2010 Gabriola Theatre Festival Press Release
---For immediate release---
Here We Go Again!
2010 Gabriola Theatre Festival
With our recent weather woes, you’ll be pleased to hear that a sure sign of summer is just around the corner.
The Gabriola Theatre Festival proudly announces its 2010 Festival line-up! After a hugely successful inaugural Festival in 2009, we’re back with a program that’s even bigger and better!
Watch for the huge Festival Tent to reappear at Folklife Village from Friday, August 20th through Sunday, August 22nd. With 12 plays, two days of StreetArt, a Kids’ Corner, a full line-up on the Outdoor Stage and the famous Lions’ Pancake Breakfast, our 2010 program promises a fabulous weekend that offers something for every member of the family.
Read all about it at our newly designed website at www.gabriolatheatrefestival.ca, and watch for the Festival Program that will appear in the June 28th issue of the Gabriola Sounder.
Tickets are on sale now at the Artworks coffee bar (cash or cheque only) and via PayPal on the website. Tickets will also be available from the Festival Kiosk in Folklife Village beginning on July 1st.
This year, we’re offering two ticket packages: the Evening Extravaganza package admits you to the 4 evening shows while the Binge Bundle package will get you into 8 fantastic shows. A limited number of these packages is available.
The Gabriola Theatre Festival invites each and every one of you to join us in a summer celebration of theatre and the arts on our lovely Isle of the Arts. Last year, many of our shows sold out, so don’t be disappointed – get your tickets early!
Gabriola Theatre Festival (2nd Annual):
Opens Friday, August 20th in the Festival Tent at Folklife Village
Gabriola Island, British Columbia
Program runs through Sunday, August 22nd
For more information or photos, contact Margy Gilmour, Promotions Coordinator, at margy@shaw.ca , or phone 1-250-247-7865.
Links to 2010 Gabriola Theatre Festival Press Material
The Blessings of the Arts
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EklEFZplypLjWBqskz.shtml
Here we go again! 2010 Gabriola Theatre Festival
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkZZkklFZErTWZMpct.shtml
2nd Annual Gabriola Theatre Festival goes up this Friday night
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EklkpZVkulbeMhuTkw.shtml
Links to 2009 Gabriola Theatre Festival Press Material
Theatre Festival ready to get the “Village bouncing” by Derek Kilbourn July 27, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkulZVZEZADEMPAJCt.shtml
Children’s company making debut at Gabriola Theatre Festival by Derek Kilbourn August 10, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkuAAuuVyAJKEqyKbS.shtml
Gabriola Theatre Festival Schedule August 18, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkVpykkykyGWQJUjgn.shtml
The Goat - an exploration in taboos of love by Derek Kilbourn August 18, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkVpykkypFdHDvJosV.shtml
Some Reckless Abandon - first MaraGold production makes debut at festival By Mara Brenner August 18, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkVpykkVkucfDIyTjb.shtml
The play's the thing by Janina Stajic August 24, 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkVEEZkuAyVNbcfzEo.shtml
Gabriola Theatre Festival “a significant success” by Derek Kilbourn August 24 2009
http://www.soundernews.com/fullstory/EkVEEZkukETGfftare.shtml
Blue is the Water, by Erik de Waal
A review by Charlotte Cameron
South African actor and writer, Erik de Waal, kept us breathless as he closed down the Gabriola Theatre Festival with Blue is the Water. This universal story of an ill-fated, mixed marriage between Eva, a Khoikhoi woman, and her Dutch-settler husband rings as true today as it did in the 1600’s. De Waal is a fabulous actor. In this one-man show we see and hear the heroine and her husband promising each other that together they will be strong. We sense a tragedy.
The poetic story is told on a bare stage, draped with gorgeous cloth which is integral to the play. The cloth is the blue water, an evening gown, a child and a blanket. Erik de Waal, a powerful man, moves lightly on bare feet through swirls of fabric, acting multiple roles, and occasionally narrating. He is the governor and his wife in the castle, and the hyena-like gossips, jealous of Eva’s blue gown, a gift from her now-dead husband. He becomes the man who boxes the ears of Eva’s golden-skinned child, known as the “bastar”. He is three women gossiping even as Eva overhears. We know similar stories of couples worn down by grief and prejudice without travelling back in time, but Blue is the Water brings their sorrow home.
