The Trial of Ken Gass, Bobby Del Rio’s new play, opens Tuesday at Sterling Studio Theatre with TV’s Peter Keleghan in the title roleDeborah Baic/The Globe and Mail
Factory Theatre recently began renovations to its heritage building in downtown Toronto, but the theatre company still hasn't managed to pave over the outrage that followed the firing of artistic director Ken Gass in a dispute over those construction plans last summer.
The Trial of Ken Gass, Bobby Del Rio's new play inspired the controversy, opens Tuesday at Sterling Studio Theatre with TV's Peter Keleghan in the title role. In it, a fictionalized Gass finds himself in Kafkaesque territory – repeatedly put on trial, but never knowing for what crime.
The playwright describes it as a metaphor for the unfettered power that institutions and their boards wield over artists. Keleghan, well versed in befuddlement having played a low-IQ news anchor on CBC's The Newsroom, is the first in a series of guest actors who will star in the two-person play over its two-week run. Others include comic Pat Thornton and Julian DeZotti.
Del Rio says each performance will only be lightly rehearsed, so each actor will be "a bit discombobulated," just like Gass. Though, he also admits, he couldn't find a single actor able to do the whole run – a last-minute addition to Sterling Studio Theatre's programming.
J. Kelly Nestruck