Pacific Theatre

Pacific Theatre blog now part of Soul Food

2008-01-02T22:05:00.001-08:00

To avoid confusion and the need to post Pacific Theatre notes in two different places, I'm going to try consolidating the Pacific Theatre blog with the Soul Food Vancouver blog. So for all the latest on PT, as well of lots of other arts events around Vancouver, click here.

Kyle Jesperson in the other WONDERFUL LIFE

2007-11-28T09:36:00.000-08:00

Hello all,

Short and sweet: If you'd like to have your heart warmed, come and see "It's a Wonderful Life" at the Arts Club, Granville Island stage, Nov.29-Dec.29.

This show is truly a marvelously inventive adaptation of the classic film.

All info is at www.artsclub.com

Book soon; tickets are selling fast (even though I am in it)!

With seasonal love,
Kyle Jespersen

MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN

2007-11-27T13:42:00.000-08:00

Michael Kopsa, Adam Bergquist and Corina Akeson are in...

A MOON FOR THE MISBEGOTTEN by Eugene O’Neill
November 16 – December 9
Preview: November 15 ($6.00) Opening: November 16
Talkback: November 22

Eugene O’Neill, America’s greatest modern playwright, tells a beautiful comic story of two lost souls and a chance encounter under the full moon. A story of love, forgiveness and hope Moon for the Misbegotten is considered O’Neill’s most honest, immediate, and lyrical play. Director: Jack Paterson

http://www.jerichoartscentre.com/
http://www.unitedplayers.com/

REMNANT in St Louis

2007-11-21T12:00:00.000-08:00

Noël Depression
Remnant, Mustard Seed Theatre's inaugural production, hits the mark.
Review by Paul Friswold, River Front Times, November 21, 2007

All Christmas stories have a villain who is to be redeemed by the spirit of the season; it's a requirement of the Lollipop Guild. Very rarely do you find a Christmas story where the extremely pro-Christmas hero is the character most in need of redemption. Rarer still is the Christmas play where a hulking nomad called Loner, a twenty-inch hooked blade jutting wickedly from his coat sleeve, arrives on Christmas Eve to help bring about the hero's redemption or to murder him. You know, either or.

But Ron Reed's Remnant is clearly of another world from the moment you step through the theater door. For Mustard Seed Theatre's inaugural production, set designer Dunsi Dai and sound designer Kareem Deanes have crafted a full-sensory simulacrum of a post-apocalyptic world, with the detritus of the twentieth century strewn about the stage, seats, theater walls and suspended from the ceiling; time-warped Christmas music warbles from somewhere, adding another layer to the chaos.

This is the home of Barlow Sho'r (Jerry Vogel), a tinker who studies and fixes the crap of another age, attempting to revive an America he never knew. It's Christmas Eve, and Barlow has drawn together his family: his wife, Delmar Nu1 (Kelley Ryan), sister Annagail Booker (Michelle Hand) and friend Kristn Taler (Peggy Billo). The group will perform the Christmas rituals, which, in Barlow's mind, will begin the resurrection of society. And as we see when Loner (Robert A. Mitchell) arrives, Barlow will eagerly kill to ensure Christmas serves its holy purpose.

Director Deanna Jent has assembled a fantastic cast to go with this gorgeous set. Reed's script is written with a broken, awkward syntax to reflect the nature of his world, but the cast delivers the lines with a fluidity and passion that never obscures meaning. Vogel imbues Barlow with a tempestuous power, part nervous energy but mostly zealous belief. His initial showdown with Mitchell is jaw-achingly tense; Mitchell stands fairly rippling with sullen violence, and Vogel faces him with jutting chin and legs locked straight. Moments of silence crackle by, the two locked in a struggle fought internally. As the storyteller Kristn, Billo paints a tale of death and misery when she recounts the history of this world; it's a mastery of understatement, her voice becoming quieter but more forceful as the litany goes on. Michelle Hand breathes a luminous mystery into the ghost-seeing Annagail; she moves with a spidery delicacy, a woman passing between two worlds. Ryan brings an appropriate frontier-wife mentality to Delmar, indebted to her husband but also quietly resentful of his domineering ways.

As with all Christmas stories, the issue of "what is Christmas?" drives the play. Barlow's belief in his own vision reveals a venal fear; secrecy and exclusion are the keys to his power. Only he can bring about the change, only he can understand the mysteries. But rather than argue the point, the foolishness of this creed is revealed in a scene between Annagail and Loner: With palpable fear of what her brother will do, and unsure of the rightness of her own actions, Annagail gifts Loner with a Bible. At the moment both hands touch the book, Annagail's face is radiant, lit from within — and Mitchell's face reveals a joy that is terrifying to behold. Whether Christmas is your holiday or just a seasonal nuisance, you can't help but be moved by the performance. Chalk it up to the spirit of the age.

Details:
RemnantThrough December 2 at the Fontbonne University Fine Arts Center Theatre, 6800 Wydown Boulevard, Clayton. Tickets are $20 ($15 for students and seniors). Call 314-719-8060 or visit www.mustardseedtheatre.com.
Subject(s): Mustard Seed Theatre, Remnant, Ron Reed

Help out a needy theatre this Christmas!

2007-11-14T11:53:00.000-08:00

A number of years back we launched a special Christmas Matching Fund, where donors' gifts between Nov 1 and Jan 15 are doubled from a special fund put together by a foundation and a few other PT supporters. Part of that tradition has been a Christmas postcard. We'll post this year's as soon as it reaches us from the designer, but in the meantime, here are a few from previous years...

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

As a non-profit society, Pacific Theatre depends on the generosity of individuals like you. Each year we look to our Christmas card donation campaign to raise over 30% of our total donor revenue for the year. Your gift, if sent by January 15, 2007 will be matched dollar for dollar, to double the amount of your donation. Tax receipts will be issued on all donations.

You can make a donation with your credit card by calling our office (604 731-5483) or online, or by mailing a cheque to us at...
Pacific Theatre
1440 West 12th Avenue
Vancouver, BC, Canada
V6H 1M8
Or you can drop off copious amounts of cash in person at that same address. Unmarked bills, please.

But all financial fun and finagling aside... Merry Christmas from all of us at Pacific Theatre!

Nov 15: PARADISE GARDEN reading, Lucia Frangione

2007-11-13T09:21:00.000-08:00

In addition to LEAVE OF ABSENCE, which Lucia has been developing for Pacific Theatre, she's working on a commissioned piece for the Arts Club. If you want a sneak peek...

I have a reading of my new play Paradise Garden at the React new play reading series at the Arts Club. It's 8pm this Thurs. Nov 15 at the Granville Island stage.

Lucia

Article: Taproot Theatre, Seattle

2007-11-07T08:19:00.000-08:00

Nice piece on Seattle's Taproot Theatre in the current Comment Magazine. Taproot is something of a sister theatre to Pacific, and provided an inspiration and model as Pacific Theatre was being formulated and launched. Kevin Brady, one of PT's apprentices (you saw him in HOSPITALITY SUITE and THE CLEARING), moved to Seattle as soon as he finished his time with us and has acted in many of their mainstage shows.

Bringing beauty and hope to the social discussion
November 02, 2007
by Rick Barry and Luann Jennings

For American theatres, longevity is success. Success doesn't show up in financial statements all theatres live on the edge. Just sticking around, being allowed to continue doing what you're doing, is the mark of a successful theatre. By this standard, Taproot Theatre Company of Seattle, Washington, is a wild success.

"Taproot" started as a touring company dedicated to "creating theatre that explores the beauty and questions of life while providing hope to our search for meaning." After thirty-one years, during which dozens of other theatres in Seattle have opened and closed, Taproot performs for more than 100,000 people every year: for 34,000 on their permanent, main stage, and double that with over 250 touring performances.

The idea for Taproot surfaced during spring break in 1976. A half dozen friends, all in their senior year of college at Seattle Pacific University, realized that they should start thinking about what to do once they graduated. Seattle had a deep love for the arts and a deep aversion to religion, so the friends decided to start a theatre company that would produce work that discussed issues from a redemptive, Christian point of view. They were too young and too brash to realize what they were in for.

Read the rest of the article here

New York: REFUGE OF LIES, 2008!

2007-10-31T12:08:00.000-07:00

Nov 14: tentatively, Lion Theatre on Theatre Row from July 31st to August 24th 2008

How exciting! I just got word from Steven Day of Day By Day Productions in New York that they've secured funding to produce my play REFUGE OF LIES in Manhattan in August/September 2008! Can you imagine? I made my first trip to NYC this April - now I've got a reason to head back there again.

The first draft of the play was written as part of the 24 Hour Play Festival at The New Play Centre in Vancouver in 1992 or 1993 or so, under the title "Flesh & Blood." Theatre & Company commissioned me to further develop the play, which premiered in Kitchener in 1994, directed by Stuart Scadron-Wattles and starring Ted Follows. There was also a reading of the play at the Art Within Symposium and Showcase in Atlanta, a couple years back. My friend J.P. Allen has worked hard on behalf of the play, sponsoring a reading in San Francisco (at which he met his wife, Janis!), and publishing the script through Ventana Press. He promoted the work to various theatres, and we had encouraging near misses at the Mark Taper Forum and the Magic Theatre, but apart from a community production at a large church in the midwestern United States, this will be the play's American premiere - its professional premiere, to be sure. And my New York debut!

One possible venue is the Cherry Lane Theatre in Greenwich Village: "As New York's oldest, continuously running Off-Broadway theatre, the Cherry Lane has helped to define American drama, fostering theater that is fresh, daring, and relevant, for over 80 years." Sheesh.

(Quick update a few hours later: it's looking like Theatre Row may be the most likely venue. Where right now Peter Dinklage (THE STATION AGENT) is starring in a show directed by Ethan Hawke. They do it different in New York...)

(And another quick update, in the "How Weird Is This" department: just got this note from Janis DeLucia Allen, "Tomorrow is the anniversary of the day that we read the play here in SF. It's the day JP and I met." Happy anniversary! And I'm the one that gets the gift...)

*

That's all for now, but I'll toss in some notes I jotted down in response to some questions a while back...

Q: We were looking through the play and curious on how you came up with the name.

A: Originally titled "Flesh And Blood," because of the communion element in the story, and because of the one Jewish school of thought that says you can only be forgiven by the person who's been wronged, "or by their flesh and blood."

But a local playwright and theatre critic had a play out at that time also called Flesh And Blood, so I asked him, and he preferred I change the title. So I had about three days to find a new title, started looking through the bible for cool-sounding pertinent quotes, loved the tie-in with both lying and the "hiding place" Rudi was building, and the idea of our sins being "hid in Christ."

Q: Structure?

A: Got the idea of the Jewish man's appearances from the incident of stopping at the stoplight / seeing the guy at the bus stop, which happened to me while I was prepping to write the play but which I attributed to Rudi. (I was in an altered state after viewing an amazing production of A LIE OF THE MIND at the Vancouver Playhouse - the bus stop event occurred at the south end of Granville Street, just before driving onto the Granville Bridge). So I played the story through, alternating between escalating scenes with him and scenes without him, and soon realized that his presence was correlated to the increasing threat to Rudi in "the real world" from the court case. The more extreme "dream occurrances" weren't really pre-planned, but came out during the writing of the first draft during a 24-hour playwriting competition: I think I was practically in a dream state myself while writing them, no exaggeration. I would fall asleep sitting up at the computer, wake up to find three pages of "j" or something.

Within the past few months I watched THE LAST WAVE, which I had seen 20 or 25 years ago and which made a huge impact on me at the time, though I could remember few details. I was astonished to see the escalating appearances of the aboriginal man outside the house, at the door, inside the house, etc., and to re-encounter the idea of "dream time" - I had completely forgotten about both aspects of the film, but clearly see the connection with my play.

I wove in the Paraguay flashback scenes and some present-time Simon scenes subsequently, to fill out the story.

Q: What about the character and cultural background that create the language style?

A: When I moved to Vancouver in 1978 to be a youth pastor, I was in a community church founded by a bunch of people who had left the Mennonite church, so I kind of picked up their culture by osmosis. (Fact is, I've ended up attending a Mennonite Church, but that's certainly after the fact of writing the play.) I'd also known some Dutch people here and there, so there's kind of a blending of the two cultures, as there would be in Rudi's marriage.

Nov 1: Seana Lee Wood at Oasis

2007-10-26T09:22:00.000-07:00

What's Dolly doing on top of that piano? Get back to the tent right now, woman! The quartet needs you!

By the way, we've commissioned Seana Lee's husband, Jim Hodgkinson, to compose a nine-voice choral score for LEAVE OF ABSENCE, the play we're developing with Lucia Frangione for our upcoming 25th Anniversary Season. More on that later...

Bellingham: JAKE'S GIFT, Oct 18-27

2007-10-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

Julia Mackey's lovely show about Jake Spleen, the character she created for MERCY WILD, is running two weekends in Bellingham. It was a huge hit at the Victoria Fringe, and Jules will be taking Jake to Montreal's Centaur Theatre in January. There's no news about that yet at Julia's website (beautifully designed by Dirk Van Stralen), but there is news of other performances, including a Remembrance Day performance in Vancouver.

Here's a note from Ms Mackey...

*

Hi Ron,

Here is the info about the Bellingham shows on the iDiOM Theatre website.

The show is a double bill starting at 8 PM on Oct 18/19/20 and 25/26/27 - tickets are $10 and the box office # is 360.201.5464

Giant Invisible Robot is first and then Jake's Gift

See you soon - hopefully on the 6th.

Jules

St Louis: REMNANT

2007-10-18T10:36:00.000-07:00

Look where I'll be, November 16...

It's the inaugural production of the brand new Mustard Seed Theatre in St. Louis, a professional company that grows out of the work of Deanna Jent's theatre department at Fontbonne University. The department hosted a CITA regional conference a number of years back at which they did a reading of REMNANT, and apparently interest in that very strange post-apocalyptic Christmas script has persisted. Can't wait to see it!

Goode / Frangione / Kopsa Project Snags Kick Start Bucks

2007-10-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

Spot the Pacific Theatre faces? That's the cast and crew for Annunciation Pictures' short film THE HITCHHIKER, directed by Jason Goode. (The sharp-eyed PT person will pick out Steve Waldschmidt, Gillian Rowe, Jason Goode and Gina Chiarelli in the crowd). That film has shown in tons of festivals, garnered oodles of awards, and the good news doesn't stop there.

Jason has been working with Lucia Frangione to develop a short film called POP SWITCH, starring Lucia and her husband Michael Kopsa. Yesterday the Director's Guild of Canada announced that the project has been awarded a $20,000 Kick Start grant.

POP SWITCH
Frank is in his late 40s and feels too old to become a father for the first time. His wife Estelle forces the issue when, on her 40th birthday, she secretly puts them back on the adoption wait list.
Annunciation Pictures

PS Lucia Frangione is presently at work writing LEAVE OF ABSENCE for Pacific Theatre, and you'll see Michael Kopsa in our spring production of THE WOODSMAN. Over in Alberta, Steve Waldschmidt is Ernie Douglas (a role he seems to have been born to play) in Rosebud Theatre's production of TENT MEETING, closing October 20.

Oct 25 - Nov 10: Kyle Rideout in The Stone Face

2007-10-11T08:32:00.000-07:00

Kyle Rideout is a regular at PT - true blue fans will remember him from HALO, BEGGARS AT THE WELL OF IMMORTALITY and... Hmm, I think there's something else as well? Certainly we see him around the place plenty, he was Romeo at Bard this summer, you'll see him on most Vancouver stages sooner or later. Next up for Kyle, a show that you might as well consider an adjunct to Pacific Theatre's "movie season" (also featuring Terence Kelly, who we got to know on TWELVE ANGRY MEN), with Mr Rideout appearing as none other than Buster Keaton in...

The Stone Face
by Sherry MacDonald
A play about Buster Keaton, Samuel Beckett and a film called Film

Oct 25 - Nov 10

Starring Alex Diakun, Allan Zinyk, Terence Kelly, Anna Hagan and Kyle Rideout
Directed by Kevin McKendrick
Waterfront Theatre
1412 Cartwright Street, Granville Island

Presented by Damfino Theatre

Closing Oct 13: 4.48 Psychosis (with Alexa Devine)

2007-10-10T16:09:00.000-07:00

Remember Alexa Devine, who was nominated for a Jessie for her outstanding work in GRACE this spring? You may have heard her talk about her experience working with Pacific Theatre at our Living Dreams event in June. Well, she's mounted a production with her husband Sean that's getting rave reviews. Anything but a feel-good piece, but definitely worth making the effort to see...

