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We Quit Theatre describes their latest project in a myriad ways: a contemporary dance docu-drama; “a love letter to our enemies”; a trans-feminist fantasia.
“It is a good description,” says performer Arne MacPherson, “because it sort of acknowledges that the piece is firing on a lot of different cylinders in terms of its form and content.”
The Winnipeg theatre disruptors have called this project Glory!, and audiences who see it at Théâtre Cercle Molière over the next couple of weeks will be treated to a healthy dose of 70’s culture and one celebrated children’s album from the age that serves as the jumping-off point.
Originally released in 1972, Free to Be... You and Me was conceived as a record that could instill values of acceptance and love. It became a vastly popular record played for children for decades to come, including by MacPherson and his child, director Gislina Patterson.
“It was a big hit in our home,” Patterson said in an interview on Morning Light. “I listened to it all the time as a kid.”
Listen to MacPherson and Patterson in full conversation with Nolan Kehler here:
In revisiting the album, Patterson and MacPherson discovered that while its message holds up well compared with other media from the time, the ways in which their idealism is reflected in 2025 feel somewhat warped, particularly for those marginalized in society like the trans community. They then compared the kid-friendly idealism of Free to Be... You and Me to another idealism of the 70’s - the liberated idealism of Hugh Hefner’s burgeoning Playboy empire – and explored how these two completely opposite views shared common language.
“There’s this quote that we come back to a lot in our process and in the performance which is something Hugh Hefner said describing the Playboy Mansion,” says Patterson. “He says that he built the Playboy Mansion to be a dream house, and he describes a space where you’re free to live and love in the way you want.”
To consider the Playboy Mansion as the ideal fails to think about those who do not see the space as an ideal place to enjoy oneself in complete pleasure. We Quit Theatre reflected on this reality and if there truly can be a universal ideal.
“I think to look at... these ideas that still feel very attractive... like, that’s something that I want,” he continues. “I want to be free to be the person I am and do the things that I want and love the way that I want to love. And to see the way that these ideas can shift so extremely and that they can be used to restrict freedom for people, I think, is really valuable to look at when we think about the world we want to build now.”
“It’s an investigation of how things have changed and how what’s happening now is kind of like a bit of a funhouse mirror,” adds MacPherson.
We Quit Theatre’s production of Glory! runs from September 4 through 7 and September 11 through 14 at Théâtre Cercle Molière on Provencher Boulevard. More information and tickets are available through the company’s website.