The Vancouver Fringe Festival, running Sept 8-18 at Granville Island and other satellite venues, features shows with our students and alumni from BFA Acting, BFA Design and Production, MFA Directing and MFA Design and Production. Here are some of our intrepid theatre workers and their shows. Please check the Fringe website for times and location.
Love, Lust and Lace; The Orbweaver; The Girl Who Was Raised by Wolverine; And Bella Sang; Dying City; and Dog at a Feast.
Tickets: https://tickets.vancouverfringe.com/default.aspx
LOVE LUST AND LACE
LOVE, LUST AND LACE
Love, Lust & Lace is an original Commedia Dell’Arte piece co-devised by Gas Pedal Productions and Axis Theatre’s artistic director Chris McGregor. Commedia Dell’Arte is a form of popular Italian street theatre that emerged in the sixteenth century. It is characterized by its use of masks, acrobatics and improvised dialogue. In this production, modern trends are merged into the traditional from. This is manifested through references to pop culture, from the Godfather to Shakespeare, all adding to the hilarity of the show.
Gas Pedal Productions, founded by the graduating UBC BFA Acting class of 2016, is dedicated to pushing boundaries and creating daring new work. The cast, consisting of seven women and one man, explores female empowerment and sexual diversity. In one hilarious scene, the overly hormonal Il Capitano’s warped view of female sexuality is answered by a burlesque dance that confronts his delusions. Cast (all the cast are recent BFA Acting alumni):
Il Magnifico: Parmiss Sehat ; Il Dottore: Mariam Barry; Smeraldina: Selene Rose; Columbina: Elizabeth Willow; Il Capitano: Francis Winter; Pantalone: Meegin Pye; Brighella: Kelsey Ranshaw
Arlecchino: Joylyn Secunda
Creative Team:
Director: Chris McGregor (MFA Directing)
Production Designer: Andrew Pye (BFA Design/Production)
Stage Manager: Benton Neufeld (BFA Design/Production)
Assistant Stage Manager: Tohree Ip (BFA Deesign/Production)
THE ORBWEAVER
THE ORBWEAVER
The Orbweaver is a dark and twisted black comedy/Mexican fairy-tale written by Paula Zelaya Cervantes (UBC’14) that will have its world premiere at the 2016 Vancouver Fringe Festival with a Mexican-Canadian cast and creative team.
Through shadow puppets, story theatre, magic, starlight, and murder, The Orbweaver tells a lively, stirring, unique love story with a touch of Mexico’s light-hearted attitude towards Death.
This fairy-tale gone wrong (really wrong), is about a boy and a girl who fall in love. She loves bright, lively things like candles and starlight. He is Death’s very own personal assistant… Not your usual boy meets girl story.
Originally written in English by emerging Mexican playwright and director, Paula Zelaya Cervantes (BA in Theatre and English Literature), Matthew Willis: Co-producer and Dramaturge (Honours Theatre and Minor in Literature); Produced by Mexican professional production company Once Once Producciones, The Orbweaver features a bilingual cast of Mexican theatre artists: Ana González Bello, winner of the Mexican Theatre Critics’ Association Award (2016); Evan Regueira, resident director of the Mexican production of Gruesome Playground Injuries and Rent: The musical; and Marcos Radosh an actor and playwright whose training combines clown, dance, and physical theatre. The result is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind, intercultural mixture between Canadian and Latin American theatrical narration styles.
AND BELLA SANG WITH US
AND BELLA SANG WITH US
Constables Miller & Harris are hired to deal with ‘the female morality question’. They run smack into societal and family pressures, political corruption, ‘The Lord of the Bawdy Houses’, and the dangerously volatile Bella. Will the two Constables be able to save a young woman from a life on the streets? Will they find their way in a police department and a city not used to women as authority figures? Will running after criminals while wearing floorlength skirts get easier?
And Bella Sang With Us is set in 1912 in the area now known as Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside/Chinatown. Some things have changed, too many have not.