“4.48 Psychosis is an hour-long rant from the darkest
corners of a deeply depressed mind…Haunting and
violently lyrical...A scorching text.”
PETER BIRNIE - THE VANCOUVER SUN

“Colleen Wheeler proves again that she’s the best
dramatic actress in Vancouver. No one does despair
better…Alexa Devine and Sean Devine successfully
convey terrible, abject pain.”
JERRY WASSERMAN - THE PROVINCE

“With great conviction, each performer gives a
gut-wrenching variation on suicidal behavior. Sean
Devine and Alexa Devine offer moments of stark horror.
Colleen Wheeler is consistently embedded in the depths
of misery.”
PETER BIRNIE - THE VANCOUVER SUN

"4.48 Psychosis claws its way right into the mind of
the clinically depressed...The intensity of this piece
is almost unbearable."
JO LEDINGHAM - THE COURIER

4.48 Psychosis
by Sarah Kane
directed by Mindy Parfitt
with Alexa Devine, Sean Devine and Colleen Wheeler

Until October 13 (8pm)
FIVE SHOWS LEFT
2-for-1 Matinee Saturday October 13 @ 2pm

"4.48 Psychosis" is the harrowing journey through one
woman's mind as she struggles with sanity and her will to live. The Daily Telegraph referred to the play as "an act of artistic heroism...a masterpiece of emotional and mental anxiety." Time Out Magazine said that "it's so dangerously beautiful that it all but leaves a bruise." Sarah Kane is one the originators of the UK's "in-yer-face" theatre movement, and is widely known today as one of the last generation's most innovative and controversial dramatists.

From the company that produced "You Are Here" and "The Darling Family"

Firehall Arts Centre / 280 East Cordova
Tickets $20/$16 / Box Office 604 689-0926

www.horseshoesandhandgrenades.ca

NYC: 100 Saints You Should Know

2007-09-19T08:57:00.000-07:00

Seeking Spiritual Bonds and Earthly Ones, Too
By BEN BRANTLEY
New York Times, September 19, 2007

Kate Fodor’s “100 Saints You Should Know,” which opened last night at Playwrights Horizons, is a decent play, with all that the adjective implies. This tale of everyday people in search of faith, directed by Ethan McSweeny and featuring the estimable Lois Smith, is thoughtful, well spoken, humbly aware of its limitations and respectful of its characters.

It is, in other words, the kind of play you could take home to mother. Just don’t expect it to provide you with a transporting night of passion.

“Saints,” developed at the Steppenwolf Theater Company in Chicago, is the inaugural production in a season that is, unusually for Playwrights Horizons, devoted to dramatists in the early chapters of their careers. (This is Ms. Fodor’s second play.)

For an opening salvo in the name of brave new theater, “Saints” is doggedly gentle and conventional. True, it tackles eminently fashionable and potentially sensational subjects: homosexuality in the priesthood, single mothers with wild pasts and self-medicating, angst-crippled teenagers.

But the story approaches these topical matters with a calm, open mind and a tidy, symmetrical structure that balances and parallels different points of view. It’s like the Platonic ideal of a Lifetime television movie.

Though the play builds to a central crisis that brings its five characters together and sends one into surgery, “Saints” is less a compellingly told story than it is a static arrangement of portraits. Each of the people in the play longs for spiritual connection, and none, it seems, are finding it close to home.

For “Saints” is especially about parents and children, literal and metaphoric. Matthew (Jeremy Shamos), a Roman Catholic priest who has discovered fleshly longings in himself, has taken a leave of absence from his church and is staying with his uncomprehending mother, Colleen (Ms. Smith).

Theresa (Janel Moloney), the cleaning woman at Matthew’s rectory, is at war with her surly but lively teenage daughter, Abby (Zoe Kazan). And while we never meet the parents of Garrett (Will Rogers), an awkward grocery delivery boy, they are vivid and reproachful presences in his conversation.

Ms. Fodor has a fine sense of the forms of emotional aggression, passive and otherwise, that can infuse even the most banal exchanges between parents and children at loggerheads, as well as a good ear for the kinks and curls of speech of people of different generations and education.

These gifts are most appealingly on display in the early scenes that set up these fractious relationships. A Scrabble game between Colleen and Matthew, newly returned to the home where he grew up, becomes a deft and touching exercise in thwarted communication. A standard stalemate debate between Abby and Theresa on the usual teenager-parent subjects (school, sex, bad influences) has a piquant ring of realness that keeps it from congealing into clichés.

An uncomfortable burden of unspoken thoughts infuses these exchanges, which gives the play what little urgency it has. Once subtext becomes text, and everybody starts pondering the nature of God and the itchy emptiness of their lives, the tension diffuses.

“I was looking for something enormous and expansive,” Theresa tells Matthew, “and somehow I ended up with a little scrap of a life.”

“Saints” honorably refuses to offer easy answers to its questing characters. Instead it provides the substitute of a quotation from St. Thérèse of Lisieux meant to define what they are all hungering for: “Prayer is a surge of the heart, a cry of recognition and love.” The phrase, repeated a full three times, obtrudes like a hastily pasted-on decal.

Ms. Fodor, whose first play, “Hannah and Martin,” was about the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, obviously shares her characters’ inquiring minds. But she is unable to generate much electricity from their modest philosophizing, even when a tragic accident occurs.

The uncertainty of the characters in “Saints” seems to have infected the production, which has an unresolved quality throughout. A symbolic silver tree has been planted uneasily in the center of Rachel Hauck’s otherwise naturalistic set. And Mr. McSweeny, who directed the revival of Gore Vidal’s “Best Man” on Broadway, keeps the proceedings at an unvarying simmer.

The acting styles sometimes feel mismatched, with some performers insistently underplaying (Ms. Moloney, Mr. Shamos), and others going for comic broad strokes (Mr. Rogers). But Ms. Kazan enjoyably nails the hostile neediness of an adolescent girl who hates her mother as much as she loves her. And Ms. Smith, who scored an indelible triumph two seasons ago in Horton Foote’s “Trip to Bountiful,” turns Colleen’s first scene into a mini master class in acting.

Ordering groceries over the phone, readjusting her waffled pink cardigan, pouring Scrabble tiles into a box: Ms. Smith invests each of these ordinary activities with the extraordinary charge of a woman desperately eager and reluctant to make contact with her son. Mr. Shamos almost matches her when Matthew combatively recites to Colleen from the writings of a 16th-century mystic.

That’s when Ms. Fodor’s play glows, as she obviously means it to, with the sense that the keenest evidence of the search for God is in the homiest details.

Check the New York Times article for audio interview with the playwright

*

100 SAINTS YOU SHOULD KNOW

By Kate Fodor; directed by Ethan McSweeny; sets by Rachel Hauck; costumes by Mimi O’Donnell; lighting by Jane Cox; sound by Matt Hubbs; production manager, Christopher Boll; production stage manager, Michaella K. McCoy. Presented by Playwrights Horizons, Tim Sanford, artistic director; Leslie Marcus, managing director; William Russo, general manager. At the Playwrights Horizons Mainstage Theater, 416 West 42nd Street, Clinton; (212) 279-4200. Through Sept. 30. Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes.

WITH: Zoe Kazan (Abby), Janel Moloney (Theresa), Will Rogers (Garrett), Jeremy Shamos (Matthew) and Lois Smith (Colleen).

Fringe: Adam Bergquist in CRACKWALKER

2007-09-04T10:49:00.000-07:00

Remember the rockin' rooster in CHICKENS? The romantic lead with leprosy in LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC? Well, lots more chance to see Adam Bergquist in the upcoming month, first in the Vancouver Fringe production of CRACKWALKER Sep 6-16, then in the staged reading of 12 ANGRY MEN at Pacific Theatre Sep 19-22. Adam emailed us this...

Thank you for opening this mass email. It's not often
I send these and a personal note would both be too
time consuming and emotionally manipulative. (I'd be
making you feel bad if you miss it)

But why would you? This is the "can't miss show" of
the Fringe! PLUS, it's only $12 to guarantee yourself
a seat. (plus the one time Fringe membership of $5)

If you've never seen or heard of THE CRACKWALKER by
award-winning Canadian playwright Judith Thompson,
this may be your last chance before it gets made into
a movie. And I probably won't be in the movie, so...
there's another good reason.

**please note** THE CRACKWALKER contains strong themes
and language, not for children's eyes or ears (and I'm
not just talking about the moustache)

I've attached a copy of the handbill, but also posted
details below in case you have trouble opening
attachments.

ALL performances are at PACIFIC THEATRE (1440 w 12th
Ave. @ Hemlock).
Showtimes are:
Thursday, September 6 - 10:15pm
Saturday, September 8 - 6:45pm
Monday, September 10 - 10:30pm
Saturday, September 15 - 5:00pm
Sunday, September 16 - 7:30pm

other details and tickets at www.vancouverfringe.com
or by calling 604-981-FRNG

Edmonton Fringe: GOD'S EYE

2007-08-24T14:20:00.000-07:00

Poet and possible-plays-for-PT lookout Diane Tucker points us to this one, a hit in the Edmonton Fringe...

God's Eye is a new play by Marty Chan. In this heartbreaking drama, a young boy questions his faith and becomes obsessed with God and paradox after his father suffers a stroke. The boy puts God on trial to prove His existence in the hopes that God will make his father better. The play explores the fragile bond between fathers and sons and cuts to the heart of an only-child's lonely and desperate need to provoke his father out of his depression. Through the story, the boy raises questions we all want answers to. Is there a God? If so, why do bad things happen to good people? Why doesn't God give us a sign? More importantly, the boy wants the answer to one important question: will his father ever get better?

The show runs about 65 minutes.

Tickets available online or via phone 409-1910. To book, go to the Fringe website. For information on all Fringe holdovers, please call 448-9000.

5 Stars - Edmonton Journal (Sound Off Review).

"...the thoughts and ideas conveyed through Norman's shattered childhood will have you questioning your life after seeing this play." - Edmonton Sun Review.

"From start to finish, God’s Eye is a joy to be a part of." - Vue Weekly review. Click here. (Rating - Sean Connery = 6 out of 6 stars)

Sean Connery is reviewing plays? I guess when the Bond gig ran out...

L.A.: Palace Of The End, by Judith Thompson

2007-07-27T11:47:00.000-07:00

PALACE OF THE END
by Judith Thompson
L.A. Weekly Pick Of The Week, Monday June 11 2007
Review by Steven Leigh Morris

With echoes of Brian Friel’s FAITH HEALER, Canadian playwright Judith Thompson paints a richly textured portrait of a world through interrelated soliloquys. But where the Irish Friel gives his “purpose of life” ruminations a romantic tilt, Thompson surveys the guts and bile of human oppression. Her landscape is Iraq and her trio of characters starts with U.S. Army PFC Lynndie England (Kate Mines), whose photo image giving a “thumbs up” to the sexual humiliation of Muslim inmates at Abu Ghraib prison made her an object of international contempt. Through her confession, we see her pregnant and with dog tags, checking her name on Google and reading the hate mail in the blogosphere. In attempting to understand her, Thompson has her explain how being a woman in the military requires cold-hearted machismo just to survive, let alone fit in. The prisoner whom she had led around on a dog chain had just called her a dog, she explains, and this was her answer. As for the thumbs-up pose, it was “one second” of fulfilling a request — one second of infamy captured for eternity. Mines’ cavalier, quick-witted interpretation of the gal from West Virginia includes her singing, with knowing irony, “I’m just a girl who can’t say no/I’m in a terrible fix.”

Next we meet Dr. David Kelly (Michael Katlin), the British weapons inspector almost crucified by Tony Blair for testifying that evidence for the invasion was “sexed up.” They didn’t need to kill him, he did it himself, and we catch him in the woods moments before his suicide. His agony was not for his testimony, but for his complicity in the invasion at the outset, which, unwittingly for him, brutally ended the lives of an Iraqi family he’d come to know and admire. The tragedy in Katlin’s portrayal is slightly mannered, and his dialect is off-center, yet the soliloquy remains engrossing.

Anna Khaja’s Iraqi ghost Nehrjas (killed during the first U.S. invasion) closes the play — a testimony to the horrors of life under Saddam Hussein, of seeing her children tortured for information leading to the arrest of their officially loathed father — an intellectual and communist. In those days, the CIA was funding Hussein’s efforts to eradicate his enemies — if you recall the 1983 video of Donald Rumsfeld shaking Hussein’s hand. Nehrjas’ story is as grueling as it gets, delivered by Khaja with mournful, merciful restraint and a wry, twisted smile that contains everything you need to know about pointless suffering, wisdom and the dignity of endurance. In her play finely directed by Sara Botsford and C.B. Brown, Thompson defiantly scrapes to the marrow of opposing camps, offering a lament that is theological and tragic and contains a rare, eerie beauty.

49th Parallel and Open at the Top at the Noho Arts Center, 111336 Magnolia Blvd., N. Hlwyd.; Fri.-Sat., 8 p.m.; Sun., 3 p.m.; thru July 8.

Katharine Venour in Touchstone's HOW IT WORKS

2007-07-10T19:30:00.000-07:00

Pacific Theatre fans will want to check out this Touchstone production, not only to see more of the work of PRODIGAL SON director Katrina Dunn, but also because Katharine Venour (AGNES OF GOD, SAINT JOAN, SISTER CALLING MY NAME, SHADOWLANDS, HUNGRY SEASON) will be in the cast.

How It Works
By Daniel MacIvor

Feb 28 - Mar 9 2008 Performance Works
Mar 12 - 15 2008 Shadbolt Centre for the Arts

Al is a cop whose teenage daughter is hitting the drugs hard. It's not an ideal time for dating, but after a messy divorce, he needs a new start. Christine arrives in his life with an antidote to all things ordinary, and some strange medicine for the girl with the angry heart. Playwright Daniel MacIvor is one of Canada's most distinctive and celebrated theatrical voices. His plays have been presented and acclaimed internationally, and have won a gamut of awards in Canada, the US and Europe. He won the Governor General's Award for Drama in 2006.

"heartfelt, funny...beautifully crafted drama." - The Chronicle Herald, Halifax

Directed by Katrina Dunn.
Starring Anna Cummer, Kerry Sandomirsky, Katharine Venour, Andrew Wheeler

London: "The Last Confession" by Roger Crane

2007-07-04T14:42:00.000-07:00

THE LAST CONFESSION
at London's Haymarket Theatre
Previews from: 28 June 2007
Opening night: 2 July 2007
Closing: 15 September 2007

When Pope John Paul I is found dead, just 33 days after his election, the circumstances appear suspicious when it is revealed that, on the night before his death, he warned three of his most influential but hostile cardinals that they would be replaced. When the Vatican refuses to investigate the death, only Cardinal Benelli steps forward to challenge the deceased's enemies.

David Suchet - star of Poirot and Maxwell on television, and Once In A Lifetime and Man And Boy on stage - leads the cast of the production which sold out its run at the Chichester Festival Theatre.

*

The First Night Feature: The Last Confession
London Theatre Guide

The events surrounding the untimely death of Pope John Paul I are explored in detail by playwright Roger Crane in this new drama about politics, in-fighting, financial wheeling and dealing, plotting, friendship, pride and loss of faith. After a successful run at the Chichester Festival Theatre and a national tour, the Vatican has come to the Theatre Royal Haymarket. Caroline Bishop entered its walls for the first night of The Last Confession.

When the 65-year-old Pope John Paul I died in 1978, he had been in office for only 33 days. The official line was a heart attack, but there was no autopsy, and a quick embalmment and funeral followed. Speculation was rife that the Pope, a liberal-minded man who wanted to implement wide-ranging change in the Catholic Church – starting with the sacking of high ranking conservative stalwarts – could have been murdered. Five years later, the rumours were fuelled by the death of Roberto Calvi, a banker associated with the Vatican, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge.

These are the facts around which Crane develops his complex and intriguing play, set before the Pope’s election, during his short reign and after his death. It is told from the perspective of Cardinal Benelli, enemy of the conservatives, shrewd politician and the man who engineered the election of his reluctant friend Cardinal Luciani as Pope John Paul I. We first meet a frail and bitter Benelli five years after the death of John Paul, as he makes his final confession to the cloaked Confessor. Together, they take us back to the events leading up to the Pope’s election and subsequent death.

All of the first half is dedicated to what happened before John Paul I died, and, like a classic murder mystery, it is the details from this build-up that suggest the possible perpetrators of the ‘murder’ in the second, and indeed the possible method of poisoning – the Pope had a penchant for sweets and coffee.

It is also a fascinating look into the workings of the Vatican – as Crane depicts them. The political allegiances and backstabbing, the formalities and customs that hang like a dead weight around the new Pope’s neck, the official line of the Vatican’s administrative body, the Curia, which curbs the Pope’s attempts at reform. Faith takes a back seat here.