The audience took a big breath at the end of the performance, and thanked Erik de Waal for his gift of a story which will continue to resonate with us. He will carry home memories of his warm Gabriola reception. Wrapped in a swathe of shimmering, blue fabric will be a blown-glass objet d’art, which he bought at StreetArt.
A Review by Sadie Balance
Robin Hood is an extremely entertaining piece which offers laughs as well as a new perspective on an old favourite.
Although unconventional in its costumes and script, it sheds light on the problem of corporatism the implications for the poor and homeless. The play uses the “IBD (International Big Deal)” as its focal point – bringing to mind the recent 2010 Vancouver Olympics and the problems faced by those with limited means. Robin Hood’s title character is aware of such problems and decides to challenge them by gleefully engaging in cynical dialogue with both the rich and the poor.
Fittingly, the play was held at “The Commons”, a place known for its programs such as People for a Healthy Community (PHC), which hosts social programs for those in need.
Robin Hood is both humorous and heartfelt, offering a light-hearted moment of reflection on some serious societal issues.
Sadie Balance
Communications Progam, Simon Fraser University
A Review by Bob Weenk
To say the Gabriola Theatre Festival “opened” with this production would be an understatement of epic proportion. This whirlwind of a play exploded on the stage and hauled the receptive audience along on a wild roller coaster ride filled with changes: changes of character; changes of costume; changes of tempo; changes of gender, and most profoundly, changes, (no, swings), of emotion from elation to despair and back to elation, at the drop of a hat, or a shawl, or Grandma’s panties. The minimalist sets and costumes provided ample backdrop for a complex tale of loss and redemption.
The narrator and protagonist, Lucy, played with a fine touch of restraint by Renee Iaci, has become pregnant as a result of “grieving wrong” for her dead mother, and has gone into self exile from her rural Manitoba roots, washing up in a “social housing” tenement in Winnipeg and thrown upon the dubious mercy of Canada’s social safety net. Her struggles with her conservative background and a disapproving welfare system provide the material for much of the humour and pathos in the plot.
Act 1, although a little unfocussed at times, introduces the many characters and fills out their background and circumstances, setting up Act 2, which is mostly about a maniacal road trip by Lucy and her friend Lish (and five infants) to Denver in a borrowed min van in search of a semi mythical juggler (and father of Lish’s twins).
Both Daune Campbell and Thomas Conlin Jones, who between them play the other 24(yes, that’s right: 24) characters in the cast, leap madly from persona to persona, changing hats and genders with abandon. The skill and talents of the actors involved (and some tight choreography) make it possible for the audience to juggle the many voices and to keep track of who is doing what to whom at any given time.
The audience, to their credit, stayed with the complex changes and laughed at all the right moments. During the more sombre scenes the tent echoed with sniffles worthy of the finale of “Titanic” during a Saturday matinee.
In the final analysis, the script, the cast and the crew did their job admirably. The strength of live theatre lies in its ability to engage the members of the audience; to shake them and make them care about what’s happening before them. This “voluntary suspension of disbelief” is the life force of theatre and dramatically and technically, “The Summer of My Amazing Luck “gives evidence that with Shameless Hussy Productions at least, theatre is alive and well.
A triumph: Shameless Hussies, indeed!
Bob Weenk
A Review by Susan Yates
In the late 1980s I saw a clip of Maggie Smith playing the vicar’s wife in Alan Bennett’s very moving one-woman play Bed Among the Lentils, and I remember to this day how perfectly suited Ms. Smith was to the part of a vicar’s wife so bored with her tedious life that a shopping trip to Leeds could slip into a comfortable affair with the friendly grocer, Mr. Ramesh.
How delightful, 20 years later, to see Louise Amuir play the role of the vicar’s wife (Susan) to perfection, with just the right amount of sly humour and sardonic wisdom to keep a full house at The Roxy enthralled for an hour.
Susan’s regular visits with Mr. Ramesh (nice legs and a captivating smile), give her the desperately needed breaks from her husband’s routine and the expectations of his congregation, particularly the church “ladies”. Imagine her surprise when Mr. Ramesh suggests that sex would be better without the fortification of the communion wine that Susan has started dipping into. This is where Louise really played her role, confiding in the audience such intimate revelations.
Thank you, Festival Gabriola, for giving us the winning combination of Louise Amuir and the vicar’s wife – and for reviving a famous Maggie Smith role with such expertise.
Susan Yates