Published by Scirocco Drama, And Bella Sang With Us received the Enbridge/Alberta Theatre Projects Award for an Established playwright.
Written by Sally Stubbs
Directed by Sarah Rodgers (BFA Acting, MFA Directing); with Ian Harmon
Cast: Leanna Brodie, Matt Grinke, Sarah May Redmond (BFA Acting), Sarah Roa (BFA Acting); Sarah Louise Turner, Simon Webb.
Production: Brian Ball-Set, Barbara Clayden-Costume, Kyla Gardiner (BFA Design)- Lighting/TD; Matt Grinke-Piano, Patricia Jiang (Present Student BFA Design/ Production) Stage management; Kenta Nezu ( BFA Design/Production) -Asst. Stage management.
THE GIRL WHO WAS RAISED BY WOLVERINE
THE GIRL WHO WAS RAISED BY WOLVERINE
Written and Directed by Deneh’Cho Thompson.
A dystopic future, resources are depleted, overpopulation is destroying the earth.
A militant government keeps people locked away in individual living quarters as the population continues to grow.
The time of the culling is near. Stephanie, like so many others, has been confined since she was a child. She holds on dearly to the memories of her childhood, her mother and father.
She is isolated and alone – until Wolverine appears.
Cast & Crew: The Girl Who Was Raised by Wolverine features Tai Amy Grauman (BFA Acting Student) as Stephanie, Jessica Hood as actor, John Cook as actor, Pedro Chamale – Production Manager, Kathleen Flaherty: Dramaturge, Lindsay Lachance- (MA Theatre Studies) -Dramaturge, Stefana Fratila – Sound Design and Jenn Wilson- Stage Manager.
DYING CITY
DYING CITY
Aenigma Theatre and the Vancouver Fringe Festival Present
DYING CITY by Christopher Shinn.
Kelly is a young, widowed therapist whose husband, Craig, died while on a tour of duty as a soldier in Iraq the year before. Struggling with her grief and with traumatic memories of the past, she cuts herself off from his side of the family in an attempt to piece together her shattered life and move on. In the present, however, her world is once again thrown into chaos when her brother-in-law, Peter, who is Craig’s Identical Twin, shows up unexpectedly on her doorstep. Thus begins a tense, unsettling interaction as Kelly is forced to
revisit a trauma that she would rather forget, all the while unsure of Peter’s intentions. With Two Actors playing Three Characters, prepare to experience a profoundly moving and unabashedly disquieting meditation of grief, war, politics, and their inevitable effect on the inner core of people.
Tanya Vanan: Producer and director (Honours Theatre and Honours English)
Scott Zechner: Sound and Light designer (BFA Theatre production)
Erica Leduc: Stage Manager (BA Theatre)
Sarah Melo: Set Designer (BFA Theatre production)
Tory Ip: Costume Designer (BFA Theatre production)
Christine Bortolin: starring as Kelly (BFA Theatre acting)
DOG AT A FEAST
DOG AT A FEAST
by Michelle Deines (MFA Creative Writing)
Presented by Bleeding Heart Theatre: A dark comedy, A Dog at a Feast examines the power of the fear of judgement, and how we are all our own worst critics.
Diane is a jaded arts critic who glories in writing bloodthirsty reviews for the shows she thinks are sub-standard—which are most of them.
Maya is an up-and-coming starlet who has been on a string of luck and therefore sees nothing but possibility.
Janet is a veteran of the whole scene who has sees things exactly as they are, and is therefore thoroughly depressed.
Director: Evan Frayne (MFA Directing); Assistant Director: Susie Coodin Sound Design/Composition: Julie Casselman
Stage Management: Megan Lai (MFA Design and Production)
Cast: Alison Kelly, Barbara Tomasic (MFA Directing) and Lisa Goebel
Production Design: Shelby Bushell (BFA Design/Production)