This is also a very personal story, as Benelli relates the anguish he feels at his part in the death of his friend, who he pushed to be Pope against his will and then, out of pride, left to fight off the wolves in the Vatican’s walls by himself. The imposing David Suchet plays Benelli as a man who can’t reconcile his faith with the political machinations of the Vatican, even more so when his great friend and liberal hope is found dead. Richard O’Callaghan plays Cardinal Luciani as a gentle, humble, yet surprisingly strong man who never wanted to be Pope, but once in office begins the process of shaking its walls with a potentially explosive cocktail of reform. Above all, Crane’s play tells the personal tragedy of a man who wanted to do good, but died too soon.

*

Interview with David Suchet
London Theatre Guide

He has played some complex characters in his time and now David Suchet is tackling another – a Cardinal in Rome grappling with guilt and doubting his faith after the death of his friend, the Pope. The man best known for playing television detective Poirot tells Caroline Bishop why he is so fascinated by the real-life murder mystery he is starring in at the Haymarket, Roger Crane’s Vatican-set thriller The Last Confession.

With his deep, commanding voice, powerful presence and arguably the most expressive eyebrows in the profession, 61-year-old David Suchet has become one of the most respected character actors of his generation across theatre, screen and radio. Right now though, he is as excited as a fresh-faced RADA graduate about to make his debut on the West End stage. “I’m so excited! I’ve waited 38 years for the Theatre Royal Haymarket. I have never played it. All my peers have,” he tells me on the phone from Milton Keynes, where he is on tour. “I’ve always been eyeing with certain envy the most fantastic dressing room that I’m going to have.”

Suchet is excited not just about the Haymarket but about the project that has allowed him to step foot on its stage. Roger Crane’s The Last Confession is a new play that premiered in Chichester to rave reviews and toured the UK before coming to London. For all involved – including Suchet himself, who puts his money where his mouth is by investing in every West End show he appears in – bringing this play to the capital is something of a gamble because it is, he says, “almost unique”. Crane’s play is based on the factual events surrounding the sudden death of Pope John Paul I in 1978 after only one month in office. Part murder mystery, part portrait of the political machinations inside the Vatican, the play is not exactly a mainstream subject for a West End show. It is unusual in other ways too: it has a cast that is both large – with a complete ensemble of 22 – and predominantly male (bar one nun) and it is that rarest of things in a West End bursting with musicals – an independent, commercial, new play. What’s more, adds Suchet, “It doesn’t contain one swear word.”

Crikey. The biggest challenge then, is for this “theatregoers’ play” to find its audience, and, if Suchet could only ring up and chat to every potential audience member they would flock to the Haymarket in droves, such is his infectious enthusiasm for the play. “The response has been phenomenal, we’ve done wonderful business on tour, the audience has been fantastic and the letters that one is receiving are confirmation that this play is really touching hearts,” he says. “I think for a new play to do this, it’s very rare and I think it’s the best new play I’ve seen, or read, or indeed been in, in my career.”

Though based on fact, Crane’s play is a fictitious account of what may or may not have happened to Albino Luciani, a radical Cardinal who reluctantly became Pope John Paul I because of the political engineering of his friend and fellow liberal Cardinal Benelli, played by Suchet. When, after just 33 days in office, the Pope is found dead, a devastated and guilt-ridden Benelli attempts to confront his conservative enemies and find out what happened to his friend. “For those who will remember 1978 and the untimely death of John Paul I and the discovery of Roberto Calvi’s body under Blackfriars Bridge [in 1982], and the way the conspiracy theories really erupted around that time, they will be absolutely fascinated to see all this and hear names that they know and they will be gripped. For those who don’t know it, it’s a really tense, good murder mystery,” says Suchet.

The challenge for him has been to understand the complexities of the character of Benelli, who questions his faith both before and, moreso, after his friend dies. “I wanted to present the hard-nosed politician and the man who is genuinely suffering because it’s a wake-up call to his faith, and that was the challenge to me, to find that and experience it and have the courage to display it.” Suchet, a Christian in the Anglican Church, feels his own faith has helped him in this challenge: “Here is a Cardinal whose best and dearest friend was taken away – so he’s dealing with all that which is on a far deeper level than I’ve ever experienced. Of course, anybody who’s got a faith will get something very deep from this play, you don’t have to be Christian or anything like that, but certainly that journey is one that I have to go through every night and it does help having a faith because I know what doubt feels like.”

Suchet’s fascination with the play’s subject matter extended to a research trip to Rome. “After a couple of days there,” he says, “I went round St Peter’s Square and there was the Pope doing his public address and I thought where else in the world, what other city in the world would I witness this sight? In a secular world, really, in a cynical world, really, and there it is in Rome with thousands of people on their knees to this man wearing white, and I thought, my goodness me.”

The actor also seems fired up by the historic nature of the events that take place in the play. Since the death of the ‘smiling Pope’, as he was known, there have been two conservatives heading the Vatican. If John Paul I had lived? Suchet is in no doubt: “It would have changed the face of Catholicism throughout the world, until he died. It would have been revolutionary.”

Such powerful events, such complex characters; this is what Suchet loves. We last saw him on screen playing another man who died in mysterious circumstances, the media magnate and businessman Robert Maxwell, another meaty character for Suchet to tuck in to. Other roles have included the similarly corrupt Melmotte in The Way We Live Now on television, and on stage George in Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf?, Salieri in Amadeus and Antonescu in Terrence Rattigan’s Man And Boy, plus, further back, many great Shakespearean characters for the RSC. Then, of course, there is Poirot, the shuffling, well-rounded Belgian detective of Agatha Christie’s novels, whom Suchet has portrayed umpteen times on screen. “The joy of my career,” he says, “is that I’ve been given these complex minds to try and understand.”

“There is a huge difference, isn’t there, between celebrity actors – what we call stars – and character acting,” Suchet muses. “I’m a character actor, I’m not a celebrity in that sense, you don’t go to see me, you go to see the play I’m in and the character I’m playing. I certainly don’t look towards the other side of my business, the celebrity side, with any form of envy whatsoever. In fact, it fills me with horror and dread that my career should always be playing the same person, I wouldn’t like that at all.”

Thankfully, Suchet has never been confined to playing the same person, despite frequently returning to inhabit the little Belgian detective – a role he says, unequivocally, he loves. He puts this flexibility down to the fact that he was a theatre actor long before he got his big break in television, as Blott in Blott On The Landscape in 1985. Since then, he has happily been able to work in both. “That’s where both the business and the public have been so generous to me. They haven’t limited me,” he says.

It says everything about his skill as an actor, though, that people are able to forget Poirot when they see him in other things. As much as he loves the character, this is part of the reason that he would never bring Poirot to the stage. “I got a letter only two days ago from a member of the audience saying will I please, please, please, please, underlined, bring Poirot to the stage,” he says. “It’s not my intention, and I don’t want to bring him to the stage, because that would intrude on the wonderful variety that I have in the theatre and that would be bringing something that everybody knows. I would be doing it for very much the wrong reasons.”

Nevertheless, he is excited about going back to the role again on television – he has two new mysteries lined up to film after he finishes his run in The Last Confession. “To think that that’s the legacy I’ll leave behind actually fills me with a great deal of pride,” he says. “Because he’s a great character to play in a great literary setting and a wonderful writer and I believe it’s been good, clean, healthy television; it’s not reality TV, it’s not smutty. If I can leave the complete works behind me of that little character, that will be a first and it will please generations to come and that’s really what I’m here for.”

Though Suchet freely admits that Poirot is “going to be the leading line in my obituary”, there will be a lot more besides, and not just in theatre and television. “My dream,” he confides, “was to have at any one time on my table a radio script, a film script, a television script and a theatre script. If I had all four on the table to choose from I reckoned I had it made. I have to say I’ve only managed it once but it was a terrific treat to have that choice!”

He won’t profess to favouring one medium over another. In fact, given this conversation took place before the attempted car bomb on Haymarket which resulted in last Friday’s preview of The Last Confession being cancelled, his work ethic seems eerily prophetic. “I have a very strict rule in my life and I mean it – that whatever I’m doing now is the most important, because it may be my very last. If life teaches us anything at all, if this recent decade has taught us anything in our knowledge of terrorism, it is that we are lucky to be alive and tomorrow may never come. So whatever I’m doing now, first of all it’s my first love – it has to be, because it may be the last thing I do – and it has to get my total one hundred percent effort.”

Rather than being a negative outlook, Suchet feels it helps him enormously. “I find it’s very positive. Whenever I’m feeling negative, thinking ‘oh gosh I may be tired’, that turns that feeling into a huge positive because there may be somebody out there who has never been in the theatre before and I’m going to give them the very best I can.”

Suchet will be giving one hundred percent on a number of projects he has already lined up for after The Last Confession – as well as the two new Poirots, there is a film version of Man And Boy and a new television series in the pipeline, and he hopes to do more work for radio. “It’s fascinating and very rewarding,” he says of his varied career. “Every part I play I feel I’m going back to the beginning and thinking ‘oh God, can I do this?’ because it’s a challenge every time.” He wouldn’t want it any other way.

Thanks, Tim!

New Faith-Based Theatre Launches With REMNANT

2007-06-21T08:03:00.000-07:00

ST. LOUIS, Mo., May 31, 2007 -- Six St. Louis theatre artists have collaborated to form a new professional theatre company designed to explore our relationship with God and our ethical responsibility to the world. Mustard Seed Theatre, inspired by Artistic Director Deanna Jent and Resident Artists Gary Barker, Adam Flores, Kelley Ryan, Michael Sullivan and Leslie Wobbe, will operate under a Small Professional Theatre contract with Actor’s Equity Association. The company will work in residence at Fontbonne University, performing in the black box theatre.

"The mustard seed is a Biblical reference to the power of faith, but it's also an image of hope and growth," said Artistic Director Deanna Jent. "In the past year, I've had many conversations with people exploring difficult but important questions about God and how their faith fits in contemporary life. I realized that I had a number of scripts that address these questions -- scripts that would fit perfectly into a theatre company exploring issues of faith and social justice.”

Mustard Seed Theatre will debut Sept. 8 – 10, 2007 with a staged reading of THE AS IF BODY LOOP by Ken Weitzman. The philosophy of football coaches, an ancient Jewish myth and the aftermath of 9/11 combine in this quirky exploration of family ties and human inter-connectedness. This is the first offering in Mustard Seed’s "Dijon Discussion Series," which is designed to plant questions and cultivate dialogue in a post-show discussion format. The Mustard Seed Blog will be made available for continuing post-show discussion.

Set in the future, REMNANT by Ron Reed will be the company's first fully staged production. Running Nov. 15 – Dec. 2, 2007, Remnant focuses on a family struggling to celebrate a vaguely-remembered holiday known as “the Christ-mas” three generations after a plague has all but wiped out humanity. The unexpected arrival of a stranger launches an exploration of sacrifice and forgiveness.

The Dijon Discussion Series also presents a staged reading of Craig Wright’s THE UNSEEN on Feb. 23 – 25, 2008. In this allegorical play, two torture victims fantasize about their eventual escape but are horrified by what brings about their eventual salvation.

An exploration of power, justice, faith and mercy, William Shakespeare’s MEASURE FOR MEASURE veers from slapstick humor to heart-wrenching confrontations as Isabella must choose between her virtue and her brother’s life. This fully-staged production closes Mustard Seed’s debut season, April 10 – 27, 2008.

The Dijon Discussion Series’ staged readings are performed Saturdays and Mondays at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 2 p.m. Tickets are $10. Fully-staged performances are at 8 p.m. Thursday – Saturday and 2 p.m. Sundays at the Fontbonne University Black Box Theatre in the Fine Arts Building at 6800 Wydown Blvd. in Clayton. Admission is $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors. Thursday performances will be "Pay What You Can Or Pay With A Can" with proceeds donated to local food pantries. 10% percent of all ticket sales will be donated to local designated charities. For tickets or audition information, call Mustard Seed Theatre at 314.719.8060 or visit www.MustardSeedTheatre.com.

# # #

Media Contact: Kim Furlow, Dramatic License PR, 636.220.7019

And here's a link to a piece in St. Louis Today, who interviewed Ron about "faith-based theatre"

New York: HORIZON and AN IDIOT DIVINE by Rinde Eckert

2007-06-07T09:25:00.000-07:00

THE ETERNAL VAUDEVILLE OF THE SPIRITUAL MIND
by Ben Brantley
New York Times, June 6 2007

God is in the curriculum in the lively lecture hall that has been made of the New York Theater Workshop, where Rinde Eckert’s “Horizon” opened last night. But even the fiercest secularist should find pleasure in this engaging performance piece, which is set in the seminary-without-walls of one man’s mind.

The furnishings of that mind will look familiar to anyone with a glancing knowledge of Christian philosophy in the 20th century. “Horizon,” directed by David Schweizer, is Mr. Eckert’s homage in song, sketch and rumination to Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971), generally acknowledged as the most influential American theologian of his time.

Not that Reinhart Poole, the character portrayed by Mr. Eckert, is a biographical facsimile of Niebuhr, whose writings on the practical applications of Christianity to political conduct have been appropriated in recent years by both neoconservatives and liberals, including Barack Obama.

Mr. Eckert is less concerned with presenting the worldly details of his character’s life than with distilling the intellectual essence behind it. There are no equivalents in “Horizon” to the varying (and to some of his disciples, perplexingly varied) political stances adopted by Niebuhr during a career that lasted through and was shaped by the vicissitudes of World War II, the cold war and the Vietnam War — subjects on which Niebuhr had much to say.

Instead Mr. Eckert has deliberately placed his man of God in a sort of spiritual laboratory: a seminary, to be exact, where Poole has taught for 25 years and from which he is being forced to depart for ominous but unspecified reasons. “Horizon” is set on the day of his last class, which becomes in a sense his last day in an academic Eden, where theory is unchallenged and uncontaminated by practice.

This framework gives a grounding dramatic tension to a work that might otherwise float entirely in the clouds of cerebration. It is also an ideal structure to consider the worldview of a man who advocated what came to be called “Christian realism,” a theory that embraces the necessity of adaptation and the danger of absolutes in a universe of flux.

Mr. Eckert and Mr. Schweizer are faced with their own, appropriately Niebuhrian adaptive challenges, those of transforming the vapors of intellectual discourse into the flashy flesh of showbiz. How do you hold the attention of a nonacademic audience on subjects — ethics, God’s judgment, allegory, doubt — that Mr. Eckert regularly spells out in capital letters on a bank of blackboards?

Mr. Eckert’s felicitous discovery here is that Niebuhr’s philosophical approach translates naturally into theatrical terms. For Niebuhr, man always saw God through a glass darkly; you needed the interpretive tools of parable and allegory to begin to comprehend the ineffable, with the important caveat that the symbol must never be mistaken for the real thing.

Mr. Eckert’s rangy, magnetically restless Poole, assisted by two vivacious shape-shifting actors (David Barlow and Howard Swain), keeps these levels of intellectual awareness in play with the verve of a vaudevillian juggler. His instructional devices include a play-within-the-play, an eternally unfinished work by Poole about the construction of an eternally unfinished church; brisk story-theater enactments of parables and songs that vary in tone from hymnal to hillbilly, from barbershop harmonies to arias of anguish.

Occasional personal detours are integrated into the flow of ideas: remembered catechisms with Poole’s father (also a minister, as was Niebuhr’s) and mother; childhood arguments with the brother who later disappeared from his life (giving a visceral relevance to the tale of the prodigal son); admonitions from his long-suffering wife, who wants Poole to look up from his notes and see the sunset.

Some of the vignettes have the grating didactic preciousness of a “Sesame Street” for grown-ups. (Can you say “original sin,” boys and girls?) But Mr. Eckert, whose previous works have drawn inspiration from the knotty minds of W. B. Yeats and Herman Melville, is undeniably expert in anchoring elusive ideas to the point at which they become graspable. The forms he uses are often deliberately simple, precisely because the content is anything but.

The notion of allegory as a means of comprehension extends to Alexander V. Nichols’s set, a combination of construction site and classroom, with an assortment of cinderblocks, wooden planks and sheets of plastic, as well as the professorial blackboards.

The cinderblocks, those unpromising deadweights, become wondrously fluid elements of transformation, especially in a parable about the dangers of idol worship, which is what happens when symbol is mistaken for substance. This cautionary tale could be applied to the rigorously literal-minded of any faith and sets off unsettling echoes in this age of raging religious divisiveness.

