New Stages Theatre is kicking off its 2024-25 season with a production of Rosamund Small’s award-winning medical drama Vitals for two performances only on September 27 and 28 at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre in downtown Peterborough.
The one-woman play tells the story of a paramedic named Anna, whose daily routine of responding to traumatic emergency calls pushes her to the breaking point.
Vitals was first produced in 2014 by Toronto’s Outside the March as an immersive experience, staged for small audience groups inside of a transformed residential house in Roncesvalles and performed using a live-broadcast audio headset system, with Katherine Cullen in the role of Anna.
In 2016, the play was adapted into a feature film, also starring Cullen, which was presented in a single 90-minute-long point-of-view shot. Cullen will reprise her role as Anna for the New Stages production.
Written by Toronto playwright Rosamund Small when she was 23 years old, Vitals was inspired by her conversations with a real-life Toronto paramedic who spoke in a no-holds-barred way about her daily work life.
“I asked her what it was like to spend every day in somebody else’s emergency, and became really obsessed with that concept,” Small said in a 2014 video interview with Outside the March. “The excitement of that, and the humanity of that, really struck me. Your job is life and death.”
The play, which has been praised by paramedics and other first responders for offering civilian audiences a real glimpse into the life of an emergency medical services worker and the post-traumatic stress disorder that can result, won Dora Mavor Moore awards for Outstanding Production and Outstanding New Play as well as the Nora Epstein National Literary Award and the JP Bickell Award for Drama.
Vitals weaves together different affecting, poignant, and disturbing emergency stories and explores their impact on the first responder to these calls.
“None of the stories are 100 per cent fact, but the major features of every story are true ones that I’ve been told,” Small said in a 2014 interview with The Toronto Star. “I didn’t reproduce them verbatim for two reasons. First, I didn’t want to get into any lawsuits and, second, the real-life versions were often too far-fetched to put on a stage. Believe me, truth is stranger than fiction.”
Along with Katherine Cullen in the starring role, the New Stages production features video projections from local filmmaker Shahed Khaito, sound design by Paul Tedeschini, costume by Jen Naus, and lighting by Patricia Thorne.
“We are thrilled to bring a moving artistic work of this timeliness and quality to our Peterborough audiences,” says New Stages artistic director Mark Wallace in a media release that describes the play as “unforgettable, heart-wrenching, catch-your-breath kind of theatre — the kind of show that stays with you for days after the play is over.”
Vitals will be performed at 7 p.m. on Friday, September 27th and again on Saturday, September 28th at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre. Tickets are $32 ($16 for EMS workers, students, arts workers, and the under-employed) and are available in person at the Market Hall box office (140 Charlotte St, Peterborough), by phone at 705-775-1503, or online at tickets.markethall.org.
As Vitals contains intense scenes, themes of suicide, and coarse language, the production is not suitable for children.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be media sponsor of New Stages Theatre Company’s 2024-25 season.
