Ga Ting is a necessary—and welcome—play, but neither the script nor the production is polished. In Ga Ting, which translates from the Chinese as Family, first-time playwright Minh Ly imagines a meeting between a Matt, a white gay man who has just lost his partner...
Stan Douglas says that Vancouver’s contempt for artists gives him more room to move
Stan Douglas and Chris Haddock, the big brains behind Helen Lawrence, which opens next Wednesday, March 19, have some surprising things to say about why they choose to make art in Vancouver. These comments didn't fit into my preview interview with the pair, which will...
How to make a press release media-friendly
This is another post for publicists. Again, I want to thank the theatre publicists of Vancouver for helping me so much. With this post, I'm hoping to provide some information that will help us all to do our jobs even more efficiently. When I get a press release, I'm...
Greasy mess
Peter Jorgensen's direction of Grease at Studio 58 is bit of a mess, but some student performances shine through. Studio 58 doesn't have enough singing talent in its ranks to cast a musical right now, so programming Grease was the first mistake. Some of the singing in...
How to write three acts
It's simple really. Act 1 sets the scene. In Act 2, the hero pursues what she wants. And, in Act 3, she goes after what she needs. In a story that ends happily, she will prevail thanks to the insight that she has gained through her struggle. The three-act template is...
The story on West Side Story
One of the arguments against non-Equity touring productions, such as Troika Entertainment's West Side Story, which is at the QE until this weekend, is that patrons get sucked into paying inflated high prices to see performers who have never appeared on the Great White...
Online comment: revenge of the idiots?
I was all prepared to write a rant about the sorry state of online commenting. I was going to tie it into Rob Ford and the general decline in public discourse. But—you know what?—in the theatre section of straight.com, the state on online commentary ain't so bad. ...
Book The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi NOW
The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi is one of those beautiful PuSh offerings with a ridiculously short run. It closes January 25 so book now. Dragonfly is about Gaston Talbot who has been unable to talk since he experienced a trauma at 16. Decades later, he can finally...
Get a measure of Mom medicine this weekend
I highly recommend two shows in the world of Vancouver theatre this weekend: Asha and Ravi Jain's A Brimful of Asha and TJ Dawe's Medicine. I've also got high hopes for director Kevin Bennett's take on Measure for Measure, which opens at Pacific Theatre tonight. A...
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