In 2005 the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., who died earlier this year, wrote an essay in these pages suggesting that it was time to rediscover Niebuhr, a writer who warned against the dangers of nations that “try to play the role of God in history.” Without ever making specific political references, and keeping his character poised on the edge of active engagement, Mr. Eckert has invitingly and unobtrusively opened the door for such a reacquaintance.

At the same time, he finds vivifying parallels between the theological quest of one man and the theatrical quest to capture and illuminate life. In “Horizon,” the dynamics of art and religion are remarkably and nobly the same.

HORIZON

Created, written and composed by Rinde Eckert; directed by David Schweizer; sets and lighting by Alexander V. Nichols; sound by Gregory T. Kuhn; choreography by David Barlow; production stage managers, Chad Brown and Odessa (Niki) Spruill; assistant stage manager, Richard A. Hodge; executive producer, Susan Endrizzi. Presented by the New York Theater Workshop, James C. Nicola, artistic director; Lynn Moffat, managing director. At the New York Theater Workshop, 79 East Fourth Street, East Village; (212) 239-6200. Through July 1. Running time: 1 hour, 25 minutes.

WITH: David Barlow (Mason No. 1/Reinhart’s Wife/Reinhart’s Brother), Rinde Eckert (Reinhart Poole) and Howard Swain (Mason No. 2/Reinhart’s Mother/Reinhart’s Father).

*

EERIE SOUNDSCAPES FOR A PRISONER AND A VILLAGE IDIOT
by Anthony Tommasini
New York Times, Feb 20 2006

Rinde Eckert calls his career a "wonderful mistake." He started as a trained opera singer but found that discipline too confining for his free-roaming creativity. So he drifted into experimental theater in the San Francisco area. Over the years he has been an actor, librettist, director, avant-garde playwright and composer.

Among Mr. Eckert's admirers is the composer John Adams, who chose him to open the weekend festival called "In Your Ear Too" that he organized at Zankel Hall. On Friday night Mr. Eckert presented his two-part work "An Idiot Divine," an iconoclastic, category-smashing and often riveting piece of — well, I guess you'd have to call it performance art.

Part 1, "Dry Land Divine," loosely tells the tale of an evangelical minister in Wyoming in the 1950's who spends 14 years in prison for manslaughter. With his lanky frame clad in gray prison garb, Mr. Eckert became that prisoner, who passes time with an accordion and seems obsessed with water dousing. At first Mr. Eckert played soft, rippling repeated figures on the accordion over which he sang a textless, eerie chant. The music segued into a folkish waltz, which slowly disintegrated, sending Mr. Eckert's prisoner into an outburst of animalistic panting at once ferocious and hilarious.

At one point his plaintive chanting, through electronic processing, was turned into something quasi-medieval, with multiple voices singing in astringent parallel lines. Mr. Eckert's music here was mostly intended, it seemed, to create effects and tap primal feelings. Yet there were wonderfully strange sounds to enjoy, as when Mr. Eckert banged clanky rhythmic patterns with metal sticks on a bucket, alternated with gentle whooshes of stirred-up water.

In Part 2, the more abstract "Idiot Variations," Mr. Eckert plays the village idiot who imagines himself a mystic, dressed in the ragged white robes of an Indian sage with a string of Tibetan bells hanging from his neck. It would have been easy here to slip into the cliché of the mentally unhinged outcast who spouts spiritual wisdom. But despite the length of the piece (45 minutes), Mr. Eckert's wild imagination mostly kept you entertained, amazed and, quite often, moved.

One moment he would sing a weird amalgam of opera, be-bop, click-clacks and nonsense. In the next he would hold a wordless argument with himself by speaking through the mouthpiece of a baritone horn to produce two distinctive and all too recognizably human voices: one high-pitched and whiny, the other huffy and officious. Though there were clever verbal riffs in "The Idiot Variations," as when the character gave explanations of the specific function of each finger on the human hand, most of the work conveys the idiot's poignant attempts to communicate through only sounds and singing.

To appreciate Mr. Eckert's piece, you have to adjust to his surreal sensibility. An enthusiastic though not large audience did just that. Thank goodness Rinde Eckert abandoned an opera career.

REMNANTS: Cast interview, Langley Times

2007-05-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

Joseph’s story retold as Depression-era tale TWU, Pacific Theatre co-production explores anti-Semitism and xenophobia in Canadian context
by Brenda Anderson
Langley Times, May 11 2007

A classic Bible story has been transplanted 3,000 years and a continent away from its roots — but its message fits as well in the context of pre-Second World War Canada as it did in ancient Egypt.

Remnants (A Fable), retells the Old Testament story of Joseph, who was sold into slavery in Egypt by his brothers, only to rise — by virtue of his prophetic dreams — to a place of prominence in the Pharaoh’s palace.

Written by Canadian playwright Jason Sherman, the drama traces a young man’s journey from a Polish shtetl (town) to the work camps of Depression-era Canada.

But as the character Joseph rises to the position of advisor to Prime Minister Mackenzie King he is sent to turn back a boatload of European Jews seeking refuge from the growing threat of Hitler’s Germany, only to discover his own brothers among the refugees.

The production is a joint effort by Trinity Western University’s theatre department and Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre.

As an ‘Emerging Artist Showcase,’ the play features up-and-coming actors, including third-year theatre and religious studies student Shay McCleary, who will play the role of a man in the gender-blind production.

Although there are several women in the cast of 12, there are no female characters in the play.

“It’s so much fun playing a man. I find my suspenders quite snappy,” says McCleary with a laugh.

Raised to behave in a ladylike manner, McCleary is having a riot dressing up in men’s suits and sitting comfortably, knees apart, like a man.

Speaking over the phone during a break in rehearsal at the Vancouver theatre, McCleary explains she was lured to TWU, “through a weird series of events.”

In her home town of New York City, McCleary got to know a number of Vancouverites who were there teaching in the public school system.

And during a visit to her then-boyfriend who was from Vancouver, she fell in love with the area.

She became a Biblical studies major before discovering TWU’s drama department, which was filled with “talented people doing good work.”

Having grown up in a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood in New York, McCleary was taken aback by what she discovered about her character during her research for Remnants.

“It was interesting for me, as a non-Canadian, playing Frederick C. Blair, the head of immigration in Canada during World War II,” she says.

“It was a bit of a history lesson.”

Blair’s (and Canada’s) stance on Jewish immigration prior to the outbreak of the Second World War and during the conflict itself is at the heart of Sherman’s play.

In the lead-up to war, as Jewish Europeans were frantically seeking a safe haven, Canada accepted between 4,000 and 5,000 immigrants from among that population.

During the war, the number dwindled to fewer than 500.

The U.S., by comparison, accepted more than 150,000 Jewish refugees and Mexico, between 15,000 and 20,000 over the same period.

McCleary, who has worked behind-the-scenes in a number of TWU theatre productions, and performed in the production As It Is In Heaven, welcomes the opportunity to join forces with up and coming actors from the Vancouver company.

A little concerned by the theatre’s unique layout at first, the actress is now having fun, she says, working in the space which features audience seating in front and behind the stage.

“I’ve heard it described as ‘theatre in the square’.

“I think we’ve always appreciated that we’ve had mild ties (with Pacific Theatre) because of (TWU instructor) Ron Reed,” she says of the collaboration.

“It’s a big deal to do a co-production for apprentices. It’s a great opportunity to gain work experience.”

It’s a sentiment echoed by fourth year TWU student Thomas Gage, who plays Joseph’s brother Simon in the production.

“I just wanted to be a part of it,” he says.

Gage describes his character as “a bit of a brute.

“He pushes Joseph around, but he has this amazing character arc at the end.”

Born in France to American parents, Gage lived in Nice until coming to Trinity Western.

He was looking for a school with a theatre department and had heard about the Langley university from friends.

“I’ve always had a passion for acting. I knew watching Star Wars as a kid it was what I wanted to do,” he says.

Gage did very little acting in France, but has performed in several productions since coming to Langley, including Taming of the Shrew and The Importance of Being Earnest.

In the fall, he will play the lead role of Thomas Mendip, a world-weary soldier seeking an end to it all, in The Lady’s Not For Burning.

Once his eductation is complete, Gage hopes to remain in the Lower Mainland to pursue a career in performing. Indie films appeal to him, he says, but ultimately, his goal is “to always be connected to theatre.

“To me, it’s the be-all, end-all.”

*

TWU/Pacific Theatre
Remnants (A Fable)
Date: May 17-June 9
Wednesday to Saturday
Time: 8 p.m.
Saturday matinees 2 p.m.
Admission: $16-$32
Venue: Pacific Theatre
1440 W. 12 Ave. Vancouver
Tickets: 604-731-5518
www.pacifictheatre.org

EITHER OR, Washington D.C.

2007-05-10T19:35:00.000-07:00

Either Or
Goldman Theater, Washington, D.C.; 214 seats; $45 top
By PAUL HARRIS
Variety, May 8 2007

Oskar Schindler wasn't the only German insider who fought against Nazi atrocities. There was also Kurt Gerstein, an evangelical Christian and officer of the SS, who risked all to wage a private war against Hitler's gas chambers. Novelist Thomas Keneally, author of the book from which the film "Schindler's List" was adapted, has turned Gerstein's saga into his first play, "Either Or," debuting at D.C.'s Theater J. It's another absorbing story about one man's crusade against moral decay, but it doesn't quite translate into effective theater.

Gerstein was an early supporter of Hitler until the persecutions began. The religious idealist was even imprisoned for helping a Jewish member of his Christian youth group. He joined the army in hopes of influencing its direction, and ultimately helped introduce Zyklon B for use in concentration camps to delouse prisoners and kill other pests. But he watched in horror as the SS found other uses for the chemical. When his efforts to seek condemnation from the Vatican and others proved fruitless, Gerstein surrendered to the Allies, eager to report all. He died in a Paris prison in 1945 of an apparent suicide.

Keneally's play begins and ends in the prison with Gerstein hanging from a strip torn from his blanket. In between is an event-filled life story that emphasizes the gruesome Hobson's choice presented to him: what route does he pursue to poison the innocent victims of Germany's concentration camps -- the slow and painful death from carbon monoxide dispensed from a creaky engine, or the quick and more humane Zyklon B? Cruelty or efficiency?

The subject is an especially poignant one for 10-year-old Theater J, which specializes in works with Jewish themes. Although it has previously mounted plays about the Holocaust, this is its first direct examination of concentration camps, with menacing characters strutting in military uniforms, polished boots and armbands, smiling contentedly as the gas is released.

To help veteran novelist Keneally fashion a meaningful script from the strong material, the theater's creative staff has worked throughout the past year in workshops, readings and a one-month residency with the Australian author.

Keneally's story is revealed in mostly short scenes that build to a stirring climax, played out on Jim Kronzer's bare bones set. Director Daniel De Raey keeps the rope taut throughout as frustrations mount over the relentless evils on display.

Theater J's able cast is headed by Paul Morella as the dedicated evangelical. He is every bit the compassionate and earnest missionary valiantly combating acts of cruelty, culminating in his soul-rending eruption. Yet Keneally's script fails to instill the character with necessary depth. Morella's Gerstein registers variations of piety, angst, self righteousness and outrage, but the character isn't able to convey much more.

Other characters are even more one-dimensional, such as Meghan Grady's mentally unstable sister-in-law and Ralph Cosham's stern father, no fault of either performer. Better developed is John Dow's Pastor Niemoller, a dissident who offers perspective from his jail cell.

As might be expected from such a skilled writer, the flawed play occasionally soars in its perspectives of the "impossible dilemma" within this climate of hatred. "We did not know that malice could take such sculptural form," intones one character in an especially perceptive aside. Like Keneally's novel, "Schindler's Ark," the story of Kurt Gerstein needs to be told. One hopes it will ultimately find the right voice.

Set, Jim Kronzer; costumes, Misha Kachman; lighting, Martha Mountain; sound, Ryan Rumery. Opened, reviewed May 6, 2007. Runs through June 3. Running time: 2 HOURS, 15 MIN.

Off-Broadway CHURCH

2007-05-10T08:56:00.000-07:00

CONFRONTING QUESTIONS OF FAITH WITH A FEW NEW RESPONSES
By Jason Zinoman
New York Times, May 9 2007

People of faith are often treated as either jokes or villains in the downtown theater scene, but that may be starting to change. Les Freres Corbusier was evenhanded in “Hell House,” and the Civilians, a company not known for being dogmatic, is working on a new docudrama about evangelicals.

Still, most seasoned audiences would expect that a drama by an experimental playwright at Performance Space 122 featuring four ministers discussing God’s glory is inviting smirks. But Young Jean Lee, who wrote and directed “Church,” isn’t joking — or if she is, the joke is on us. Her slyly subversive drama ambushes its audience with an earnest and surprisingly moving Christian church service that might be the most unlikely provocation produced in years.

With a cast of speakers, Ms. Lee, described in the press materials as a nonbelieving daughter of Korean-American evangelicals, portrays the kind of Christians secular downtown hipsters may find hard to dismiss: open-minded, liberal, tolerant.

“I don’t know that God exists any more than I know that God doesn’t exist,” says José (Greg Hildreth), a cerebral minister who mocks the arm-flailing brand of preacher sent up by the performance artist Reverend Billy. “The truth is that the world is a mystery.”

When I saw the show, the audience at first nervously chuckled, but gradually calmed and listened intently to the kind of pleas found in church. But the point here is not to convert so much as to confront. Ms. Lee has a talent for evocative and sometimes grotesque imagery, and on the attack she is at the height of her powers.

The play begins with the lights off, and José, from the back of the room, laying into the ticket-buyers for their petty concerns, their mediocrity and delusions of nonconformity. “You are incredibly similar to all the people sitting around you right now,” José says. “The vast majority of them are doomed to a life of disappointing mediocrity just like yours.”

“Church” is as much about the art of persuasion as it is about religion. It’s organized like an excellent and occasionally angry argument, starting by attacking the opponent’s ideas and finishing by proposing new ones. But who is Ms. Lee arguing with? The supposedly godless denizens of the theater world? Or is she confronting her own lack of faith?

Ms. Lee is most convincing when her characters stop talking and begin singing and dancing. The female ministers — wonderfully underplayed by Karinne Keithley, Weena Pauly and Katie Workum — show some joyous moves, and the play ends with a rousing spiritual.

On the way out, a theatergoer, perhaps still waiting for the teasing wink, shook her head and said, “That really freaked me out!”

“Church” continues through Saturday at Performance Space 122, 150 First Avenue, at Ninth Street, East Village; (212) 352-3101, ps122.org.

God in the East Village: CHURCH and ST JOAN OF THE STOCKYARDS

2007-05-10T08:28:00.000-07:00

FAITH CONFRONTED, AND DEFENDED, DOWNTOWN
by Erik Piepenburg
New York Times, May 6 2007

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, the East Village center known for telling heart-on-its-sleeve theater to take a hike, is undergoing a religious conversion of sorts, with two new shows on Christian themes. “Church,” written and directed by Young Jean Lee, is being performed until next Saturday. It’s an unorthodox contemporary worship service, complete with sermon, praise dancing and a gospel choir. The playwright and director Lear DeBessonet upends Brecht’s “St. Joan of the Stockyards” in a revival that begins June 15, transplanting the dark Joan of Arc story to 1920s Chicago, with bluegrass music by the singer Kelley McRae and handouts of warm bread.

Ms. Lee, 32, and Ms. DeBessonet, 26, sat with Erik Piepenburg to discuss how Christian fundamentalism influenced their plays; what it means to lose, gain and question faith; and how downtown theater mistreats the evangelical mind. Here are excerpts of their conversation; there is also an audio slideshow which features extended audio excerpts and photographs.

Growing Up Christian

LEAR DEBESSONET I’m from Baton Rouge and grew up in a Christianized culture. My family was nominally Christian but has actually become more involved in the church than they’ve ever been in my past. I had a very intense conversion experience when I was 10 and became passionately dedicated to Christianity. I had a bit of a Joan of Arc complex. I wasn’t Catholic, so I wasn’t planning to be a nun, but I certainly planned to dedicate my life to God. I never thought I would get married or have children. I felt I had a sort of calling. A lot of my work stems out of trying to sort through that as an adult.

YOUNG JEAN LEE My parents were converted to evangelical Christianity when they were living in Korea by an American missionary, and he helped bring them over to the United States. As soon as I was born, they both directed all of their energy into making me a Christian. I converted when I was 5, but by the time I was 8, I sort of didn’t believe anymore. I always hated church. I was not a religious person. I resisted and fought through my entire childhood and adolescence. When I went to college, I refused to go to church anymore, and there was a big battle between me and my parents. They realized they had to stop trying to force it on me.

