{"id":23054,"date":"2019-02-21T13:13:41","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:13:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=23054"},"modified":"2019-02-21T13:13:41","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T18:13:41","slug":"love-and-deception-hit-the-stage-in-theatre-auroras-kiss-of-the-spider-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/love-and-deception-hit-the-stage-in-theatre-auroras-kiss-of-the-spider-woman\/","title":{"rendered":"Love and deception hit the stage in Theatre Aurora\u2019s Kiss of the Spider Woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

Kiss of the Spider Woman is nearly 35 years in the making for Neill Kernohan.
\nMr. Kernohan first saw Manuel Puig\u2019s landmark play about two prisoners in a Buenos Aires prison when the film adaptation first graced the silver screen in the mid 1980s and its plot has stuck with him ever since.
\nNow, the Theatre Aurora veteran is back in the director\u2019s chair bringing Kiss of the Spider Woman to life, preparing for opening night next Thursday, February 28.
\nKiss of the Spider Woman follows two prisoners, Molina and Valentin, sharing a cell in Argentina. Molina is described as an \u201ceffeminate gay window-dresser in jail for corruption of a minor\u201d while Valentin is a political prisoner, part of a revolutionary group trying to overthrow the government.
\nThe two men, seemingly opposites in every way, form an intimate bond in their cell and their relationship changes both of them in profound ways.
\n\u201cWhen it first came out, I felt it was an interesting take on gay life in the 1960s, in some ways,\u201d says Mr. Kernohan. \u201cOne of the two main characters identifies in the play as gay, but, to me, it was kind of interesting for the time. Looking at the play now, [you wonder] if he was really gay or if he was a trans woman. As we begin to discuss that and how attitudes have changed, that\u2019s how we approached it.\u201d
\nMr. Kernohan is also approaching the story with his own rich theatrical experiences.
\nHis first interest in theatre was sparked at a young age. Having appeared in many shows, the watershed moment came during a production of The Wizard of Oz where he played the Cowardly Lion. He heard laughter from the audience and that, he says, is when he \u201cblossomed\u201d on stage.
\n\u201cI think I have always had theatre in my life,\u201d he says. \u201cI went to Wilfrid Laurier University for a music degree and during that time we did operas, and I also got involved in the drama group. I don\u2019t remember a time when I wasn\u2019t doing some kind of theatre, but I had a hiatus of about 25 years after university while I worked as a church musician, which fulfilled a lot of what I wanted to do in the arts. But, when that ended four or five years ago, I took a year or two off and thought, \u2018I don\u2019t have to worry about music now,\u2019 but then I just had to get back into it.\u201d
\nHe made his return to the stage as a music director at Theatre Aurora and, with a number of musicals under his belt, including Theatre Aurora\u2019s recent productions of If\/Then and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, this is the first time in several years that he\u2019s had the opportunity to direct a play.
\nThe play version of Kiss of the Spider Woman was first performed in 1983 following the publication of Puig\u2019s novel of the same name in 1976.
\nA lot has changed for the LGBTQ community over the last four decades, and while some of the conversation has changed as it pertains to a number of the issues addressed in the novel, play, and also the 1990s musical, Mr. Kernohan says there isn\u2019t anything in the play that rings untrue today.
\n\u201cI think a modern LGBTQ person would have a lot to argue about with Melina,\u201d he says. \u201cWe\u2019re using \u2018him\u2019 right now, but we\u2019re not really sure what pronoun Melina would use today. Some of the things Melina says in the show I think would set a young queer person\u2019s teeth on edge and make them really interested in having a conversation. For the time, I think it was extremely forward-thinking in some ways.
\n\u201cIn the end, it is a love story. It\u2019s about love and deception. There\u2019s a lot of deception happening in the show, but there is definitely a journey that the two characters go on. Each character learns something by being in the presence of the other character. For me, it\u2019s a play about love, it\u2019s a play about deception and it is a little bit of a mystery too.
\n\u201cI want people to be entertained by the show. There are some deep issues being brought forward about how we deceive people, why we would deceive people, and how we deceive them to get our own way. I want the audience to be entertained first and, secondly, to be able to think about what love and deception mean.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kiss of the Spider Woman opens at Theatre Aurora\u2019s Henderson Drive theatre on Thursday, February 28 at 8 p.m., with additional performances on select dates and times through Saturday, March 9. For tickets and further information, contact Theatre Aurora at 905-727-3669 or visit www.theatreaurora.com.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kiss of the Spider Woman is nearly 35 years in the making for Neill Kernohan.
\nMr. Kernohan first saw Manuel Puig\u2019s landmark play about two prisoners in a Buenos Aires prison when the film adaptation first graced the silver screen in the mid 1980s and its plot has stuck with him ever since.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5ZQ","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 16:36:27","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23054\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}