BirdLand Theatre Presents

On the Royal Road: The Burgher King by Elfriede Jelinek
Translated by Gitta Honegger

Toronto, Ontario…BirdLand Theatre is proud to present a bold new staged reading of Nobel Prize winner Elfriede Jelinek’s groundbreaking play On the Royal Road: The Burgher King at Innis College Town Hall, 2 Sussex Avenue, Toronto, on November 9 at 3.30pm.
This staged reading was originally presented two times in New York City at Martin E. Segall Centre at CUNY as part of PEN Festival.
Directed by Stefan Dzeparoski, starring New York City based performer Masha Dakic Gitta Honegger, Ms. Jelinek’s translator, described the play as being told by a blind female seer who “suggests Miss Piggy channelling a confused Tiresias as she tries to get a handle on the bizarre behaviour of the leader-elect (Donald Trump) to draw from it some sort of oracle for the future.”
“This seer (Miss Piggy) with bleeding eyes sends Donald Trump through a shattered looking glass where Jelinek examines him through the distorted mirrors of the heroes of Western culture: from Oedipus to Abraham, Isaac and Jesus, to Martin Heidegger, who attempted to lead the Führer,” Ms. Honegger wrote.
Following the tremendous success of its recent production in New York City The Birds by Conor McPherson, BirdLand Theatre is again embracing the minimalist and raw journey in this latest reading On The Royal Road: The Burgher King.
“I am looking for the boundary separating imagination and reality, alienation and normality, which surrounds the characters of Miss Piggy and Donald Trump” says director Stefan Dzeparoski. “By bringing the fictitious character of Miss Piggy, through the broken lenses of Trump’s post-truth world Jelinek injects into the present a notion that we must go beyond desperation and become the rebels of our own lives. Miss Piggy questions the meaning of what we are ready to believe in our lives.”
On the Royal Road: The Burgher King is produced by Zorana Kydd in association with Serbian Film Festival now in it’s 20th year and Nenad Stankovic. BirdLand Theatre (Artistic Director: Zorana Kydd) has won numerous Dora Mavor Moore Awards and been highly praised for its past productions including Gruesome Playground Injuries (directed by Stefan Dzeparoski), Assassins (directed by Adam Brazier) and The Last Days of Judas Iscariot (directed by David Ferry) and Off Broadway in New York City Wide Awake Hearts and The Birds (directed by Stefan Dzeparoski).