MS. DEBESSONET I find it so ironic that Young, who has been critical for her whole life of this faith, is making a play that’s sincerely giving it a fair shot. I, who have cherished and protected this faith for most of my life, am making this show about someone losing their faith, that in some way denigrates it at the end, or calls into question the validity of it.

Fear and Motivation

MS. LEE The premise that all of my shows begin with is, I ask myself the question, “What is the last show in the world that you would ever want to make?” Then I force myself to make that show. My whole aesthetic is about fighting complacency. So if I make a show that goes against my instincts of what I want to do, that creates a very tense and complicated dynamic. For “Church” the last show in the world I would ever want to do was an evangelical Christian service that’s sincerely trying to convert the audience to Christianity, and that’s not ironic or a joke or making fun of Christianity at all. That just seemed like a real nightmare and a challenge for me, and it has been.

MS. DEBESSONET Usually my questions have to do with God in some way, because that’s what I think about, that’s what keeps me up in the middle of the night. This play, about the problematic relationship between Christianity and social justice and idealism, is really upsetting to me. I don’t know how to look at those questions honestly. I don’t know how to make an honest piece of work without entering into that crisis on some level.

On Evangelicals and Theater

MS. DEBESSONET Evangelical Christians in America right now can be very easy to make fun of. There’s a lot of good material there. But the problem is that it’s not helping the dialogue around these issues. What we really need is to be generating conversation about it, not just affirming people in what they already think. I think it’s very hard in the downtown theater world to address faith sincerely. Sometimes it’s perceived as being ironic, even if you’re meaning it to be sincere.

MS. LEE Most of what I’ve seen up until this point has been critiques and making fun. Christians are just not taken seriously at all, which is what my show came out of. But I have a feeling there’s going to be a big wave of theatrical stuff dealing with evangelical Christians over the next year.

MS. DEBESSONET I think the downtown artistic community is realizing we don’t really have the option of dismissing [evangelical Christianity] anymore. This is a force in our world. There are so many millions of people that do believe this, and for us not to even attempt to engage them or understand what’s driving them seems irresponsible artistically.

May 6: Lucia Frangione, LEAVE OF ABSENCE reading, PTC

2007-04-20T13:39:00.000-07:00

Lucia has been working away on a new script, LEAVE OF ABSENCE. It got a first round at Alberta Theatre Projects. Then Pacific Theatre came up with a grant to commission more rewrites and hire D.D. Kugler to dramaturg, and drew Playwrights Theatre Centre into the process: they've paid actors and Morris Ertman (the director), provided workshop space. Cia's also gotten subsequent grant support from a couple other sources - Canada Council, I think maybe?

Anyhow, Playwrights Theatre Centre has chosen the play to present as part of their New Play Festival. It's slated for Sunday May 6 at 8pm, I'm guessing at the PTC venue on Granville Island. It's not updated at their website yet, but hopefully soon!

REMNANTS: Violins needed - broken violins, student violins, violins with strings missing....

2007-04-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

Okay, the director for our upcoming show has some bizarre ideas.

He wants to try using violins in the show. More for effects than for music making. Like, maybe eight of the darn things? Or more?

We don't want violins that are worth tons of money. Broken violins are fine. Violins with one string. Half-size and quarter-size student violins. Violas.

And a a commensurate number of bows, if possible. Again: cheap, broken, whatever.

None of them can look modern. No chin rests, no plastic, no blue paint, no pickups.

CAN YOU HELP?

Got one in your storage room? Did Auntie Erma play the fiddle? Got a local musical instrument repair shop you could ask at? Junk stores, anything? We want to borrow (or be given), not to rent: rentals cost too much moolah.

And Herr Direcktor wants as many as possible for the first day of rehearsal. April 30. (But if you read this after April 30, and you might have something for us, IT MAY NOT BE TOO LATE!!!)

Got a fiddle? Got a lead? Email prop mistress Kerri Norris (kdnorth@hotmail.com) or stage manager Lois Dawson (dawson.lois@gmail.com).

We'll give you comps. And all our love.

Thanks!

Pacific Theatre’s 2007-2008 Season Screams Blockbuster & Popcorn with its “PT Goes to the Movies” Theme

2007-04-18T12:04:00.000-07:00

Pacific Theatre’s 2007-2008 Season Screams Blockbuster & Popcorn with its “PT Goes to the Movies” Theme

Vancouver, BC – April 17, 2007 (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE)

Pacific Theatre is thrilled to announce its “PT Goes to the Movies” 2007-2008 subscription season – a blockbuster year of five arresting Mainstage productions and three powerful Second Stage events. Spanning 500 years and crossing the Atlantic, Pacific Theatre’s 24th season promises a wide range of soul-searching stage plays, that are also screen-plays, at astonishingly low subscription prices.

Artistic Director Ron Reed is pleased to have reunited a long history of talented company members for the 2007-08 season, having hand-picked plays with specific actors in mind. This season also looks forward to the development of a number of new plays, and is anticipating numerous world premieres for its 2008-09 season. The 2007-08 season includes:

I ain’ no dog and I ain’ no chile and I ain’ jes a back of the neck you look at while you goin’ where you want to go.
DRIVING MISS DAISY
By Alfred Uhry
October 11 – November 10 (opens Oct.12)

“The comedy that won a Pulitzer Prize.”Atlanta, 1948. On the verge of the Civil Rights upheaval, an aging Jewish widow – “stubborn as a small-eyed needle and independent as the Statue of Liberty” – reluctantly surrenders the driver’s seat to Hoke Coburn, a proud, soft-spoken black man and a Southern Baptist who over the course of 25 years becomes not only her chauffeur, but, against all odds, her best friend.

Featuring Tom Pickett and Erla Faye Forsyth, Paul Moniz de Sa. Sarah Rodgers, director.

Strange, isn’t it? Each man’s life touches so many other lives. When he isn’t around he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?
THIS WONDERFUL LIFE

By Steve Murray
November 29 – December 29 (opens Nov.30)

“Wonderful! Wonderful! Wonderful! How could it be anything else?
It’s Christmas Eve in a wartime New England town. Despairing over a life of compromise and dreams deferred, George Bailey sets out to throw himself from a bridge – until a dotty angel-in-waiting shows him what might have been. A single actor brings 35 characters to life in this imaginative tour-de-force. A beloved holiday with a theatrical twist.

Featuring Dan Amos. Morris Ertman, director.

And when the last law was cut down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, the laws all being flat?
A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS

By Robert Bolt
January 24 – February 23 (opens Jan.25)

Produced by Midnight Theatre Collective
When Henry VIII sets out to divorce his wife and marry Anne Boelyn, he seeks the support of England’s Lord Chancellor – revered scholar, lawyer, and churchman Sir Thomas More. More’s quiet defiance ignites a ferocious battle between church and state, faith and politics, as he struggles to avoid the dreadful, inevitable choice – between King and conscience, loyalty and martyrdom.

Featuring Ron Reed, Damon Calderwood, Dirk Van Stralen, Julia Mackey, Adam Bergquist. Jeremy Tow, director.

A long time ago, I was sent far away. When they let me come back, all my friends were gone.
THE WOODSMAN

By Steven Fechter
April 3 – April 26 (opens Apr.4)

“An unforgivable act. A chance to start over. A fight for redemption.”
Walter is guilty of the unpardonable: he is a pedophile. Returning home after twelve years in prison, he attempts to forge a new life – to restrain his darkest impulses. Every minute of every day. For the rest of his life.

Featuring Dirk Van Stralen, Rebecca deBoer, Michael Kopsa, and Camille Beaudoin. Morris Ertman, director.

Tony’s too nice a boy to wake up twenty years from now with nothing in his life but stocks and bonds. Mixed up and unhappy, the way you are.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU

By George S. Kaufman & Moss Hart
May 15 – June 14 (opens May 16)
“You’ll love them all for giving you the swellest time you’ve ever had!”
It’s the middle of the Great Depression, but there’s nothing depressing about life in the Vanderhof-Sycamore household – they dance, they make plays, they make music and babies and revolutionary tracts, and fireworks in the basement. All is peaceful anarchy until Alice, the white sheep of the family, brings home her all-too-ordinary Wall Street boyfriend…

An Emerging Artist Showcase / Theatre at TWU Co-Production. Ron Reed, director.

SECOND STAGE

TWELVE ANGRY MEN
By Reginald Rose
September 19-22

“Life Is In Their Hands – Death Is On Their Minds! It explodes like 12 sticks of dynamite!”

Twelve men are corralled in an over-heated jury room, their guilty verdict stalled by the lone juror who feels there may be "reasonable doubt." An open and shut case escalates into a searing examination of conscience. Staged reading - five performances only!

Featuring Michael Kopsa, Ron Reed, Tim Dixon, Francis Boyle, Frank Nickel, Steve Waldschmidt, J.P. Allen, David Nykl. Ian Farthing, director.

SIDE SHOW – A NIGHT AT THE IMPROV
Hilarious, at-the-movies-themed comedy, clad in all the chaos of a Hollywood dressing room. Let the melodrama begin!
February 28 – March 1

CHRISTMAS PRESENCE
A Pacific Theatre Tradition
This evening of stories, songs, comedy, and nostalgia will feel like the live version of an evening watching your Christmas-time favourites on TV.
In the City at Pacific Theatre – Dec. 9-10
Benefit Performance for Holy Trinity – Dec. 11
In the Valley at the Matsqui Centennial Auditorium – Dec.15

NEW THIS YEAR
STAGE & SCREEN SERIES
Nov.6, Dec.4, Feb.19, Apr.22, Jun.10
How does a play become a film? How does a film become a play? Artistic Director Ron Reed is joined by PT artists and film industry professionals in hosting a series of interactive evenings that explore the relationship between these unique story-telling mediums.

MUSIC AT PACIFIC
Brian Mix, Artistic Director
Oct.4, Feb.17, May 25
A new chamber music series on the Pacific Theatre stage. Three concerts of music connected to the themes, characters and settings of the season’s plays, performed by some of Vancouver’s finest classical musicians.

Pacific Theatre continues to make excellent professional theatre accessible with remarkably affordable subscriptions starting at only $55 for four shows. Pacific Theatre has also launched new and improved websales – buy all your single tickets online at pacifictheatre.org

Grace talkback, TWU

2007-04-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

Great experience today. Each Friday the Trinity Western theatre department holds their Integration Forum, where all the theatre department folks gather to hear guest speakers, kick around matters of faith and art, all that. Today, three of the cast members of GRACE, plus director Angela Konrad (who chairs Theatre at TWU) and yours truly. Best talkback I've ever been part of (though we had some extraordinary ones after PRODIGAL SON) - a full hour and a half talking about the play itself, how it does what it does, what we make of it, all that. Substantial, thoughtful - really enhanced my appreciation of the play.

One student shared a favourite book of poetry with me following the session, and showed me one poem in particular that ties in to the play. Absolutely. Here's an excerpt...

Pry Me Off Dead Center

O persistent God,
Deliver me from assuming your mercy is gentle.
Pressure me that I may grow more human,
Not through the lessening of my struggles, but through an expansion of them
That will undamn me
And unbury my gifts.

From Guerrillas Of Grace: Prayers For The Battle
by Ted Loder

Returning Vancouverite Loves GRACE

2007-04-03T22:24:00.001-07:00

Our Box Office Received this E-mail about Grace:

I am a Vancouverite who just returned home after living and working in Toronto for three years. As an actress, I took advantage of the constant stream of theatre to be seen in Toronto, some amazing, some less impressive, but each a valuable experience in some form. As a bit of a welcome home my best friend (who rarely goes out to see theatre) got us tickets to see Grace last night. We were both blown away. From opposite ends of the spectrum - from someone who sees a lot of theatre to my friend who doesn't gravitate towards it much - we met on a common ground of astonishment after your production. Every actor served the story and its believability entirely.

What a brave endeavour by all to house the Canadian premier of this play in a theatre with a Spiritual/Christian mandate. Thanks for one of the most incredible theatre experiences I've had yet and for such an impressive re-introduction to theatre in my hometown.

Kyle Jesperson in "120bpm"

2007-03-28T11:58:00.000-07:00

Remember Kyle Jesperson? He played George MacDonald in A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR. Kyle's a grad of the TWU Theatre program who recently completed Studio 58 training. He writes;

Hey gang,

Running April 3-20 (2-for-1 preview April 2nd) is a new play called "120bpm." It's one night in the rave culture of the late 90's, and the venue is pretty cool: a second-story warehouse rather than a theatre. I've never been in a show like it, and I feel pretty safe in surmising that I won't ever be in a show like it again.

I'd love for y'all to come!

Love from Kyle

For more, check out Up In The Air Theatre

GRACE Costume Sketches

2007-03-10T14:13:00.002-08:00

I'm an actor who loves the physical world of a play. Sets, light, props, and especially costumes give me so much as I build the life of a character. Tangible materials to build the world of the play that I'm going to move into and inhabit. Of course, a tremendous amount of that world is created in the actor's imagination, and re-created or co-created in that of the audience: we can create a world together on a bare stage. But when we're given real, physical stuff by the designers, it does so much to make that world specific, and tangible.

Especially costumes. I show up on the first day of rehearsals with rehearsal costumes I've scrounged on my own, just so I can start living in the skin of the character I'm beginning to embody. And as soon as the costumer adds each new element - a pair of shoes, a belt, a jacket, whatever - I beg to use it in rehearsal from then on. Now bear in mind, I weather a good deal of mockery for these indulgences, but for me it pays off.

I love costume designers.

Thought it'd be fun to offer you a sneak peek at Francesca Albertazzi's GRACE costumes. Here are her preliminary renderings...

Mar 1-18: Anthony Ingram, "A Delicate Balance"

2007-03-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

Anthony Ingram's involvement with Pacific Theatre goes right back to 1984, when "Tony" auditioned for the Pacific Salt Company! A billion shows later at PT (ELEPHANT MAN, BEGGARS AT THE WATERS OF IMMORTALITY, HALO, PRIVATE EYES, RON'S FIFTIETH BIRTHDAY PARTY, etc, etc) and everywhere else, Anthony's in the director's chair for Eddy Albee's seventy-ninth birthday party...

Tempus Theatre presents…

Edward Albee's Pulitzer Prize winning play
A Delicate Balance
Directed by Anthony F. Ingram
Starring: Anna Hagan, Terence Kelly, Teryl Rothery, Bert Steinmanis, Valerie Sing Turner, and T Weir

March 1 - 18
Tuesday to Sunday 8pm
Jericho Arts Centre
1675 Discovery Street (at NW Marine Drive)
Pay-What-You-Will: Tuesday March 6 and 13
For Tickets: ticketstonight or 604.231.7538

Join us after the show on March 11, and celebrate Edward Albee’s 79th Birthday!

On an autumn weekend, Agnes and Tobias find their stately home invaded by her alcoholic sister, their daughter who has just left her fourth marriage, and their best friends seeking refuge from a mysterious terror. As the powerful ties between family, friends and each other begin to pull in opposing directions, Agnes and Tobias discover that more is at stake than just who gets the spare room.

"[A Delicate Balance] is basically about these people who have accommodated to their own weaknesses and compromises, the adjustments they've made. When the time comes that there is a demand put on them, they have to figure out whether or not they are strong enough anymore to do what should normally be done; the Christian way, to take you in. The [delicate balance] is between what we should be doing and what we ultimately decide we need to do to protect ourselves."
-Edward Albee

Who - or what - is Tempus Theatre?
In 2005, five actors - Anna Hagan, Anthony F. Ingram, Bert Steinmanis, Valerie Sing Turner and T Weir - were brought together as part of the cast of Caryl Churchill’s groundbreaking work, Cloud 9, which became both an audience and critical success. Challenged by the complexity of the play and inspired by each other’s talent, ideas and passions, they sought a way to continue working together on scripts that challenged actor and audience both artistically and intellectually. Thus, Tempus Theatre was born. Celebrating the ephemeral essence of theatre – the unrepeatable moment of performance – Tempus Theatre is committed to producing strong, text-based work that provokes consideration of the past that has shaped us, the present we live in and the possible futures we may encounter. For more information about Tempus Theatre, visit us on the web

Mar 20 & 27: Julia Mackey, "Jake's Gift"

2007-03-10T09:18:00.000-08:00

Back in 2002, Julia Mackey was part of a group of actors who worked through Libby Appel's mask training process and then created a show with the characters they created, which we staged in December 2002 as MERCY WILD. Jake was a marvel, a cranky old bookie with World War Two secrets and a penchant for Frank Sinatra.

