I WAS UNBECOMING THEN

Next Stage Festival/ Toronto Fringe at Buddies in Bad Times

Supported by the Toronto Arts Council

by Lyndsey Bourne | music by Sam Kaseta | music direction Alexa Belgrave

cast Astrid Atherly, Olivia Daniels, Tkaia Green, Lara Hamburg, Anikka Hanson, Shannon Murtagh, Heeyun Park 박희윤, Riel Reddick-Stevens, Grace Rockett, Lizzie Song, 陳佳琦 Jenn Tan, Miranda Wiseman | swings Thea Mae Hesler, Ellyse Wolter

photos Taylor Long

In a high school music room in North Vancouver, twelve teenage girls assemble to practice and perfect their parts, desperate to please Bruce, the choir director.

Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award - Best Director of a Musical

Under Khanin’s subtle, precise direction, the actors barely moved positions on a contained stage area, rather signalling changes in scene, relationship, and perception through small shifts of their bodies and voices. It was some of the most remarkable ensemble work TTCA voters have seen in recent years, a testament to Khanin’s vision and sure hand in uniting a tight production, design, and acting team. - Karen Fricker

In a particularly strong year for directors, two were commended for their extraordinary workIlana Khanin, whose work on Lyndsey Bourne and Sam Kaseta’s I Was Unbecoming Then beat out an impressive roster of competitors at more established theatre companies. - Globe and Mail

The two TTCAs for direction were awarded to a pair of directors whose artistic visions helped to elevate the material they were staging…Ilana Khanin for the new musical “I Was Unbecoming Then,” by Lyndsey Bourne and Sam Kaseta. - Toronto Star

Dora Award nomination - Outstanding New Musical/ Opera

Globe and Mail, “Best Theatre of 2024 from Toronto, Stratford and Shaw”

I Was Unbecoming Then emerged as a standout piece of programming that heavily featured newcomers to the city’s theatre scene, all of whom knocked this project out of the park. Each song was perfectly in tune, and director Ilana Khanin exquisitely tapped into the show’s portraiture of mid-2000s girlhood (complete with velour tracksuits and rolled-down Uggs). I so hope for a remount in 2025.

Intermission Magazine, “Our favourite theatre productions of 2024, in Toronto and beyond”

It’s a depiction of that late adolescent moment, but really without cliches about that time… The staging was very stark… so smart using what they had… The performers would speak to each other or directly to the audience and would often move in sync. And this notion of them being on display brought a lot to the fore about that time of life, feeling like everyone’s looking at you — that’s what you want, but that’s also what you fear. 

I felt there was a real trust in the material, as well as a committed directorial approach.

Toronto Star, “That sound you’re hearing on Toronto stages? It’s women talking — we need to hear more of it”

The one that most fully shook up… conventions was “I Was Unbecoming Then,” an ensemble musical about girls becoming women in the Next Stage Theatre Festival. At the start of Ilana Khanin’s precise production, they strike poses on a big white carpet illuminated by standing lights (design by Echo Zhou) and gaze out to the audience. Immediately, the painful paradox of adolescence: You’re all looking at me. Stop looking at me. Please look at me…The significance and power of “Unbecoming” accumulates in the different layers of communication and how acutely the characters are keyed into each other, mirroring and competing and loving and hating…The all too short Next Stage run of “I Was Unbecoming Then” has ended, but I expect it will not be the end of the road for this groundbreaking piece.

Broadway World

Director Ilana Khanin corrals the large cast so that they rarely miss a beat, crucial in a show more about individual moments and timing than storyline.

Intermission

I Was Unbecoming Then, a new musical playing in the Chamber space at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, combines a familiar world of teen angst with the more unfamiliar land of a capella choral arrangements…The cast traverses between the spoken and the sung in tight choreographies of conformity arranged by director Ilana Khanin. From the get-go, the set and staging make it easy to visualise oneself as part of the choir… As Unbecoming continued, it became evident that the design is meant to behave as a frame for the complex stage pictures that soon take shape. As the choir comes alive, they begin to shift in mechanical directions, strictly following each other’s impulses. When moving as a unit, the effect is a stark reflection on the pressure to adhere to the status quo that is uniquely strong within a group of girls.

Istvan Reviews

Offbeat anecdotes, quirky confessions and bizarre sexual fantasies grant us insights into these girls’ interior lives with intimate, resonant details. Ilana Khanin’s direction offers plenty of striking tableau, maintaining a palpable tension between our experience of them as individuals and as a complex unit.

A View from the Box

With a cast of 12 talented vocalists, directed by Ilana Khanin, I Was Unbecoming Then is a stunning play with music about the girls of a high school choir and their journeys in self discovery, love, death, and just trying to ace that trig test.

She Does the City, “I Was Unbecoming Then at Next Stage Explores Girlhood in the Early 2000s”

SesayArts

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