P.T.C's New Play Festival in Vancouver June 8 - 13

Playwrights Theatre Centre brings five new plays to Vancouver audiences June 8-13, 2009.

All plays staged at Playwrights Theatre, Granville Island, 3rd floor, 1398 Cartwright Street,Vancouver. B.C.

This year’s plays include: Nigeria, by Martin Gover (Richmond); Stroke, by Marie-Léofeli Barlizo (Montreal), Herr Beckmann’s People by Sally Stubbs (Vancouver), Medicine Boy by Waawaate Fobister (Toronto), and Tear, by Jason Maghanoy (Toronto).

The plays will be presented in intimate staged readings offering audience members a front row seat to watch the process of making new Canadian theatre.

From dance theatre to intergenerational epic to psychological drama, the festival presents engaging content in innovative forms. This year’s playwrights delve into dislocation – from one generation to the next, from one culture to the next. The characters strive for connection, for understanding, and for an identity that acknowledges the past while grappling with contemporary realities. According to PTC Literary Manager Martin Kinch, “The festival reflects the strength of our ongoing development programs, with three of the plays coming straight out of the PTC Playwrights Colony. We’re very excited to share these plays and the process of play-making with our audience.”
All readings are at 8 p.m. The festival schedule:

The festival kicks off with our Playwrights Cabaret, featuring all the playwrights and improvisational band ion Zoo.

The Festival. all shows start 8pm.

Monday June 8 - Playwrights Cabaret with ion Zoo
Readings from works by the festival playwrights, plus special guests. Ion Zoo draws inspiration from a wide range of musical ingredients including bebop, noise, baroque aria, contemporary classical and Weimar cabaret to create an aural feast of haunting melodies, lush atmospheric textures and spontaneous compositions.

Tuesday June 9 - Nigeria by Martin Gover, director: Heidi Taylor
A three-way power struggle, with seduction at its core. What is fiction? What is reality? When our current reality becomes untenable, how do we escape?

Wednesday June 10 - Medicine Boy by Waawaate Fobister, director: Aiyyana Maracle
This new commission explores a young man’s search for his path in contemporary aboriginal society. A dance theatre exploration of medicine training and sexual identity, featuring Byron Chief-Moon.

Thursday June 11 - Stroke by Marie Leofeli Barlizo, director: Martin Kinch
A Filipino-Canadian family wrestles with its past when a traumatic event stirs up family secrets. A father and daughter, connected by their profession, but divided by years of emotional neglect, navigate the uncertain waters of memory and need.

Friday June 12 - Tear by Jason Maghanoy, director: Heidi Taylor
While fulfilling his duty to have his Grandfather’s tombstone made, a young boy is plunged into a world of new experiences. A Filipino homecoming for a Canadian boy.

Saturday June 13 - Herr Beckmann's People by Sally Stubbs, director: Katrina Dunn, dramaturg: Martin Kinch
In 1970’s West Germany, secrets from the Second World War have driven a family apart. Prodigal daughter Anna forces her family to answer tough questions about their past, and in return is faced with moral dilemmas of her own.

All tickets are $10, $5 concession rate. Reservations recommended, and accepted after May 15 by phone: 604-685-6228 ext. 106.

contact email - carol@playwrightstheatre.com

Detailed show descriptions and bios available on our website: www.playwrightstheatre.com.

Nigeria

(A Staged Reading)










Tuesday June 9th. 8pm at the New Play festival
Granville Island

Written By: Martin Gover
Director: Heidi Taylor


Featuring:

Todd Thomson as Peter

Carmen Aguirre as Joan

Medina Hahn as Kris


Vague dreams of Africa real and unreal.

A three-way power struggle, with seduction at its core. What is fiction? What is reality? When our current reality becomes untenable, how do we escape?


EXTRACT SCENE TWO.

JOAN Peter has... a way about him.

KRIS He does have -

JOAN Don’t you? Magic.

PETER Well I -

JOAN He is remarkable in some ways.

KRIS I noticed the energy, the -

JOAN But then not in others.

PETER(to Kris) Joan and I go way back.

KRIS Well yes...I see that…

JOAN Way back.

Pause

KRIS So..really...a healing?