Julia couldn't let go of her creation - or he couldn't let go of her - and a trip to Normandy for the D-Day commemorations led her to create a one-person-show for her crusty alter ego. Pacific Theatre presented a staged reading of the piece last fall, and Jules has gone on to perform JAKE'S GIFT at a number of theatres in BC since that time, including Nanaimo's Western Edge Theatre, Antony Holland's Theatre Centre on Gabriola Island, and upcoming performances in the Richmond Gateway's SceneFirst series and a Vancouver Public Library performance on World Theatre Day - as well as a slot in Toronto's 2007 Fringe Festival!

But before I pass along the details on the upcoming lower mainland shows, let me point you to the JAKE'S GIFT website - a skookum little setup by none other than Dirk Van Stralen, another PT regular and Julia's main squeeze (in fact, fiance!).

SceneFirst at the Gateway!
SceneFirst is back for its third season at the Gateway, an exciting four-day series featuring staged readings of four new Canadian scripts, directed and performed by theatre professionals, scripts in hand, without benefit of props, sets, special lighting or costumes. SceneFirst runs March 20-23rd, 2007 at 8pm.

Four scripts by local writers Julia Mackey, Mark Leiren-Young, Joao Canhoto and Elaine Avila were chosen from over 100 submitted by writers across Canada. These plays will now become part of the short list for future production in the Gateway’s MainStage or Studio B Series. Thanks to feedback from last year’s SceneFirst attendees, one script from SceneFirst 2006 is short-listed for Gateway’s 2007-08 Mainstage season.

JAKES GIFT by Julia Mackey
TUESDAY, MARCH 20, 2007 8PM
Jake's Gift is the story of a cantankerous WW2 veteran who reluctantly returns to Normandy, France for the 60th Anniversary of D-Day. On his journey, Jake meets a precocious local girl named Isabelle whose inquisitive nature challenges him to confront some old ghosts. Jake’s Gift celebrates the importance and the healing power of remembrance.
Tickets are $5 per person at the door or call 604-270-1812.

*

Tuesday Mar 27 2007 @ 7PM: World Theatre Day
Vancouver Public Library, Alice Mackay Room Lower Level
Vancouver theatre legend Antony Holland directs presentations of two one-act plays. Written and performed by Julia Mackey, Jakes Gift tells the touching story of a meeting of a Canadian World War II veteran and a young French girl on a beach in Normandy. Brian Friels The Yalta Game, a romantic comedy based on a classic Chekhov story, follows a young couple and their misadventures at a holiday resort.

Contact: Nicola Scudder 604-331-3774

GRACE: Notes from the set designer

2007-02-26T14:06:00.001-08:00

First day of GRACE rehearsal. Table reading of the script, designer presentations. Steve Waldschmidt is our set designer (you saw his design work in A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR and THE QUARREL), and won't be joining us from Alberta until Saturday, so he sent some notes on the drawings and model he'd sent on ahead.

I think they give a fascinating glimpse into the world of our next mainstage show, so Steve's let me share some excerpts with you.

First of all, I am thrilled to work with this group of people, and I am thrilled to be working on this particular script. It's the first play I've ever read that made my feet sweat—a real page-turner, but filled with a desperation and with timely questions and critique about North American culture and a distorted version of Christianity that make my... well, that make my feet sweat.

What most struck me about the story is the impersonal superficiality of their lives. The woman in the rental office—Peggy, Patsy, Pamby? No one knows her and it doesn’t matter. Like the apartments, people are all seen as the same and not worth really knowing. Sarah first, and then Sam, begin to resist that pressure of anonymity. And the impermanence of their lives in Florida is huge. Have either of these neighbours even finished unpacking?

And then there’s the get rich quick scheme, set in the sunshine state. I’m in the middle of a book called ‘The Orchid Thief’ (Ron's note: Susan Orlean's unadaptable book was adapted into the remarkable film, ADAPTATION) and this quote describes the world of GRACE so well it’s worth repeating here:

“The state of Florida does incite people. It gives them big ideas. They don’t exactly drift here: They come on purpose—and Florida seems like the kind of place where you can try anything, the kind of place that for centuries has made entrepreneurs’ mouths water. It is moldable, reinventable. It has been added to, subtracted from, drained, ditched, paved, dredged, irrigated, cultivated, wrestled from the wild, restored to the wild, flooded, platted, set on fire. Things are always being taken out of Florida or smuggled in. The flow in and out is so constant that what exactly the state consists of is different from day to day… Sometimes I think I’ve figured out some order in the universe, but then I find myself in Florida, swamped by incongruity and paradox, and I have to start all over again.”

So this renovation business, this flipping of real estate. Cosmetic upgrades to raise an appraisal value. It sure fits with the ‘health & wealth gospel’—a perversion of Christianity that is strangely only popular in North America. Relationship with God is reduced to a formula or ‘spiritual principles’ and you can control the universe if you do just the right things in just the right order—financial prosperity and happiness guaranteed by God. (Sound more like superstition or black magic than Christianity, actually.) A religion made for suburbia and the culture of consumerism.

And then there’s the overlapping, identical apartments. furnished rental apartments. Kitschy, tacky, stereotypical and candy-coated in the so-called ‘Florida-style.’ An address on Ocean Drive, miles from the water with a picture-window view of the concrete warehouse next door. Constant vigilance to prevent termites and bugs filling the walls and replacing the building's actual structure. Seeing past the glossy surface to the cheap, insubstantial interior.

There's a fifth un-named character in the play — time.... Space and time are fluid in the world of the play—but there’s a naturalism as well. Cause and effect. How can we get a sense of time itself to be visible on the set? Clocks? No. What else? What about layers of paint and wallpaper? Good idea, Angela!

That’s all for now—see you Saturday!

"Life Of Brian" takes the stage: Toronto, June

2007-02-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

This in Variety...

'Messiah' in Idle hands
'Spamalot' creator announces next project
By RICHARD OUZOUNIAN

And now for something not so completely different.

Following on the heels of "Monty Python's Spamalot," Eric Idle has announced his next project will be "Not the Messiah (He's a Very Naughty Boy)," a comic oratorio set to have its world premiere in Toronto in June as part of the city's inaugural Luminato Festival of the Arts.

Just as Tony-winning tuner "Spamalot" was based on the 1975 film "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," Idle's new work is loosely adapted from the iconic British troupe's 1979 pic "Life of Brian." "Spamalot" co-composer John Du Prez again will collaborate with Idle.

The piece has been commissioned by the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, whose music director, Peter Oundjian, is also Idle's cousin -- although the comedian insists that had nothing to do with his decision.

"Who would want to work with their relatives, anyway?" Idle said. "They're usually unpleasant, dishonest and slow to pick up the check."

The 63-year-old comic did allow that Oundjian may be an exception to the rule because "he's got a bit of class, which is something my family has always desperately needed."

Idle was unwilling to disclose details about the work other than to say, "I promise it will be funnier than Handel, although probably not as good."

One question, though, is whether it will include "Brian's" best-known tune: "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," already part of "Spamalot."

Luminato is a new 90-event multidisciplinary arts fest scheduled to run throughout Toronto June 1-10. CEO is Janice Price, who ankled her job at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia to take over the fledging Canadian event.

Other high-profile names whose participation was announced Tuesday include Philip Glass, Leonard Cohen, Atom Egoyan and Isabel Bayrakdarian.

Organizers anticipate half a million people will attend the largely free events of this C$15 million ($13 million) festival, conceived to boost Toronto tourism.

"Spamalot" opened in March 2005 on Broadway, where it recently crossed the $100 million mark in grosses. The show has since spawned a national tour and a production in London's West End. A sit-down run in Las Vegas will start previews March 8 for a March 31 opening.

Defiance, by John Patrick Shanley

2007-02-07T12:07:00.000-08:00

Doesn't this look interesting?...

Defiance
John Patrick Shanley

5 men, 1 woman

“Spellbinding. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but John Patrick Shanley has followed up Doubt, the best play of 2004–05, with a play of identical quality.” —Wall Street Journal. “As thoughtful and probing as Doubt. An arresting, ambitious tale of race relations and the military mindset, filled with the provocative questions and bristling with dialogue for which John Patrick Shanley, a fierce moral sage, is known.” —NY Times. “Thrilling. A lean, powerful fist of a play. With rare compassion, rigor and craft, Shanley again makes a frontal attack on a subject we think we know too well, and proves otherwise.” —NY Newsday. “Riveting. Shanley once again poses aptly thorny questions about faith and loyalty.” —Time Out. “Shanley delivers yet another gripping drama that pushes viewers to the edge of their seats and keeps them thinking long after the show is over.” —Star-Ledger. “An absorbing, thoughtful, intelligent work.” —Variety. “Complicated, exciting and briskly compelling.” —USA Today.

THE STORY: DEFIANCE is set on a United States Marine Corps base in North Carolina in 1971. Two officers, one black and one white, are on a collision course over race, women and the high cost of doing the right thing. This riveting, surprising new work is about power, love and responsibility—who has it, who wants it and who deserves it.

Joan Didion and "The Year of Magical Thinking"

2007-01-30T23:09:00.000-08:00

"Joan Didion's extraordinary memoir of grief, The Year Of Magical Thinking, will soon become a Broadway show."
Film Comment, January-February 2007

Caught my interest because I've heard it's a marvelous book, and also because I've had an eye on Didion for quite some time. I had it in the back of my mind that she is some sort of Christian, perhaps an Anglican? But a quick scan of the web puts that in question. She's clearly not too keen on the Left Behind series, George W., manifest destiny or fundamentalism - but that only means me and Joan (and Anne Lamott, for example) would have a lot in common, and I'm an orthodox believer (heck, I'm a proud graduate of Regent College and tickled to be on the faculty at Trinity Western U).

So I wonder: where did I come up with this idea that Joan had some sort of faith thing going on? She co-screenplayed TRUE CONFESSIONS, which fizzled as a movie despite superlative casting, but nonetheless treated faith with some understanding, I thought. Anybody help me with this?

Ron

Wanted: Stage Manager for apprentice showcase production

2007-01-16T14:51:00.000-08:00

Wanted for the March Apprentice Show:

Volunteer Stage Manager for SINNERS AND SAINTS?, a unique set of provocative one act plays at Pacific Theatre produced by Stones Throw Productions. Some experience of stage management and the elements of lighting design needed.

The plays will run after performances of GRACE at Pacific Theatre, with an additional free performance on World Theatre Day, March 27th. The first of these plays, RIVER BOTTOM BABY, is a one woman show by PT’s playwriting apprentice. The second and third plays will showcase two of PT’s talented apprentices. All three of the plays are contemporary and will be technically very simple. The stage manager will be responsible for costuming needs, setting up a basic lighting design upon the existing lights of GRACE, very occasionally managing portions of the play or the odd rehearsal for the actors, and running the sound and lighting board during performances. There will be a separate props master and sound designer to work on those specific aspects of the production. We are looking for someone who is amicable, hard working, efficient and lots of fun!

IN A NUTSHELL
Plays: RIVER BOTTOM BABY (30 minutes) BABEL RAP (20 minutes) & CABBAGE HEAD (10 minutes)
Dates for rehearsals: Very part-time in mid-February to mid-March. Will be needed more for technical rehearsals towards the end of March.
Dates for performances: Tuesday March 27th, Friday March 30th, Saturday March 31st, & Friday April 6th, Saturday April 7th.
Responsibilites:
1. Checking in with the directors every few rehearsals for costuming needs and searching for contemporary costumes.
2. May be needed once every few rehearsals for each play to run cues with actors, or even portions of the play. This won’t be very often.
3. Designing an elementary lighting design for both plays, using the existing lights of GRACE.
4. Running the sound and lighting board during the actual productions.

Interested? Email Tina Teeninga - tina@teeninga.ca

Oct 20 - Nov 18: Kris Knutsen in W(H)ACKED!

2006-11-11T08:20:00.000-08:00

Kris Knutsen is a well-known, much-loved pal o' PT. She's managed our box office, apprenticed, and acted on our mainstage. Remember LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC? Colin Thomas wrote;

"Just a year ago, they were junior actors. Now they look a lot like stars. Adam Bergquist and Kris Knutsen, who participated in Pacific Theatre’s apprenticeship program last season, deliver confident, subtle—and ultimately very moving—performances in Arlene Hutton’s romantic two-hander, LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC.... Knutsen has a sly way of letting the sun of May’s smart, adventuresome spirit shine through the bars of her fear and narrow-mindedness.... Pacific Theatre is a Christian company. Perhaps that has something to do with one of their great gifts: they’re not afraid to present innocence on-stage."

Alas, Kris moved back home to Seattle, and (not alas) is currently onstage...

Maybe it's time for a road trip!

Want to see CARIBOO MAGI for free? Want to usher?

2006-11-02T11:11:00.000-08:00

A note from Alison Chisholm, who runs the box office at Pacific Theatre;

Pacific Theatre is presently searching for volunteers to do some ushering for our upcoming show CARIBOO MAGI. This is going to be an amazing and VERY busy show (we're expecting a majority of sold out performances), so I strongly encourage you to take this opportunity to see this show for FREE. The show runs from Nov. 23rd to Dec. 30th with shows Wednesday to Saturdays at 8pm as well as matinee showings at 2pm on Saturday afternoons. We will also be adding two matinee performances during Christmas week. These performances will take place at 3pm on Dec. 27th, 28th. We could really use some help with the first week of the run (Nov. 23, 24, and 25), but all other timeslots of the run also need to be filled, so any help would be appreciated.

If you are at all interested in volunteering to help with this show, please email me (alison@pacifictheatre.org) with the dates and times when you would like to usher. Please remember that if you have any friends that would also like to usher, we can book you together (for a total of no more than four people working each performance).

I'd like to thank you in advance for your support and contributions to the theatre. Volunteers are vital to the success of the theatre.

All the best!

Alison Chisholm
alison@pacifictheatre.org

CONFESSIONS not sold out! Thu Oct 12 or Fri Oct 13

2006-10-12T00:27:00.000-07:00

Odd glitch resulted in announcement that the shows were almost sold out. Nope. Still seats left for all three shows, though Saturday 14 is getting pretty darn full.

Here's the scoop...

*

Don’t Miss CONFESSIONS this Thursday through Saturday-
Pacific Theatre’s Evening of Songs and Storytelling in the tradition of CHRISTMAS PRESENCE

For tickets ($9-$20) call our box office at 604.731.5518
or reply to this email (include your phone number) and a
Pacific Theatre representative will call you back.

Pacific Theatre is pleased to present CONFESSIONS, an autumnal version of its holiday favourite, CHRISTMAS PRESENCE – this October, enjoy a cornucopia of stories, songs, poetry, comedy and reminiscence.

In the past, Pacific Theatre has hosted a wide range of performing artists at similar events, including Ron Reed, Sheree Plett, Michael Hart, Lance Odegaard, Spencer Capier and Nelson Boschman. Patrons can expect an equally exciting line-up for this fall’s show!

CONFESSIONS runs October 12th through 14th at Pacific Theatre in Vancouver. All shows at 8pm. For tickets ($9-$20) and information call 604.731.5518 or visit pacifictheatre.org. That’s 604.731.5518 or pacifictheatre.org!

LILIA: Patrick Lonergan review

2006-10-02T00:19:00.000-07:00

Patrick Lonergan writes and distributes an arts email he calls "Patrick's Picks," which deals mainly with theatre and classical music performances in the Vancouver area. (Hey, I oughta try something like that...) Here's what he wrote about LILIA...

LiLiA, on the other hand, was absolutely wonderful. The story of actress Lilia Skala as portrayed by her granddaughter, it is warm, loving, intense, funny, sad, and so human and deserves all the accolades it has received. Actress-playwright Libby Skala is brilliant and for her it is clearly a labour of love. Her ability to use her body and above all her facial features to transform herself from one character to another is phenomenal. In an instant her face changes from that of a young girl to that of her grandmother and then, just as quickly, back again. The scene in which grandmother gives granddaughter a lesson in acting was amazing, a truly dazzling tour-de-force as Skala changes characters back and forth with rapid-fire speed, revealing both Lilia Skala’s greatness as an actress (Libby Skala writes in her programme notes: “To this day she’s the greatest actress I’ve seen.”) and the great skill of Libby Skala herself. The play is superbly constructed with no scene ever outstaying its welcome. We are not simply given a chronological presentation but, rather, we jump back and forth through time, in short, pithy vignettes from Lilia’s life. We are, nonetheless, never lost, never confused. The play unfolds in bits and pieces which gradually come together as a more complete story. Lilia is presented to us warts and all. She was a strong and strong-willed woman with great courage and deep faith. But she could also be imperious, hard, and petty almost to the point of cruelty as, for example, when she covets her granddaughter’s sweater or criticises her looks. “Write a part for me”, her grandmother asks Libby. And she has. Libby Skala closes her programme notes with the following:

"As LiLiA moves forward I continue to plumb the depths of each nuance and life lesson to be gleaned from my grandmother’s experiences. Lilia often said: ‘I’ve barely scratched the surface in terms of what’s inside me – what I can give of myself to mankind.’ She was constantly trying to teach and guide me, but I wasn’t always receptive. Well, it’s never too late.
The lessons continue as I have the privilege of performing this play – not only as a tribute to my grandmother, but as an ever-evolving experience between actor and audience.”

