Where do you think your children go at night?
Welcome to Vaughan, Ontario. Suburbia. All homes look exactly the same, unless you count Concord Floral. Abandoned in the middle of a field beyond the backyards of the suburbs, Concord Floral is a run-down one-million-square-foot greenhouse where the neighbourhood teenagers come in search of privacy, freedom, and companionship. They hide their secrets there, in a place that could be considered their makeshift home.
Did you hear?
When one of these secrets is unearthed, ten teenagers must come to terms with the power of the greenhouse’s past. Plagued with memories no one wants to remember, they bond and fight with each other over one unified realization: the story of Concord Floral must be told. Drawing many parallels with Giovanni Boccaccio’s medieval allegory, The Decameron, this play blends past and present, forgotten and remembered, and real and unreal to tell a contemporary rendition of a haunting urban myth.
Something’s coming. Can’t you feel it?
Jordan Tannahill
Born in 1988, Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian theatre practitioner whose work has been performed across Canada and worldwide. He is best known for having written and directed plays through Suburban Beast (2008-2016), a Toronto-based theatre company he founded, and for having run Videofag (2012-2016), an alternative art space in Kensington Market. Tannahill often works with non-traditional performers in non-traditional performance spaces; Suburban Beast staged work in a variety of unconventional locations, from art galleries to Honest Ed’s discount emporium, while Videofag quickly became recognized as a place for queer and avante-guarde creation. Concord Floral was originally performed by teenagers mostly the same ages as characters in the play, some of whom became involved through a youth program at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. Tannahill is also involved in Canada’s dance industry, having choreographed for and performed at the Toronto Dance Theatre on multiple occasions.
Tannahill has received numerous prizes for his plays. Specifically, he is the recipient of the Outstanding New Play Award at the Dora Awards and the Carol Bolt Award, both for Concord Floral in 2015, among others. In addition to playwriting, he is the author of Theatre of the Unimpressed: In Search of Vital Drama (2015), a book that addresses how to overcome the common flaws in contemporary theatre. He is currently collaborating with filmmaker Stephen Dunn to make a film adaption of Botticelli in the Fire (written by Tannahill in 2016). Tannahill’s first novel, Liminal, a story about a young man plunged into a world of chaos after experiencing a moment were he cannot tell if his mother is alive or dead, is scheduled to be published by House of Anansi Press in 2018. While he was born in Ottawa, Canada, he currently resides in London, England.
More information can be found at Jordan Tannahill’s website.
References
Jordan Tannahill. http://www.jordantannahill.com, 2017. Accessed 16 September 2017.
Liminal. House of Anansi Press, 2017, https://houseofanansi.com/products/liminal. Accessed 05 October 2017.