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June 9, 2021

new roots festival | mary mother of god

Excerpts available for New Roots Festival passholders (it’s free!)

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From PT favourites Shauna Johannesen (Common Grace) and Laura Koch (The Kwerks) comes a new Christmas musical in development: Mary, Mother of God. Featuring Shauna and Laura’s trademark wit and warmth, Mary, Mother Of God is a modern revisiting of the Christmas story, from Mary’s perspective. Hear an excerpt from the show – tunes included! – as part of the New Roots Festival.

Shauna Johannesen is an award-winning writer, actor, and filmmaker. Her plays have been produced across Western Canada, including Common Grace, at Pacific Theatre and M is for Music, commissioned by the VSO. Shauna also wrote and starred in Bedbugs: A Musical Love Story about a rag-tag group of bed bug puppets who are…let’s say, misunderstood. She then wrote and directed the short film Trying, a romantic comedy about What to Expect when you’re Not Expecting. Most recently Shauna co-directed a Leo-nominated music video for The Kwerks with Jason Goode. Shauna also works as a dramaturg and an actor. She can be seen in the latest seasons of the Babysitters Club on Netflix and When Calls the Heart on Hallmark.

Laura Koch is an award-winning musician and performer who seeps honesty through every pore as she teases and toys with melodies like she was born doing it, and she almost was. Creating sounds and melodies from her youngest years, in the secret of her family home’s basement where the old piano stood, hidden deep in her creative closet; it wasn’t until her adult years that she blasted the floodgates open and began the rush of soul-shattering songs that comprise her repertoire today. She folds and unfolds notes and words like origami, intricate and delicate and structured and wild, pouring out tones that rival the sweetest misty mornings and the richest wailing cries, only to be stopped short with a rhythmic consonant chopping at the empty spaces, causing your body to vibrate and your shoulders to shimmy. Laura has an approach to music that is all at once new and old, fresh and ancient. Her stage presence is warm and authentic, drawing listeners into a friendship they weren’t expecting, her stories and lyrics eliciting nods and knowing smiles. Drawing from her beloved folk roots, leaning lazily into soul, tipping a hat to pop, your ears won’t be disappointed.

Artist’s Notes

Mary is an icon. Literally and figuratively. And yet, we know almost nothing about Mary herself. The centerpoint of the Christian Story is that God became human and dwelt among us and yet we seem to go to a lot of lengths to keep Mary, his mother, from being too human – to keep her saintly, and sanitized, and other-worldly.

Virgin birth…How would that have played with your parents? Silent night… She literally gave birth in a barn, so probably not.  Mary took these things and pondered them in her heart….OK, and then what? What was the WHOLE REST OF MARY’S LIFE like? And in the centuries since, how has Mary’s story been used, who has used it, and what is the power of a person’s story anyway?

We were interested in exploring what it might be like to think of Mary as a real flesh and blood person – with thoughts and dreams and feelings and a body. Someone with her own Story. But we also wanted to look at these ideas from a modern lens. At Christmas. With music.

And most importantly, we wanted to write something fun that we would pay money to see. (This is not a bad test to run your ideas through we found…)

So, our ideas will continue to evolve (as every story does!), but here is a sneak peak at what we might find if we turned the lens in The Greatest Story Ever Told towards Mary: Mother of God.

– Shauna Johannesen and Laura Koch

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