She has done her grandmother proud. Do see this.

New York, 2004: The Mystery Of The Charity Of Joan Of Arc

2006-09-24T06:56:00.000-07:00

Paul Wagler sends me a link to this 2004 revival of a 1910 show with some real contemporary interest. I'd better read it: Paul's batting 1.000, having been the one to bring me the script of SHADOWLANDS back in the early nineties!

The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc
by Charles Péguy, translated by Julian Green
May 12 - Jun 5, 2004
Produced by the Target Margin Theater at the Here Arts Center, New York

A CurtainUp Review
by Les Gutman

"He who allows things to be done is like him who orders them to be done.
It is all one. It is worse than him who does them. Because he who does shows
courage, at least, in doing. He who commits a crime has at least the courage
to commit it.And when you allow the crime to be committed, you have the
same crime, and cowardice to boot." Jeannette

Kierkegaard, to whom Charles Péguy no doubt owed some debt, said that the self is "a relation which relates itself to itself". In The Mystery of the Charity of Joan of Arc, we find a young Joan of Arc (Sophia Skiles) engaged in an existential struggle, with her self, her faith and the relation between the two. These play out alone, in conversation with a young, less thought-burdened contemporary, Hauviette (Jerusha Klemperer), and in a dialectic with a holy woman, Madame Gervaise (Daphne Gaines). They are, we are asked to believe at least, the tribulations of Joan of Arc, the foundations for the more familiar religious figure to come.

Péguy's lyrical work, here in a largely unfussy translation by Julian Green, overflows with words as it compresses Joan's spiritual anxiety into an economical but full seventy minutes. (Written almost a century ago, this is the play's American premiere.) David Herksovits wisely focuses the three fine actors on the language. Those familiar with the playful aesthetic which usually infuses his work may be surprised to discover it is largely absent here.

Regardless of the extent to which one is bowled over by the play's religious aspects, the play's context couldn't raise questions of greater currency. For young Jeanette finds herself confronted by war, its effects and its seeming irreconcilability:

For every wounded man we happen to look after, for every child we feed, indefatigable war makes hundreds of wounded, of sick and homeless people, every day. All our efforts are in vain. War has more power than anything when it comes to making people suffer. Ah, a curse on war!

Those who kill lose their souls because they kill. And those who are killed lose their souls because they are killed.

The three women in this cast are up to the challenges presented. There is a genuineness in Sophia Skiles' Jeanette that filters her passion and anguish through the lens of a young woman, "different" no doubt, who is seeking her own inexplicable truths. Daphne Gaines is skillful in guiding her, yet neither character is permitted to convey the sort of earnestness that would quickly render the text overwrought. Jerusha Klemperer operates in a lighter vein, with flashes of contemporary sensibilities, but her counterpoint is never jolting.

Lenore Doxsee has a large canvas in Here's mainstage theater. She has chosen to suggest both the vastness of the world and the intimacy of one's personal view of it in a particularly striking way. A spinning wheel becomes the focal point. Mark Barton's lighting, mostly achieved indirectly, is exceptionally supportive, and David Zinn's costumes also work quite well in establishing the characters.

*

"David Herskovits' Target Margin Theater... has revived a mock-medieval French play from 1910, and there's not a surplus gadget to be seen - only a peaceful, low-key environment, a single raked platform, and whatever magic the three actresses' voices can coax from the text... Herskovits' simple act of aesthetic faith has powerful resonances in a theater, and a world, hooked on every kind of overindulgence." The Village Voice

"The holy stillness of this Target Margin Theater production, masterfully evoked by director David Herskovits and his excellent ensemble, encourages the unhurried contemplation of this mysterious little play... Translated by Julian Green, the writing accumulates in gradually shifting repetitions that take on incantatory power." Newsday

CONFESSIONS: Submissions? Ideas?

2006-09-23T16:22:00.000-07:00

Three weeks hence (Oct 12-14), I'll be doing CONFESSIONS at Pacific Theatre. (No, I'm not a priest...) (Or a Catholic...) Three evenings of readings interspersed with songs, very loose. Like CHRISTMAS PRESENCE, but without the Christmas. Like PASSION, a couple years ago, or TESTIMONY this spring.

This year's theme, any sort of connotation to CONFESSIONS that comes to mind. Confessions of sin, weakness, embarassment, secrets, failure, flaw, humanity or any other sort of crime. Or confessions of faith. Or about the confessional. Or whatever. God stuff's good. Doesn't necessarily have to be. A few years ago, I wrote my (per)version of the "Paul Is Dead" hoax, something along the lines of "John Is Born Again" - documents his conversion through the lyrics of various Beatles songs, how he evangelized other members of the band: I want to sandwich it in between a gospel-tinged "Let It Be" (a la Aretha Franklin), follow it up with "The Word," something like that. So you can see, the theme ain't all that narrow.

Anybody got anything I could read? Essay, story, novel excerpt, play scene, poetry, joke, you name it. Something you've written, or are going to write? Or something you've read that somebody else wrote? Or seen in a movie or play? Even just a short, memorable quote to do with confession. Anything jazzy in St Augustine? Email me your ideas: surfer@ronreed.org

I'm thinking some Anne Lamott, though I haven't thought about what specific piece yet. Frederick Buechner's sure to have stuff. I've got a couple pieces marked in Joyful Noise, Rick Moody and Darcey Steinke's fabulous collection of essays. Oh, there's a great monologue in "A Thousand Clowns" about this guy going down the street apologizing to total strangers - that would fit! Wouldn't Woody Allen have something self-deprecating in one of his books or films? That ring a bell with anybody?

Let me know if anything comes to mind. And don't be shy about offering your own pieces.

Do my work for me.

Ron

Philadelphia: "A Prayer For Owen Meany"

2006-09-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Probably too big a cast for PT, but I sure do love the novel. Hmmm...

A Prayer for Owen Meany
Sep 14 - Oct 15
A Novel by John Irving
Adapted by Simon Bent
Directed by Terrence J. Nolen
On the Haas Stage, Arden Theatre, Philadelphia
The acclaimed adaptation of John Irving’s beloved novel

Arden Theatre Company will kick off the 2006/2007 season with the Philadelphia premiere of A Prayer for Owen Meany, adapted from the beloved, bestselling novel by celebrated author John Irving (The World According to Garp, The Cider House Rules). Owen Meany is an unusually small child with a striking voice who considers himself an instrument of God. When he accidentally kills his friend’s mother in 1950s New Hampshire, the two boys are forever linked as they search for truth in a provocative dark comedy of friendship, faith and destiny. Published in 1989, the novel A Prayer for Owen Meany became an international phenomenon among readers and critics, hailed by Time as “vintage Irving… a boisterous cast, a spirited story” and “roomy, intelligent, exhilarating… Dickensian in scope” by the Los Angeles Times Book Review. After the play’s premiere at the Royal National Theatre in London, the Evening Standard raved: “Simon Bent's adaptation is a triumph of elegant compression..[a] beautiful recreation for the stage of John Irving's epic American novel.” The Arden’s production features some of Philadelphia’s most distinguished actors, including Ian Merrill Peakes, Scott Greer, Mary Martello, Anthony Lawton, Paul L. Nolan, Karen Peakes, Catharine K. Slusar and Maureen Torsney-Weir. Doug Hara—seen on Broadway in “The Boys of Winter” and “Metamorphoses”—will bring to life the indelible character of Owen Meany. The show is directed by Arden Theatre Company’s Producing Artistic Director and co-founder, Terrence J. Nolen.

Goode, Chiarelli, Rowe at HITCHHIKER L.A. Opening

2006-09-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles Premiere
HITCHHIKER

Jason Goode is a Regent alum who's been turning his attention to stage (you may have seen him on our stage in the Stones Throw production of MATCH a couple seasons back) and, even more, to film. Last year our recently-departed and much-missed Gillian Rowe worked as AD (Assistant Director, dontcha know) and co-storyboard artist on Jason's short film HITCHHIKER, which starred Gina Chiarelli.

The film premiered at the Los Angeles International Short Film Festival on September 12th and was very well received, with Gina, Gillian and Jason all in attendance. Wish I could have been there!

HITCHIKER will make its Canadian debut at the Calgary International Film Festival on September 28th, 6:30pm at the Globe Theatre.

ANON NO MORE! Kokotailo, Chy, Plitt Honoured

2006-09-21T09:16:00.000-07:00

You saw Lori Kokotailo as the youngest daughter in HUNGRY SEASON, as the actress Kate Terry in A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR, and playing Beatrice in the Stones Throw / Emerging Artist showcase production LESS ADO ABOUT NOTHING. The girl's got range! And Chy was marvelous as Martha in HUNGRY SEASON, as the farm wife in CHICKENS, her long history at Pacific Theatre going right back to INTO AN EMPTY ROOM and both stagings of DREAMS OF KINGS & CARPENTERS.

Both Lori and Chy have been nominated as Best Actress for comic performances in locally-lensed short films, SUPER-ANON and SARCASM-ANON respectively. SUPER-ANON (which won a Significant Achievement Award for Ensemble Acting and the Best Film Award in the REEL FAST 48 Hour Film Festival) recieved two other nominations as well at the CANWEST COMEDY FEST, for Best Film and Best Actor (Terry Hayman). Additional information on SUPER-ANON is available at http://www.superanon.com

And here's one that slipped by in the dog days of summer: SUPER-ANON director Steve Plitt won huge accolades at the recent International Christian Visual Media Conference in Denver, for THE FANNY CROSBY STORY, a docudrama he wrote and directed about the blind hymn writer who penned more than ten thousand hymns. ("Tell them what he won, Ron...")

Silver crown award for Best Drama under $250K
Silver crown award for Best Screenplay
Gold crown award for Best Documentary over $50K
Gold crown award for Best Picture

Extraordinary! Congrats, Steve! Congrats all.

Lori Kokotailo & Chy, Best Actress nominations!

2006-09-20T20:16:00.000-07:00

Lori Kokotailo and Chy honoured at
VANCOUVER COMEDY FEST AWARDS

You saw Lori as the youngest daughter in HUNGRY SEASON, as the actress Kate Terry in A BRIGHT PARTICULAR STAR, and playing Beatrice in the Stones Throw / Emerging Artist showcase production LESS ADO ABOUT NOTHING - the girl's got range! Chy was marvelous as Martha in HUNGRY SEASON, as the farm wife in CHICKENS, and her long history at Pacific Theatre goes right back to INTO AN EMPTY ROOM and both stagings of DREAMS OF KINGS & CARPENTERS.

Both Lori and Chy have been nominated as Best Actress for comic performances in locally-lensed short films, SUPER-ANON and SARCASM-ANON respectively. SUPER-ANON (which won a Significant Achievement Award for Ensemble Acting and the Best Film Award in the REEL FAST 48 Hour Film Festival) recieved two other nominations as well at the CANWEST COMEDY FEST, for Best Film and Best Actor (Terry Hayman). Additional information on SUPER-ANON is available at http://www.superanon.com

Congratulations!

Fringe: Maria Denholme's "Moxie"

2006-09-09T10:16:00.000-07:00

Yup, she's got moxie alright. Maria is Pacific Theatre's uber-volunteer. From serving on our board of directors to catering our opening night receptions to stage managing shows to acting as PT cheerleader anywhere and everywhere (you should see her with a pom pom!), Maria's done it all at Pacific Theatre. (Well, you've never seen her onstage. Nor will you. She flat out refuses.)

Anyhow, she's stage managing a Fringe show you may want to check out;

MOXIE: A Comedy
by Jason Patrick Rothery
Join us for this macabre comedic fable. Two inmates try to keep from being eaten alive in a morally bankrupt future prison system. Sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how often you do the right thing, you still end up as next morning's breakfast. Moxie is a ruthless social satire addressing our cutthroat corporate culture; a dystopian absurdist comedy about the prisons we're born into, and those we create for ourselves. Warning! Coarse Language, Questionable Morals, and Adult Subject Matter. You won't want to miss this.
Waterfront Theatre Sept 7 – 17, 2006
Thursday Sept 7 7:00pm
Saturday Sept 9 11:15pm
Sunday Sept 10 1:15pm
Wednesday Sept 13 8:15pm
Saturday Sept 16 7:00pm
Sunday Sept 17 5:00pm

Other Fringe shows are blurbed elsewhere in the PT blog, and over at the Soul Food Vancouver blog

New York: "Creation: A Clown Show!"

2006-09-07T18:12:00.000-07:00

Doesn't this look swell? Wonder if this guy travels...

God Speaks, and a Clown Answers, in 'Creation: A Clown Show!"
New York Times review by Anita Gates, August 11 2006

Two things could but shouldn’t hold adults back from seeing “Creation: A Clown Show!,” which opened last night at Theater Five. While the events take place during the seven days in which the Bible says God created the world, there is nothing narrowly religious about it. Evolutionists who welcome metaphor will be amused. And though the word “clown” is in the title, it doesn’t mean Ringling Brothers style.

The only circuslike element of Lucas Caleb Rooney’s wardrobe is a red rubber nose. But as an accessory to his patched jacket, ragged shorts, bow tie, horizontally striped red knee socks and the long-stemmed daisy in his lapel, it doesn’t really stand out.

Mr. Rooney plays a little boy named Timmy who stumbles into a situation in which he has to act out the Creation as instructed by the booming offstage voice of God (Samuel Stricklen). It’s tough. How do you divide the light from the darkness? And what the heck is a firmament?

It gets tougher and funnier. On the fifth day God creates life in the seas. Timmy pretends to be a whale and ends up doing a condensed version of “Moby-Dick.” The real trouble comes later in the fifth day when God creates “winged fowl.” The act becomes literally gooey when Timmy releases what he thinks is a little bird into the air. (Oops, it was a raw egg.) When he hatches a dozen adorable yellow marshmallow Peeps, things get even uglier for Timmy, who disobeys God and ends up screaming, “I hate myself!”

Mr. Rooney has been compared to Red Skelton, and he does exhibit Skelton’s combination of goofiness and heartwarming sweetness. But his innocence is even more childlike. Near the beginning, when Timmy settles into the audience thinking he is going to see a show rather than be one, Mr. Rooney, directed by Orlando Pabotoy (with whom he conceived the production), seems more like Will Ferrell in the movie “Elf.”

But his childlike post-Creation persona is all his own, especially when he puts his message in perspective with a poignant final visual. However it got here, he demonstrates, life on earth was a swell idea. It would be the crime of all crimes to destroy it.

“Creation: A Clown Show!” continues through Sept. 10 at Theater Five, 311 West 43rd Street, Clinton, (212) 868-4444.

(Thanks, Diane!)

Ian Farthing tours with "Shear Madness"

2006-09-07T17:48:00.000-07:00

If you know Pacific Theatre you know Ian Farthing. You've seen him in PT shows like THE FOREIGNER, LETTICE & LOVAGE and THE CLEARING, and in THE GLASS MENAGERIE, an Equity Co-op he produced as a guest production in our 2003/2004 season. He also heads up our Lit Squad, overseeing the reading of new plays that come our way. Also one of my Artistic Advisors to the board. Heck, Ian is Pacific Theatre! (Now, Ron. You're getting carried away again...)

Anyhow, Ian also works a lot around town - Arts Club, Mad Duck, etc. - and he's about to go into rehearsals for the Arts Club touring production of the inventive, entertaining and just-plain-silly SHEAR MADNESS. Kind of cool. Years ago, Paul Muir brought the script to our attention as a possible PT side-light, but rights were tricky, etc, etc. Anyhow, it's fun to see a PT stamp on the show, now that it's found a BC home!

SHEAR MADNESS
by Marilyn Abrams and Bruce Jordan
Based on Scherenschnitt, by Paul Portner

A hilarious whodunit

It’s like Clue in a hair salon! The longest-running non-musical play in American history, Shear Madness is the perfect whodunit. With the audience’s investigative and observational powers to aid them, two undercover cops and an outrageous cast of characters put on a different mystery every night. It’s the funniest show you’ll see this year.

