Tour Dates for 2012:

Winner of the Carol Tambor "Best of Edinburgh" at the world's largest theatre festival in 2006, Volcano's production Goodness is a multi-layered exploration of genocide laced with choral music from around the world. The coveted prize for this award was a New York run at Performance Space 122 from March 1 – 11, 2007 (the New York Times raved). The piece subsequently played at the Magnetic North festival in Vancouver, where it was invited to the Festival Arts Azimut in Rwanda in October 2009 as part of a national commemoration on the 15th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide.

UPDATE: Read Gord Rand's essay on touring Goodness to Edinburgh.

UPDATE: Volcano opened its books to the Globe and Mail to show what it takes for performing arts groups to tour abroad.  Click here to learn more.

Volcano's invitation to take Goodness to Rwanda in 2009 is threatened by the recent cuts to the PromArt program.  Click HERE for the Globe and Mail article.

Click here to donate to Volcano online through CanadaHelps.org.

Goodness 2009 Media Sponsor 

Original Production – Tarragon, Oct/Nov 2005 cast:
Victor Ertmanis, Lil Francks, Tara Hughes, JD Nicholsen, Jordan Pettle, Bernadeta Wrobel

Edinburgh, August 2006 & New York, March 2007 cast:
Victor Ertmanis, Lili Francks, Tara Hughes, JD Nicholsen, Gord Rand, Amy Rutherford

A Volcano/Tarragon co-production at the Tarragon Theatre, October 2005.

Winner: Carol Tambor / Best of Edinburgh Award 2006.
Winner: Fringe First Award, Edinburgh 2006.

June 10 - 14, 2008 at Performance Works, Granville Island, Vancouver.
Presented by the Magnetic North Festival.

In Goodness, Jewish Playwright Michael Redhill provides the audience with a less-than-reliable version of himself as narrator. He then takes us on a brief, uncomfortable visit to Poland to explore the loss of his family in the Holocaust and then on to England, where, disillusioned and bitter, he stumbles across the story of a much more recent genocide.

He meets Althea - an ex-prison guard, now living in hiding. She tells him a story of the man she once guarded - a man thought to have orchestrated a killing-spree in her country - a man whose memory has disappeared. At the narrative core of the piece is the old man who may or may not have instigated the actions that wiped out Althea's family. At his murder trial, he appears to have Alzheimer's. With no memory, is he still guilty? Or is he faking the disease to escape punishment? Who decides how the story is told? Who is telling the truth? From Pinochet to Saddam Hussein, from Yugoslavia to Sudan, Goodness resonates deeply with the world of the present moment.

In a series of time-shifting tales-within-tales, with actors stepping in and out of roles, Redhill explores what it means to tell, or even know, the truth, and who is able to tell the truth to another. The play suggests a moral continuum that begins with writing, and ends with watching. What is the responsibility of a play? What is the responsibility of its audience? And, as the play itself asks: "Why do good people rush to do evil?"