also issued in electronic format.

ISBN 978-1-55071-690-0

9781550716917 Epub

9781550716924 Mobi

1. Arts--Canada. I. Title. II. Series: Essential drama

series (Toronto, Ont.) ; 34

NX513.A1N37 2013 700.971 C2012-907654-6

... [A] sweeping cultural critique, a cri de coeur that is perhaps the first extended work of its kind to attempt to decolonize the Canadian imagination ... surely one of the strangest and most provocative pieces of theatre ever staged in this country... Nardi doesn't just bite the hand that feeds him; he chews it up and then spits it out.

Michael Posner , Globe and Mail, Queens Quarterly Magazine

Nardi uses dramatic acid to burn the rust off truth, and to blister complacency until it turns into awareness. He takes no prisoners ... The questions that troubled him so deeply have to do, not just with identity and cultural stereotyping, but also with the nature of storytelling. To see Nardi in ac tion is a bit like witnessing spontaneous combustion in a cave at night; at first, there is the scent of sulphur; then, a vague crackling in the air; then a flash of light, and the play of shadow on the walls; above all, there is surprise.

Joe Fiorito , The Toronto Star

Nardi presents them with an lan that echoes, alternately, the great Italian playwright and puzzle-maker Luigi Pirandello and, more oddly, Sam Coleridge sitting on the cliffs of Dover in 1798 wondering what, exactly, the French Revolution was about to rain down on the English ... Nardi delivers the best kind of tour de force, one that doesnt try to overpower its audiences or monumentalize the subject matter. Hes going to make you laugh out loud any number of times because did I mention this? Nardi is a very, very funny man when he wants to be. And he tells, as Coleridge once did, most bitter truth, but without bitterness.

Brian Fawcett , author

... [T]here is far more theatricality in his presentation than in many plays, because the actor knows exactly how to dramatize his material ... a representation of what it means to be in the authentic present, something every actor needs to know. This is a stunning model of period acting, and it is created without fanfare, without absurd artifice, and with such convincing intensity that it absorbs us in its surging current. In England, Italy, Germany, et cetera, Two Letters would be front-page news on the arts or culture page. Not so in Canada, of course.

Keith Garebian , author , poet , theatre critic Stage and Page

... [T]ook my breath away. It was not only some of the best writing Id heard in a while but the clearest and most passionate indictment Ive encountered of whats wrong with film, television and theatre in Canada.

Jim Henshaw , actor , screenwriter and film and television producer

... [U]n virulent plaidoyer contre la complaisance du milieu thtral, lignorance de la critique, lincomptence des metteurs en scne et jen passe ... la performance oscille constamment entre la narration et le pamphlet. Et a frappe fort. toute allure, comme sil tait matre doeuvre dun vritable bombardement, Nardi attaque de toutes parts. Des prises de parole de ce genre-l, on nose mme pas en rver dans le milieu francophone qubcois. Pourtant, la situation est bien peu diffrente ... Ceux qui ne voient pas de thtre dans la srie de lettres quil lit, ou plutt quil performe depuis plusieurs mois entre Toronto et Montral doivent tre sourds ou aveugles. Passons vite sur les qualits de prsence et la fougue du comdien, car ce serait oublier lessentiel. Ce qui compte, cest que Tony Nardi dit des choses importantes, que personne dautre que lui nose dire avec autant de passion.

Philippe Couture (form er VOIR theatre critic) now with Le Devoir

Tony Nardis letters is the clearest most powerful statement ever made in Canada of the actors art in modern times. Nardis letters are a scream into the mouthless void of the destruction and desolation row of the Canadian Cultural agenda, one which has reduced the actors role to that of corporatist marionette in the pocket of petty bureaucrats and the letters are an act of intellectual and cultural and perhaps even spiritual, terrorism. They curdle the blood much in the same way that Antonin Artauds manifesto, The Theatre and Its Cruelty , predicted the holocaust and the Nazi and Fascist approach of a new and controlled barbarism, never seen before.

Nick Mancuso , actor , writer , poet

I confess that he convinced me he knew more about [Goldoni and commedia dellarte] than I did. In fact, hed already proved it, not by telling but by showing. The final section of his Letter [Two] was a kind of dream sequence in which a teacher of commedia went on trial. Nardi jumped between judge, defendant and other participants, bringing stock characters to dizzying life at a pace that now seemed the product of inspiration rather than panic. It was planned and written, but it had the manic flavour of improvisation. I think it was commedia; it was certainly virtuoso. If he wants to help our theatre and himself well, as that other commedia descendant Mr. Punch used to say thats the way to do it.

Robert Cushman , theatre critic , National Post

Le propos ... va bien au-del du thtre: le comdien dnonce avec l'nergie du dsespoir tout consensus paralysant qui masque une situation
que nul n'ose dnoncer, par paresse ou par crainte de reprsailles. Les insatisfactions et doutes fonds ne viennent pas nourrir les changes, mais plutt les messes basses, les petites condamnations prives, le silence gn. Le coup de gueule de Nardi, splendide verbomoteur la prsence scnique remarquable, peut rappeler les tentatives rcentes des dramaturges velyne de la Chenelire et Olivier Choinire de susciter un tel dbat dans l'espace public ... Nardi, arm de ses outils de comdien que sont sa voix et son corps ainsi que d'un acerbe sens de l'humour, provoque la rflexion et l'envie de partager les fruits de cette dernire; n'est-ce pas ce qu'on est en droit d'esprer du meilleur thtre?