“A finely timed machine of comedy” ~ Peter Birnie, Vancouver Sun

“It's a helluva lot of fun” ~ Jerry Wasserman, The Province

“It’s the funniest, fastest couple of hours you'll spend laughing” ~ Jo Ledingham, Vancouver Courier

TOUR SCHEDULE:

North Vancouver
Capilano College Performing Arts Theatre
• 604.990.7810
Oct. 3 – 4, 2006

Burnaby
Shadbolt Centre for the Arts
• 604.205.3000
Oct. 5 – 7, 2006

Sidney
Mary Winspear Centre at Sanscha
• 250.656.0275
Oct. 9 – 10, 2006

Duncan
Cowichan Theatre
• 250.748.7529
Oct. 11, 2006

West Vancouver
Kay Meek Centre
• 604.913.3634
Oct. 12, 2006

Surrey
Surrey Arts Centre
• 604.501.5566
Oct. 13 – 28, 2006

Coquitlam
Evergreen Cultural Centre
• 604.927.6555
Oct. 31 – Nov. 4, 2006

Maple Ridge
The ACT Maple Ridge Arts Centre & Theatre
• 604.476.2787
Nov. 5 – 6, 2006

Mission
Clarke Foundation Theatre
• 604.820.3961
Nov. 7 – 8, 2006

Vernon
Vernon and District Performing Arts Centre
• 250.549.SHOW (7469)
Nov. 11, 2006

Fringe: Frank Nickel "Caught In The Act!"

2006-09-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

We've got some new folks at Pacific Theatre this fall, one of whom is Frank Nickel. He's our new production manager, also tackling whatever other areas he darn well feels like. He'll be producing our SIDE SHOW: NIGHT AT THE IMPROV, working with Dan Amos on financial management, helping our computers stay healthy and all kinds of good stuff.

Fact is, the boy's also an actor! An SFU grad and founding member of Genus Theatre. Who happen to have a wild and wacky show (utterly without redeeming social value, I'm hoping) in The Fringe.

Here's their data. Check it out!

*

Genus Proudly Presents our Fringe Festival debut...
CAUGHT IN THE ACT!

Have you ever...

Been the victim of a particularly embarrassing restaurant birthday song?

Had to talk your way out of getting arrested?

Been brutally snubbed by a yuppy hostess at a dinner party?

Witnessed a horrible accident and just had to stay and see how it all
turned out?

If so, this is the show for you!

Genus Theatre Company invites its faithful following to enjoy the
spectacle as it looses its Fringe Fest virginity with its fifth
original production. Caught in the Act explores the lurking
exhibitionist in us all. It is an examination and celebration of all
those moments where theatre and the pedestrian collide. Some of us
will do whatever it takes to get noticed. Caught in the Act presents
a sometimes hilarious, often uncomfortable voyeuristic glimpse in the
mirror. Be sure to catch this showcase of all of life's long running,
never billed, but always entertaining performances.

THE DETAILS
=======================================
Georgia Straight Stage 4 - The Waterfront Theatre
Fri. Sep 8, 11:00 PM
Sat. Sep 9, 9:00 PM
Tue. Sep 12, 5:15 PM
Wed. Sep 13, 10:15 PM
Fri. Sep 15, 5:00 PM
Sun. Sep 17, 9:00 PM

Tickets for the Vancouver Fringe are $10 and can be purchased by
contacting Festival Box Office by phoning 604-257-0366, online at
www.festivalboxoffice.com, or at the door on the day of the show.

For more details or to view a trailer for the show visit our website
www.genustheatre.com
=======================================
Want to know what Victoria Fringe audience members have been saying
about Caught in the Act? Read on!

"Hilarious, bizarre, extravagant and uniquely able to tap into my funny
bone."

"I laughed - hard, so hard in fact that I cried - more than once!
They're quirky, clever and downright frivolous."

"I must put this show in my top five. The comedy is sharp, the writing
is tight and the film pieces are a great way of fleshing out the
show."

To read more audience reviews visit www.victoriafringe.com and click
on the "CRAIG ONLINE" newspaper icon in the green sidebar.

We hope you can join us for this newest Genus concoction.
Good times and laughter be with you.

Genus Theatre
www.genustheatre.com

Kirsten Waldschmidt, Podcast Preacher

2006-09-04T17:17:00.000-07:00

Actor / designer / director / publicist / great human being Steve Waldschmidt departed from Pacific Theatre this summer (okay, scratch the part about "great human being") with the excuse that his wife Kirsten had landed her dream job, pastoring at a Covenant church in Strathmore, Alberta.

I guess he was telling the truth. We have corroborating evidence.

My wife's mom is also a Covenanter. (Sounds vaguely cult-like, doesn't it? Like an evangelical version of the Freemasons or something, people meeting under cover of night to sign death pacts in blood, or possibly grape juice. Actually, they're just a bunch of nice Swedes and Germans who used to be Lutherans, only they wanted to have Bible studies in their living rooms and apparently that was a problem. Something like that. Over such controversies are schisms spawned.) Anyhow, Grandma Eunice sent us a copy of the latest Covenant Companion, partly because there's a regular column on film and she knows her son-in-law is kind of obsessed, and partly because there's an article that mentions... Kirsten Waldschmidt!

Heidi Griepp has a regular "Webwatch" column in the aforementioned periodical, and in August she focused on "Podcasting, Wi-Fi, and the Church: How to plug in to audio resources on the Web." She does a survey of Covenant churches that offer podcasts, and she leads off her list with Hope Community Covenant Church, in noplace other than Strathmore Alberta!

"Hope Community Covenant Church in Strathmore, Alberta, had my favorite sermon, from Kirsten Waldschmidt. The church has a well-designed and easy-to-explore website. You can find their podcast on their homepage and on iTunes."

Unfortunately, a quick trip to the HopeComCovenChu site indicates that they only archive the previous month's sermons, so the kudoed Kirstencast is not to be had. And while iTunes features a surfeit of Hope Community Church podcasts, and even one from a Hope Covenant Church, none appear to issue forth from Strathmore, or feature the dulcet tones of Ms Waldschmidt. Sigh. If you can't trust The Covenant Companion, who can you trust?

So maybe it's all a big fraud after all. Maybe Steve had other reasons for fleeing Pacific Theatre...

Fringe: Frangione Directs "64 And No More Lies"

2006-09-04T13:41:00.000-07:00

A note from Lucia Frangione about a one-woman-show she's directing in the Fringe Festival, which just happens to be performed at the Pacific Theatre space...

64 And No More Lies

Lucia writes; "This show is written and performed by a lovely woman in her sixties: Susan Freedman. I think she's a witty writer and stabs down a day in the life of a age demographic not often explored. She's toured two previous shows at the Fringes across Canada and the States and has been pick of the fringe a few times. It's a charming little one woman show, great to bring Mom to in particular! "More laughs about therapy, family, diets, and facing the truth, in the third of Susan's acclaimed comedies about growing older and growing up.""

Fri. Sept 8, 9:30pm
Sun Sept 10, 7pm
Tues Sept 12, 8:30pm
Wed. Sept 13, 10:15pm
Sat. Sept. 16, 2:30pm
Sun Sept 17, 1:45pm

Fringe: "Diary of Adam & Eve" with Damon Calderwood

2006-09-04T11:41:00.000-07:00

This FRINGE note just in from Damon Calderwood, who was THE ELEPHANT MAN in the Five Bob Equity Co-op production on the PT stage last fall (and a long-time PT artist). He writes...

"I'm about to play the world's first man in a wonderfully charming musical called The Diary of Adam and Eve. I hope you can come see it--it's about 45 minutes long, and it was written by the same guys that wrote my favorite musical of all time...Fiddler on the Roof. I hope you can see this whimsical musical, and I look forward to hearing from you. (no ribbing, please...I'm still sore)."

Little Apple Productions Equity Co-op's
THE DIARY OF ADAM AND EVE
Carousel Theatre (1411 Cartwright Street, Granville Island--across from the Waterfront Theatre)
Thu Sep 7, 7pm
Sat Sep 9, 4:30pm
Sun Sep 10, 2:45pm
Mon Sep 1, 7pm
Wed Sep 13, 7pm
Thu Sep 14, 7:45pm
Fri Sep 15, 7pm
Sat Sep 16, 4:30pm
Sun Sep 17, 4:30pm
Tickets: 604 257-0366 / 1 888 777-0366 / www.festivalboxoffice.com
Or get them at the door--there are about 60 seats for each show.

First produced on Broadway in 1966, starring Alan Alda and Barbara Harris, this charming and successful musical was written by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, of Fiddler on the Roof and She Loves Me fame. Based on the famous Mark Twain book, The Diaries of Adam and Eve, it follows the story of Adam and Eve from creation through to their eviction from the garden of Eden and beyond-all with a humorous yet gentle look at male/female relationships and differences.

Adam: Damon Calderwood
Eve: Shawna Parry
Snake: Leon Willey

Sep 5-16: "Peer Gynt" with Craig Erickson, Donald Adams

2006-09-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

Blackbird Theatre
PEER GYNT
Henrik Ibsen, translated/adapted by Errol Durbach
Vancouver East Cultural Centre
Pay-what-you-can preview Sep 5, runs Sep 6–16

Here's what Craig Erickson says: "Big, theatrical, with Kierkegarde, trolls and strange fallen angels. Excellent translation of Ibsen's classic."

You saw Craig in a memorable turn on the PT stage when he played the younger preacher in GOD'S MAN IN TEXAS a couple seasons back, and most recently in this spring's PRODIGAL SON. You'll see him opposite Alexa Dubreuil in our Canadian premiere of Craig Wright's edgy GRACE next March. On other stages, he got a Jessie nod for his work in Mad Duck's JULIUS CAESAR, and did a fine turn as Stanley in a handsome production of STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE by Chemainus Theatre, our sister company on Vancouver Island.

Right now Craig is playing the young version of the title character, with Donald Adams (his prodigal father in the aforementioned PRODIGAL SON) as the not-quite-as-young-but-I'm-sure-still-youthful-manly-and-virile version of that same character, in Blackbird Theatre's PEER GYNT. The one-year-old company aims to cast Vancouver's best actors in classics of the theatrical repertoire: an exquisite debut production last fall of Schiller's little-seen MARY STUART was followed by Harold Pinter's THE BIRTHDAY PARTY featuring with our own Anthony Ingram as the not-so-lucky birthday boy (great photos of both productions at the Blackbird website).

Here's what the 'birds say about their latest: "Ibsen’s Peer Gynt is a comic and dramatic feast for the mind and heart, a great folk epic with a large cast of characters, and a fantastic voyage around and through to the centre of man’s being. Peer’s picaresque adventures have enchanted audiences for more than a century. Blackbird Theatre presents the professional Vancouver premiere of a brilliant new translation and adaptation by Errol Durbach that raises questions about modern life. Come discover a Peer Gynt for the new millennium."

Wicker Man, Prodigal Son, Daisy, Bard

2006-09-02T08:15:00.000-07:00

Moonlighter that I am, I just finished reviewing Neil LaBute's THE WICKER MAN for Christianity Today Movies, a movie that's neither as bad as critics say it is nor as good as it could have been. I mention that here only because one of the chief pleasures of seeing the film was a brief glimpse of Christine Willes.

Christine does lovely work in the film: as briefly as she's on camera, she establishes a real screen presence. When the policeman arrives on Summersisle - Bowen Island, if I'm not mistaken - he first meets three women and asks them about the missing child. Christine is one of them, Sister Violet. You'll recognize her if you saw PRODIGAL SON at Pacific Theatre this spring, in which she played the mother.

I consider Christine's performance in that show one of the absolute finest on our stage in 22 seasons. Extraordinary commitment, embodying such a wide span of age, funny, heart-breaking, true. We've talked about maybe doing DRIVING MISS DAISY, with Christine opposite Tom Pickett. Wouldn't that be something to experience! In our intimate space? Who knows, maybe in 2007-2008...

By the way, there are still a handful of performances of TROILUS & CRESSIDA at Bard On The Beach, a production which thrilled me, and which has stayed vividly in my mind all summer. It transposes the Trojan Wars to the American Civil War to great effect: I was reminded that there are places in the South that linguists claim most closely resemble the way the English language was spoken in Elizabethan England, and hearing the way Shakespeare's language sings when played south of the Mason-Dixon line, I can't help but think there's something to that.

At any rate, Tom Pickett is remarkable in T&C, with a kind of physical extension I've never before seen him have the opportunity to explore. It's a gutsy, detailed, virtuoso turn: both he and Alan Gray take the premise and make something astonishing of it, the standouts in a very strong cast. (Tom Pickett has played in MASTER HAROLD... & THE BOYS, TENT MEETING, PLAYLAND, HOSPITALITY SUITE and SHADOWLANDS at Pacific Theatre, as well as various roles at many other Vancouver area theatres.)

Also at Bard, a very effective MEASURE FOR MEASURE in a WW2-ish Italian fascist setting. Karen Rae and Kyle Rideout are wonderful as Isabella and her brother, in another very strong cast. Karen and Kyle were together in HALO, and you've also seen Kyle on the PT stage in BEGGARS AT THE WATERS OF IMMORTALITY (Anthony Ingram's Yeats triple-feature) and THE FARNDALE CHRISTMAS CAROL, for which he snagged a Jessie.

"The Nibroc Trilogy" by Arlene Hutton

2006-09-02T08:07:00.000-07:00

Remember Krista Knutsen and Adam Bergquist, and the marvelous work they did for director Angela Konrad in LAST TRAIN TO NIBROC? Colin Thomas wrote (and I paraphrase) "A year ago, they were Pacific Theatre apprentices: this year, they look a lot like stars." And I could only agree.

Turns out that play is only the first installment in a trilogy of plays about those same two characters. Reading about the complete cycle in IMAGE Journal's "Update" email, the gears begin to turn...

Arlene Hutton’s Nibroc Trilogy

Arlene Hutton is a playwright who knows how to leave her characters some breathing room. Author of the acclaimed plays As it is in Heaven and the three installments of the Nibroc Trilogy—Last Train to Nibroc (2000), See Rock City (2005), and Gulf View Drive, premiering next weekend in Los Angeles—Hutton deals in stories that peer into the delicate intertwining of relationships, examining without prying them apart. Her secret? Developing characters who speak for themselves—not as the playwright’s mouthpiece. The result is an entrance into the lives of real people, full-bodied and refreshingly free of caricature.

Audiences will have the unprecedented chance to see all three plays of the Nibroc Trilogy, together for the first time in honor of Gulf View Drive's debut, at the Actor’s Co-op in L.A. on September 8. Nibroc tells the story of Raleigh and May, two young Kentuckians who fumble into love with each other after meeting on a train during WWII, then regroup to face the demons of their times—as well as some of their own.

A seasoned people watcher, Hutton is skilled at observing her characters manage the tectonic shifts of their changing circumstances. Raleigh is forced out of the draft by his epilepsy and restricted from driving, but buoyed by his good nature, is bent on becoming a published writer. May, full of her own grit, trades her dream of mission work for marriage and a rare job as a school principal before losing it when the GIs come home from war. Over the course of the three plays, the young couple find outside demands and their own deepest desires, frustrations, and visions threatening the equilibrium of the marriage—but it’s also the stuff that creates it. In Gulf View Drive, as May and Raleigh face the scars of post-war America, their dialogue finds new rhythms as they search for, in Raleigh’s words, “The chance to do, I don’t know, something, maybe something important. Good.”

The Nibroc Trilogy is a romance and comedy, yes, but it’s also a sharp-eyed look at how a relationship takes root despite odds that feel familiar fifty years later. In the face of the daily threat of estrangement, Hutton reminds us of the possibility of communion.

Arlene Hutton is the Tennessee Williams Fellow in Playwriting for 2005-2006 and Glen Workshop teacher extraordinaire. All three plays of the Nibroc Trilogy will be presented in rotating repertory through Nov. 26. For times and ticket information, call 323.462.8460.

To Aug 12: A Midsummer Night's Dream, New West

2000-07-28T18:55:00.000-07:00

Frank Nickel, Kerry Norris and Stephen Elcheshen have all graced the Pacific Theatre stage over the past years. Well, they've joined forces for a theatrical romp in the park, an outdoor staging of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT'S DREAM at the bandshell of Queen's Park, New Westminster. It runs every Saturday at 2pm and every Sunday at 11am through to August 12.

For more info and all the players in the show, visit the Shadows & Dreams website.

Spot The Star

2000-03-29T10:32:00.000-08:00

Recognize the poster boy for a past PT show? Our once but probably not future king, with certain affinities to Frank Sinatra? Around our office, we think of him as "The IT Boy"? Winging his way back from the front, just in time to see his buddy Craig Erickson in GRACE...

Fab Four | Kevin Brown

1984-05-16T08:32:00.000-07:00

Kevin Brown, California Institute of the Arts (Acting, 1984)

photo date: Dec 31, 2009