JOAN An event.

KRIS Ok...but ...how? I mean...how was it? Was it…I don’t know – amazing?

Pause

JOAN Peter?

PETER What?

JOAN How was it?

Beat

PETER A nightmare.

For more information about this play and other great
plays in the festival go to:
http://ptcfest.blogspot.com/
or
http://www.playwrightstheatre.com/news.php?newsid=82

Herr Beckmann's People: June 13, 8 pm,

Herr Beckmann's People,

Saturday, June 13, 8 pm,on Granville Island, at the New Play Festival

Directed by: Katrina Dunn

Dramaturg: Martin Kinch

Written by Sally Stubbs



Cast:

Stephanie Belding as Anna

Christine Willis as Clara

David Bloom as Rainer

Daniel Arnold as Klaus

Donna White as Frau Schmidt


When Anna was a little girl in Germany her mother was a famous concert pianist and her father was an officer in the SS.

Thirty years later Anna is a painter in Victoria, BC. Hounded by un reconciled memories and unsolved mysteries, she returns to her childhood home in Munich to confront the mother she has not seen for two decades. Herr Beckmann's People is interpreted through the haunted lens of Anna's paintings and her mother's music.

The play confronts the murky history of a family and a nation with compassion and senstivity.

For more Information about The New Play Festival go to: -

link http://ptc.blogfest.com

or the PTC website click here

About The Playwrights Theatre Centre

Playwrights Theatre Centre (PTC) is a Vancouver based new play development centre dedicated to the encouragement and expression of the Canadian voice on the stage.

Since its inception in 1970, more than 5000 new Canadian plays have passed through Playwrights Theatre Centre. More than 600 plays have been showcased – in workshops, public staged readings, and full productions – many from such prominent award-winning playwrights as Gordon Armstrong, Aaron Bushkowsky, Sally Clark, Marie Clements, Tom Cone, Dennis Foon, Margaret Hollingsworth, Kevin Kerr, David King, W.P. Kinsella, Betty Lambert, John Lazarus, Michael Lewis MacLennan, Eric Nicol, Kathleen Oliver, Morris Panych, Sheldon Rosen, Vern Thiessen, Charles Tidler, Ian Weir, and Guillermo Verdecchia. Plays developed at Playwrights Theatre Centre have gone on to win the Governor General’s Award for Drama, The Chalmers Award, as well as countless regional theatre awards including, among others, Vancouver’s Jessie Richardson Award and Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award.

Founded as the New Play Centre in 1970 by Sheila Neville and Douglas Bankson, PTC initially began as a script critique service with a mandate to “encourage and develop dramatic writing in British Columbia”. With the hiring of its first managing and artistic director, Pamela Hawthorn, in 1972 the mandate was broadened and became an active producing theatre company dedicated to the production and presentation of new works.

Under Ms. Hawthorn’s direction the New Play Centre premiered such plays as Herringbone by Tom Cone, Ned and Jack by Sheldon Rosen, Under the Skin by Betty Lambert, Harbour Houseby David King, and Dreaming and Duelling by John and Joa Lazarus among other major Canadian plays.

In 1995, under the direction of Artistic Director Kim Selody, The New Play Centre merged with The Betty Lambert Society to become Playwrights Theatre Centre and in 1999, under the leadership of Chapelle Jaffe, PTC acquired a permanent home complete with offices, library, writer’s room and a well-equipped 85-seat studio, on Vancouver’s Granville Island.

Throughout the year, PTC reads and reports on 100+ new scripts and holds in-house readings and workshops of more than 30; offers a number of writing programs to its members including New Eyes/New Voices, a development program for early career dramaturgs; and presents several public readings and cabarets. In early May, PTC mounts the annual Vancouver New Play Festival on Granville Island which presents an exciting variety of workshop productions, cabarets, seminars, and panel discussions.

Under current Executive Director/Literary Manager, Martin Kinch, PTC works with individual playwrights from across the country and in partnership with many of BC and Canada’s foremost theatre companies. With the Canadian Play Project, PTC has also begun to fill a vital role in the dissemination of Canadian work to new plays for producers, directors and literary managers around the world. You can find out more about the Canadian Play Project elsewhere on this web-site.