Based on Jamie Nesbitt’s real family history, Salamandra tells the story of Jamie inheriting a 150 bedroom castle in Zakopane, Poland. Through his 90-year-old grandfather (the play’s narrator), Jamie learns how his movie star aunt and his minister of war uncle lost Salamandra Castle to the Nazi’s 70 years earlier. Swept up by the past glory of his now-fallen aristocratic family, Jamie begins re-creating Salamandra on stage — part play and part movie. But all is not as it seems. As Jamie dives deeper into the past, a darker side of pre-war Poland begins to appear, shedding new light on his family’s actions. Faced with the difficult task of how to tell the past truthfully, Jamie finds fiction and non-fiction beginning to blur. Salamandra begins to take hold of Jamie, throwing him into a quickly unraveling world where ego, blood, and time collide.
Salamandra has been developed with the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Toronto Arts Council and Soulpepper Theatre. It received a work-in-progress staged reading at the 2014 rEvolver Festival in Vancouver. Watch for full production in 2023.
Created by Noah Drew, Emer O’Toole, Martin Andrews & Catalina Medina
Co-produced with Working Group Theatre (USA) & La Barracuda Carmela (Colombia)
SHOW INFO: www.theriotballet.com
Written & composed by Noah Drew
Direction & dramaturgy by Jamie Nesbitt
Arrangements & musical direction by Yawen Wang