The Wine Bar at The Cultch
1895 Venables Street, Vancouver
 

Tucked away on the corner of Venables Street and Victorian Drive, a block east of  buzzing Commercial Drive, the creaky old Vancouver East Cultural Theatre had a quaint charm for theatre lovers despite its uncomfortable seats and awkwardly located washrooms.  Originally an old abandoned church that was developed into a theatre space some thirty-seven years ago, the facility suffered from structural and technical limitations and uncomfortable working conditions for casts and crews and has now been extensively renovated.

I had seen several shows in the new and smaller VanCity Culture Lab which opened towards the end of 2008 but until now had not seen the refurbished main Historic Theatre. After picking up our tickets for Best Before we decided to await the start of the show in the Wine bar - what a pleasant surprise.  It is a delightful spot with comfortable bar stools placed around about 10 raised bar tables.

The MicroTheatre Series :
At The Cultch (1895 Venables)
1 to 6 Feb, 2010

1) Etiquette - A Rotozaza production (UK)
2) You & The Moon - The Only Animal (Vancouver, BC)
I3) Intimate History - An Untied Artists production (UK)

Vancouver, BC:  Three cheers for the new Wine Bar  at The Cultch. The Olympic road-closures are at the stage where part of Pacific Boulevard and both the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts are closed to traffic so to get from my place anywhere involves ferreting out new routes.  To make sure we were in time for our Micro-Theatre adventure, we set off early along the E. Hastings route to Commercial. Although until just beyond Main Street traffic moved at a snail's pace, after that the pace picked up and we were actually at The Cultch with a good half an hour to spare after collecting our tickets. So we settled down comfortably in the Wine Bar to enjoy a glass of wine while we waited to be called for our show.

The Passion Project
Director/Creator   Reid Farrington
Pacific Theatre and the PuSh Festival
Pacific Theatre
an 27 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  When I initially read the description of The Passion Project as "video art installation- meets theatre" I wasn't sure what to think about it other than that it would be novel and different. After seeing it, I concluded that think is the wrong word. It is more a sensory experience than a cognitive experience.  And what on earth do I mean by that?  Let me try and articulate my experience.

Arriving somewhat early, as usual, I await the start of the show in the lobby of the theatre. A suggestion of what is to come is shown by three sets of grainy black and white images projected onto a sackcloth screen. As more people arrive we are taken round to the back entrance of the theatre and told that we should wander around during the performance for an interactive experience.

The theatre space has been reconfigured and some rows of seats removed. There is a 10 x 10 square delineated by rows of panel with loops of ropes hanging overhead. Around the square there is room for the audience to walk. The lit set is quite striking. The ropes and sack-cloth screens evoke a sense of medieval times; the demarcated space, a sense of confinement.

Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
A new version by Tom Stoppard
Directed by Victor Vasuta
United Players of Vancouver
Jericho Arts Centre
Jan 22 to Feb 14, 2010

Vancouver, BC: I really enjoyed United Player's production of Anton Chekhov's Ivanov, although I did find myself wanting to hand Nickolay Ivanov a strong dose of some psychotropic  medication and a referral to a psychotherapist. But that's the infuriatingly hapless self-absorbed character that Chekhov created.

In the title role, Noel Johansen showed us a  man who has lost his way in every aspect of his world - his marriage, his work and his finances. Married to the ailing Anna (Tamara McCarthy), whose wealthy parents disowned her when she converted from Judaism to marry him, Ivanov has "fallen out of  love"  with Anna. He leaves her at home each evening while he goes to  visit the  Lebedevs,  the affable Pavel (Dave Campbell) and his  wife Zinaida (Christine Ianetta). Zinaida is a wealthy moneylender to whom Ivanov is severely in debt. And then there is Sasha.

Best Before
by Rimini Protokoll (Helgard Haug  & Stefan Kaegil)
The Cultch, PuSh Festival and Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
The Cultch
Jan 29 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  As a computer-nerd/technophile of long-standing I was intrigued by the concept of taking the multi-player video game concept into the theatre and eagerly anticipated the experience of my personal avatar interacting with some 200 other avatars to conjure up  a new society in BestLand.

