Director

Dion: A Rock Opera is a fully sung rock opera based on Euripedes' The Bacchae. Book by Prince Edward Island's poet/novelist Steven Mayoff, music by The Coal Mine's co-founder, Ted Dykstra. Four years in the making, The Coal Mine has developed the show from scratch, with two full cast two-week workshops over that time. 

Pentheus, the conservative right wing leader of a city-state "somewhere in time" on this earth, arrives home from a trip to learn that all the disenfranchised people in his kingdom have taken to the hills, following a non-binary and self-proclaimed Demi-God named Dion. The runaways from society, rumour has it, are drinking a strange brew, and are often seen running through the hills naked in states of ecstasy. The runaways include almost all of society’s women, including his own mother Agave and his uncle Cadmus.

Pentheus has heard of this Dion. They are his cousin. They claim Zeus as a father, and Pentheus' aunt Semele as a mother. Pentheus has made it clear the story is a lie. Semele made it up to excuse her wontoness. Dion is just a human, says Pentheus. Dion wants revenge for this slandering of his mother. That is why they are back. That is why they allow themselves to be captured and brought to Pentheus in chains. 

What ensues is this leader being seduced into dressing up as a woman and going to the hills to see for himself, where he meets his end...

EPSG:4326

Dion: A Rock Opera

Coal Mine Theatre

Appropriate is a full-length drama by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. In this searing comic drama, the estranged members of the Lafayette family return to their crumbling Arkansas plantation home to settle the accounts of their recently deceased patriarch. As they sort through a hoarded lifetime of mementos and junk, they discover a gruesome relic that sends them spiraling into a dark history of repressed memories and family secrets. A breakout play from one of the theatre's most exciting and provocative young writers.

Appropriate

In Annie Baker’s THE ANTIPODES, a group of people sit around a table telling, cataloging, and theorizing stories. Their purpose is never clear: are they brainstorming ideas for a TV show? A film? A mythology? This is a world where ghostly fables co-exist with mundane discussions of snacks and sexual exploits, where the vague instruction to tell stories about “something monstrous” though “it might not be a literal monster” becomes maddeningly impossible. Part satire, part sacred rite, THE ANTIPODES asks what value stories have for a world in crisis.

Ted Dykstra

Director

Events

Past events

4 - 25 Feb, 2024

Dion: A Rock Opera · Coal Mine Theatre

Sep 24 - Oct 15, 2023

Appropriate · Coal Mine Theatre

About

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