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About Krank:

A Tale of Time Travel ...

It is November 11th, 2009. Ainsley Giddings steps aboard the ferry to Ward's Island. A forties-something psychotherapist on a self-imposed writing retreat, she has sublet a cottage for a year in which to think and write and clear her mind of Dan, her former lover.

Berlin playwright Bertolt Brecht, astonished at being restored to life, is on that same ferry boat. Having died in 1956, his heyday was in Berlin in the 1930s, an anti-fascist playwright whose provocative musicals like The Threepenny Opera and The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny, made him a 'person of significance' to the emerging Nazi party. Suddenly, he has been brought back — given a second chance at life.

The stranger and Ainsley strike up a conversation and she discovers that not only is he unsure of that day's date, but of the year as well. Fascinating and unsettling.

Their acquaintance develops into a bizarre and eccentric love affair. But mixed in with the affair are island airport politics and eventually a civic uprising in downtown Toronto — in effect, the G-20 — which provokes a brutal repression by the police. This reminds Brecht of the 1930s resistance against Fascism in Berlin, especially when he is caught in the sweep by cops and thrown into a temporary jail with hundreds of others.

Ainsley's exertions at translating modern life to Brecht while trying to remain resolutely apolitical lead to their escape to Berlin where time takes another weird half-twist around these two mismatched lovers.

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Join my KRANK Newsletter

Dear Friends,

At your suggestions, I'm launching the KRANK newsletter, posting issues of interest to fiction lovers and civil libertarians. I'll also post regular updates on my readings and performances of KRANK.
Simply email me at jumpstarting@gmail.com As thanks for signing up to my newsletter, I will email you a free chapter of KRANK.

Today is your last opportunity to catch LAB CAB, the glorious FREE festival of short presentations of music, dance, theatre, comedy, kids' stuff etc. happening all across the Parkdale neighbourhood.

As part of LAB CAB, I'll be doing a 20-minute performance (with actor David Bolt) of KRANK's Dialogued Encounters between Toronto Gestalt therapist Ainsley Giddings and Commie playwright Bertolt Brecht who died in the 1950s.
Brecht has mysteriously been reincarnated on a Toronto Island ferry boat, just in time for the G20 riots.
Masaryk-Cowan Community Recreation Centre (Activity Room #1)

See you this afternoon @ 4:15!