Best Before, an innovative  audience interactive production was developed for the PuSh Festival by Helgard Haug  & Stefan Kaegil of Rimini Protokoll, an  experimental theatre company based in Germany, working with local playwright/dramaturg, Tim Carlson.  Rimini Protokoll create  novel forms of "reality" theatre, casting non-professional actors for their "theatre of experts" projects  and often employing technology as a form of equal partner in the work.  For example for  Best before, as well as the usual team of set, video, sound and light designers, the "backstage" or "offline" development team included a computer game designer, character animator, and programmer

Nevermore - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe
Writer, Composer, Director  Jonathan Christenson
Production Designer Bretta Gerecke
Choreographer Laura Krewski
Sound Designer Wade  Staples
A Catalyst Theatre production presented with the:-
Arts Club Theatre Company, Cultch, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival,  Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad
Arts Club Granville Island Stage
Jan 21 to Feb 6, 2010

Vancouver, BC:  Wow, they just keep coming. One stunning show after another. I just love the cornucopia of art that is spilling out all over my beloved  city of Vancouver during the Cultural Olympiad. Nevermore is  another superb production not to be missed. The visual aspects  are  spectacular, the music haunting and the effect is strangely disturbing and other-worldly.

As you take your seat, you see a  bank of panels on an otherwise bare stage and think minimalism and simplicity. But these panels will confound your imagination and be transformed by brilliant lighting into transparent moving screens behind and through which strange characters move.  Clad in strikingly geometric and oddly shaped black and white costumes, coloured by red, blue and purple lights, these characters inhabit two bizarre worlds, the imagined "real" world of Edgar Allan  Poe's bitter life and those equally dark and bitter worlds created in his stories and poems.

Sõ  Percussion plays Steve Reich and David Lang
Push Festival and Music on Main
Heritage Hall
Jan 24 and 25, 2010

Vancouver BC: My insanely busy life living and writing on theatre, food, travel, and of course dance - the doing of it , not the writing about it, leaves me little time to go to music events but when I read about Sõ Percussion in the PuSh brochure, I could not resist going to this performance.  Rhythm is what my life's about at the moment - I feel the beat - all the time. Maybe a different kind of beat. I'm talking samba, chachacha, waltz, tango but rhythm trumps melody when dance and dance music plays all the time when I am at thome.  Since I had no idea what the range of percussion music would encompass, this would be an opportunity for me to learn something new. So, for any of you who, like me, know painfully little about this subject, I did some pre-event research and spent some fascinating time reading and listening at the websites of So Percussion , Steve Reich and David Lang.

The Show Must Go On
by Jérôme Bel

SFU Woodwards and The Dance Centre
Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at SFU
Jan 20 to 23rd, 2010

I was especially looking forward to going to see this show  because I anticipated that for several reasons it would be a bit of an adventure . Firstly this would be the first production I would see in the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre in the Simon Fraser University complex, newly built on the old Woodwards site. As it turned out it is still so new that I was directed by a security man to an entrance to the theatre complex through a gap in the construction fencing that still surrounds much of the area.

The second reason was that instead of driving my car I planned to take the Canada Line up to Waterfront and walk along West Hastings to the theatre, checking out a Salsa Studio on the way. I can just hear the groans of "what's the big deal, taking transit" but I was going by myself to this show, and for me, walking alone late at night in what is not as yet a very desirable part of the city, constitutes an adventure.

The Edward Curtis Project by Marie Clements
Directed by Marie Clements and Brenda Leadlay
Presentation House Theatre
Jan 21 to 31, 2010

Photograph Credits: Tim Matheson

Vancouver, BC:  "Obsession and appropriation." 

In a unique and rare conjunction, within a four day period, I saw two newly created theatrical works, dealing with similar themes but approached very differently - Beyond Eden and The Edward Curtis Project. After seeing The Edward Curtis Project, I stayed to hear the talk back session in which members of the cast succinctly summed up the common themes of these plays as "obsession and  appropriation".

Both plays are loosely based on real events surrounding two men, each driven by an obsession. Beyond Eden's Lewis Wilson is an anthropologist/ archeologist bound on preserving cultural history of the Haida by  retrieving and restoring decaying totem poles form a deserted Haida village.  Edward Curtis is a photographer who devotes his life to "documenting" what he calls "The Vanishing Indian." In both cases an argument can be made that as  "the other", i.e. non-Aboriginal, they are engaging in cultural appropriation by "stealing"  Aboriginal  art or icons. And in the case of Curtis, possibly even portraying a self-manufactured cultural image as the real thing.

Beyond Eden by Bruce Ruddell
Music by Bruce Ruddell and Bill Henderson
Directed by Dennis Garnhum
Music Direction by Bill Henderson
Choreographer Jacques Lemay
Fight Director JeanPierre Fournier
Co-produced by Vancouver Playhouse and Theatre Calgary
Jan 16 to Feb 6 th, 2010

Photographs by David Cooper

Vancouver, BC:  Just imagine. You dream  an "impossible dream" for 25 years and finally one exhilarating night, your dream explodes into  reality in a visually and musically stunning production. Beyond Eden had  its world premiere last week on the Vancouver Playhouse stage as part of the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad and it is  a "tour de force".  Bruce Ruddell  and his creative collaborators, cast and crew can truly be proud of how his dream has been actualized.