The company first presented an original production of Rougher Trade, a hit and runner up for Best of Venue, at the 2004 Ottawa Fringe festival. The production, an in your face drama about the boundaries between fantasy and reality, shocked crowds...
ROUGHER TRADE
" Literature can entertain, in fact must entertain, but only the dim or brainwashed artist is content merely to entertain, to play the clown…I want desperately to get close to the spectator, to each and everyone I have trapped in the darkness or half light, to penetrate very close and intimate, like a knife in the rib. I want to make that spectator happy but uncomfortable. I want to tear him open, guts and all, spice him, cook him in the filthy, stinking broil of our history. I want him washed inside out like the naked truth, and then sew him back again a different man. I believe if we wound ourselves with reality… that we can attain a new positive awareness. "