City of Wine: The biggest thing ever

City of Wine tells the epic story of the city of Thebes and its citizens through a cycle of seven plays by playwright Ned Dickens. Produced by the award-winning dramaturgical theatre company nightswimming, the cycle will be performed twice over May 5th to 9th, 2009 at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto, Canada.

What did it take to make it happen?

• 1 playwright
  
• 15 years
  
• 9 Workshops
  
• 12 dramaturgs
  
• 14 directors
  
• 25 designers
  
• 110 theatre artists
  
• 172 professional actors
  
• 9 schools
  
• 42 school sessions
  
• 233 student performers
  
• 248 individual supporters
  
• 4 Canadian cities
  
• 5 days in May
  
• 12 hours of theatre

McGill University professor of theatre studies Dennis Salter recently declared to Macleans Magazine, "Nothing on this scale has ever been tried in Canadian theatre."

Leading up to this event, student performer/bloggers from across Canada will be sharing their production and experience with the Praxis blog with one submission from an artist involved in each of the seven shows.

City of Wine bloggers were each given the same broad criteria: Write one paragraph about and include one image of your production. The statement, “Why I am too busy to blog about City of Wine” was suggested as a starting point for these soon-to-be graduated performers, but was not strictly prescriptive.

Stay tuned for the first responses this week!