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Ruth Bonneville \/ Free Press<\/p>\n
Berkley Silverman (left) and Colleen Furlan star in the story of Annie Londonderry\u2019s 1894 trip around the world on her bicycle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re still asking the same questions: who gets to be seen, who gets to be heard, who gets to be believed and how one needs to reinvent themselves, or hide, to be able to survive,\u201d says Stevens. \u201cWho has to change their persona in order to thrive?\u201d As the rider asks, \u201cHow far do I have to go in order to move forward?\u201d<\/p>\n
Starring as Londonderry (n\u00e9e Kopchovsky) is Berkley Silverman, a Toronto-raised performer who will star in the titular role later this summer in the Charlottetown Festival\u2019s vaunted staging of Anne of Green Gables.<\/p>\n
As a Jewish performer, Silverman could relate to the pressures faced by Annie, who took on her ultra-anglo pseudonym as a condition of sponsorship from a New Hampshire spring-water firm of the same name.<\/p>\n
In the intersecting worlds of Judaism and performing arts, Londonderry\u2019s transformation isn\u2019t unique: before winning a Tony as Judy Holliday, the star of Bells Are Ringing was born in Queens as Judith Tuvim; all Judy did was translate the Hebrew to English and singularize the plural of her inherited surname. Lauren Bacall? Don\u2019t you mean Betty Perske?<\/p>\n
Raised a century after Londonderry\u2019s legendary trip, Silverman\u2019s taking the role allowed her to further appreciate the emancipatory power offered by the 19th-century proliferation of the bicycle \u2014 a means of transportation that suffragist Susan B. Anthony said granted its users access to \u201cfree, untrammelled womanhood.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI love to do a spin class and I like to ride my bike in the summer a lot. Especially when I was a kid: that was my time to explore. I had that freedom,\u201d says Silverman, who\u2019s voiced the husky pup Everest on Paw Patrol for over a decade. \u201cI have a sister who\u2019s six years older than me, so when I was a kid, she was a teenager, and she\u2019d watch me ride my bike to the nearest convenience store to get a popsicle.\u201d<\/p>\n
Starring alongside Silverman is Colleen Furlan, who plays Martha, a secretary at publisher Joseph Pulitzer\u2019s New York World, where Annie would for a time write stories under the pen name Nelly Bly Jr.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnnie enlists Martha in telling her story,\u201d says Furlan, who will appear as Elle Woods\u2019 trusty salon pal Paulette in this summer\u2019s production of Legally Blonde at Rainbow Stage.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Ruth Bonneville \/ Free Press<\/p>\n Silverman portrays Annie Londonderry, the first woman to cycle around the world.<\/p>\n \u201cMartha doesn\u2019t have all the details, so you get to watch Martha on this arc of not really being willing to participate, before tapping into that wonder and imagination.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we see the arc of Martha, it\u2019s kind of the arc of all women who would have been impacted by what Annie accomplished and what she wrote about,\u201d Stevens says.<\/p>\n Making its Canadian debut at the Berney Theatre on Saturday, Ride \u2014 written by Freya Catrin Smith and Jack Williams \u2014 had its world premi\u00e8re at London\u2019s Vault Festival in 2020, where it won the People\u2019s Choice Award.<\/p>\n The production is the final show in Winnipeg Jewish Theatre\u2019s proper 2025-2026 season before the company\u2019s co-production in September of Fiddler on the Roof at Rainbow Stage, the first such collaboration between the two performing arts organizations.<\/p>\n winnipegfreepress.com\/benwaldman<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ben Waldman Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University\u2019s (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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