Corporate Finch -- a play that will keep you on the edge of your seat

"Taylor [Marie Graham] has written the story we need right now. It's a story that needs to be told." -- Actress Lucy Sanci

Three beautiful gold finches have been coming to my garden for years. They arrive each morning, then again every evening to eat the seeds my native plants produce. They also visit throughout the day sitting on the tallest stalks to rest before taking flight in what looks like a spirited game of tag.

I miss them when these happy little visitors don’t come around. But it’s not until the start of fall when I haven’t seen them for several days that it dawns on me these small balls of gold are en route to warmer climes and I won’t see them again until spring.

Goldfinch is a member of the finch family that includes 240 species worldwide. Seventeen species of these highly social birds call North America home.

Finches may be compact, but they are said to symbolize a large range of emotions — everything from joy and happiness to danger and fragility. They also have profound spiritual significance including wisdom, freedom, death, resurrection and new beginnings.

Playwright Taylor Marie Graham has expertly woven all of these finchisms throughout her one-act play, Corporate Finch.

Set in the historic Mennonite village of St. Jacobs, Ontario, Graham reveals what can happen when old order traditions of peacemaking, service to community and living a Christ-centred life intersect with the secular society that engulfs them.

I attended the September 29^th production performed in the outdoor amphitheatre at historic Joseph Schneider Haus in Kitchener.

Sitting under a harvest moon in the cool autumn air surrounded by very large old trees created a dramatic backdrop. That natural setting helped convince the audience they really were watching two local teenagers break into an old abandoned factory at midnight.

What unfolds after that? Well, you’ll have find a production to see for yourself – but, suffice it to say, this psychological thriller keeps the audience invested, guessing and constantly caught off guard.

Finch, played by Lucy Sanci, and Jake, played by Matt Ivanoff, slowly reveal the complexity of their relationship and how a prank gone wrong has brought them to the edge of this dark abyss where theology, morality, teenage love and blueberry eating finches collide.

Just like my goldfinches, Corporate Finch is on hiatus after a busy summer with performances at Toronto Fringe, Sault St. Marie Fringe, and Here For Now Theatre in Stratford before culminating in two sold out performances during the International Multicultural Platform for Alternative Contemporary Theatre (IMPACT) festival in Kitchener on September 29th and 30th.

But fear not, Graham will be arranging future performances.

“What I really enjoy about Corporate Finch is that it redefines what psychological thriller means,” Sanci told Small Change during a post-production interview.

“When you read the tag line: ‘Two teenagers break into an abandoned factory, will both make it out alive,’ you think it’s going to be like any other thriller. However, as you move through the story you realize it’s about so much more, something much more real and scary than what people initially think is going on – that’s one of the ways the play makes its biggest impact,” Sanci added.

Sanci felt the caste was incredibly lucky to be able to perform on the grounds of Schneider Haus. The outdoor setting meant the audience was surrounded by the natural world with all its inherent sounds and dim lighting — aside from the harvest moon — which helped transport the them to another world very much like a cold, dark, abandoned factory.

“As an actor you use what’s around you, and having the wind, the moon, real bird sounds around us only gave us more to play with and work from,” Sanci said via email.

“I am so honoured that playwright/director Taylor Marie Graham trusted me with this piece. When she asked me to take on the role of Finch, I knew I had to say yes! She writes such amazingly complex, heartful, and vulnerable characters that really make you question what it means to be human in this world and how we all fit together,” Sanci shared.

Graham is an award-winning playwright, librettist, director, theatre researcher, and educator living and working in Cambridge, Ontario, on Treaty 3, Haldimand Tract.

Her plays and operas run the gamut from child friendly to arrestingly funny to disturbingly dark and dangerous.

Corporate Finch was one of three winners of Flush Ink Production’s 22-hour horror playwriting contest. It is also the second Graham production that Sanci has performed in – the first being Frog Song a children’s opera that premiered at Here For Now Theatre this past summer.

"Diving into Finch, and her story as a whole, is one of the highlights of my career thus far, and I cannot wait to see how many more lives will be touched by Finch," wrote Sanci.

She added, “Taylor has written the story we need right now. It's a story that needs to be told."

Billed as intimate one-act horror at its best, Corporate Finch contains mature language and subject matter along with abrupt cues, violence and discussion of violence.

Learn more about Lucy at lucysanci.com or @lucy_sanci