MONSTER
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WRITTEN BY: Daniel McIvor DIRECTED BY: Julia Schultz PERFORMED BY: Taylor Olson PRODUCED BY: That's Us! |
Monster, a one-man play, begins in the total darkness of a movie theatre. After a long silence, someone in the audience rudely shushes his neighbour, and the show begins. Daniel MacIvor transforms himself into a series of characters whose lives seem eerily related. There’s the young boy who tells the story of the neighbour lad who hacked up his father in the basement. There are alcoholic Al and shiny Janine, the lovers who quarrel, make up, and decide to marry after seeing a movie about a lad who ... well, same thing. There’s the ex-drunk who dreamed up the movie, but got no credit because he was said to have stolen the idea from a famous unfinished film, a claim that so angered him that he went back on the sauce. And there’s the movie maker who made that incomplete epic.
REVIEWS
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THE TEAM
Taylor Olson is an actor, writer and filmmaker. A multiple ACTRA, and Screen NS nominee, Taylor most recently won the David Renton Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor at FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival for his role in the feature film Hopeless Romantic. On stage Taylor trained at Dalhousie University’s Classical Acting Programme, and has acted in productions such as Daniel MacIvor’s Monster (Best Drama, Best Solo Show, EFT’s Upstage Award and Best Lead Actor at the Halifax Fringe Festival 2019; Robert Merritt Nominee Outstanding Lead Performance, 2020); Craig in Joyride (Matchstick Theatre); Catherine Banks’ Bone Cage as Jamie (Matchstick Theatre); Heavy, his personal solo show, For The Taking (Festival Antigonish); Red Fish with HTYP, co-written with Rachel Hastings; Two in the Coop & David for Queen (HTYP); and Neptune Theatre’s, Controlled Damage. As a director and writer his films have screened internationally and won prizes at festivals such as CBC's Short Film Face Off, and FIN: Atlantic International Film Festival. Taylor's feature film directorial debut Bone Cage, adapted from the play by Catherine Banks, recently finished post production and awaits its premiere status.
Julia Schultz is a come-from-away who found a home in Halifax. She graduated from Dalhousie in 2018 with a double major in Theatre and English. Recent credits: Co Producing and directing Steady Theatre Collective’s Macbeth, February 2019. Co-producing, devising and performing in the New Pants Project’s How the Light Lies (On You), August 2019. Directing Monster for Halifax Fringe, September 2019. As a theatre maker she prioritizes the dignity of the individual, a sense of play, and authenticity.