Theatre at UBC
On Stage: Season 2009/10
By Moises Kaufman and Tectonic Theatre Projects
Directed by
Nicola Cavendish
Frederic Wood Theatre
Nov. 19-28, 2009
7:30 PM
Click here to visit showsite
We welcome our talented alumna, award winning actress and director Nicola Cavendish, to direct this dramatic investigation of events surrounding the Matthew Shepard story.
Renowned Canadian actress, director and playwright Nicola Cavendish directs this play examining the true story of gay University of Wyoming student Matthew Shepard. In October 1998 Shepard was kidnapped, severely beaten and left to die, tied to a fence on the outskirts of Laramie Wyoming. Five weeks later, Moisés Kaufman and fellow members of New York City's Tectonic Theatre Project went to Laramie and over the course of a year conducted over 200 interviews with its inhabitants. The resulting play, The Laramie Project, chronicles the life of the town in the year after the murder. It has since become a lightning rod for gay rights and the establishment of hate-crime laws.
“Nothing short of stunning… not to be missed.”
- New York Magazine
“A pioneering work and a powerful stage event.”
- Time Magazine
With Moisés Kaufman at the helm, the award-winning Tectonic Theater Project explores the ways in which experimentation with form and structure can inform contemporary drama. Other projects include 33 Variations (dramatizing Ludwig van Beethoven's life), Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde and I Am My Own Wife all created from historical and living records of actual events. The Laramie Project has been adapted into a film (starring Peter Fonda, Laura Linney, Christina Ricchi and Steve Buscemi) and the company has recently created and premiered a sequel to the play, The Laramie Project, 10 Years Later.
More at http://tectonictheaterproject.org
We’re thrilled to welcome UBC Theatre alumna Nicola Cavendish to direct this production. A very accomplished actress and playwright her directing credits include The Mousetrap (Arts Club Theatre) and Having Hope at Home (Chemainus Theatre). Cavendish has earned five Jessie Richardson Awards, two Doras, a Gemini, the Montreal Critics Award for Best Actress, and the UBC Alumni Association Award of Distinction. She has worked across Canada, in Seattle, and New York, where she performed on Broadway. Cavendish starred in the National Tour of Michel Tremblay’s acclaimed For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again and she has spent four seasons at the Shaw Festival Theatre. The role of Shirley Valentine has taken Cavendish across Canada in numerous revivals spanning 20 years.
The Laramie Project features a cast of 15 with Theatre at UBC BFA Acting candidates Megs Chenosky, Andy Cohen, Mishelle Cuttler, Eric Freilich, Sarah Goodwill, Claire Hesselgrave, Dave Kaye, Barbara Kozicki, Andrew Lynch, Jameson Parker, Christine Quintana, Ryan Warden, Ben Whipple, Joanna Williams and Tich Wilson. The creative team includes professional artist Jonathon Monro (Sound Design) and Professor Ron Fedoruk (Scenic Design) with BFA Design candidates Zoe Green (Costumes) and Laura McLean (Stage Management).
THE LARAMIE PROJECT: November 18 - 28, 2009
Frederic Wood Theatre, 6354 Crescent Rd., UBC
Mon. - Sat. at 7:30 p.m. | Opening: Thursday Nov. 19 | Run: Nov. 18 - 28, 2009 | Curtain: Mon. - Sat. at 7:30 p.m. | Tickets: $20/$14/$10 | $6 Preview: Sept. 30 | Mondays $5 for all UBC alumni |
Box Office: 604.822.2678 or theatre@interchange.ubc.ca
By William Shakespeare
Directed by
MFA Directing Candidate Catriona Leger
Jan. 21-30, 2010
7:30 PM
Showsite: coming soon
Among Shakespeare’s first works, Romeo and Juliet has become one the most beloved plays of all time, from the Elizabethan Age to the present.
China 
Feb. 2-6, 2010 By William Yang
Produced by Performing Lines from Australia
Presented with Vancouver 2010 Olympiad and
PuSh International Performing Arts Festival
February 2-6, 2010
7:30 p.m.
William Yang's photography and wryly humorous reflections about the meaning of culture and belonging come together with Nicholas Ng's haunting live score for the erhu (Chinese violin) and pipa (Chinese lute), for an unforgettable theatrical experience.
By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by MFA Directing Candidate Mindy Parfitt
March 18-27, 2010
7:30 PM
Showsite: coming soon
One of Shaw's most popular plays, Arms and the Man challenges notions of romance, bravery, cowardice, patriotism, and loyalty.
Produced by Tomoe Arts & Theatre at UBC
April 9, 10 & 11, 2010
Elegant courtesans, powerful samurai, vengeful spirits – a few of the characters dancer-actors can embody in the art of odori, the style of dance found in Japanese kabuki theatre. Professional Vancouver artists with invited dancers from Japan. Lecture-demo April 9th.
By Bryony Lavery
Directed by Renée Iaci
Produced by shameless hussy productions & Theatre at UBC
Dorothy Somerset Studio Theatre
Sept. 22-Oct. 3, 2009
7:30 pm
VANCOUVER PREMIERE
A big, brave, compassionate play about grief, revenge, forgiveness and bearing the unbearable." - New York Times
One evening ten-year-old Rhona goes missing. Her mother, Nancy, retreats into a state of frozen hope. Agnetha, an American academic, comes to England to research a thesis: "Serial Killing—A Forgivable Act?" Then there's Ralph, a loner who's looking for some distraction. Drawn together by horrific circumstances, these three embark on a harrowing, strangely beautiful and cathartic journey. Angry, humane and compassionate, Frozen is an extraordinary play that entwines the lives of a murderer, the mother of one of his victims and his psychologist, to explore our capacity for forgiveness, remorse and change after an act that would seem to rule them out entirely. This professional presentation is produced by one of Canada’s most provocative touring theatre companies, shameless hussy productions, with the generous support of Theatre at UBC. The hussies continue to travel extensively across Canada this season with two of their critically acclaimed plays.
A major play… Thrilling, humane and timely.”
- Times (London)
One the UK’s busiest playwrights, Bryony Lavery has penned over forty plays since 1976. She earned her reputation early with the company Female Trouble and as AD of Gay Sweatshop. Her latest work is an adaptation of Magdalen King- Hall's 1943 novel, The Life and Death of the Wicked Lady Skelton. Lavery is used to the assumption that her work is invariably heavyweight as well as feminist. Her play Frozen received the UK's prestigious Barclay Award for Best New Play of 1998.
What I wanted to express particularly [with Frozen] was the immense journey of a victim of such horror, through impenetrable dark."
- Bryony Lavery
Consistently surprising… the almost thriller-like promise of the play's climactic confrontation is like a time-bomb ticking in the back of your head."
– Independent
Directed by Theatre at UBC Alumna Renée Iaci, starring Daune Campbell, Alumni Anthony F. Ingram & Deb Pickman with Andrew Lynch and Stage Management by Lois Dawson. The company includes Theatre at UBC Alumni Lauchlin Johnston (Set), Don Griffiths (Lighting) & Jay Havens (Costumes) with Stephen Bulat (Original Music) Maggie Chok ~ Ion Design & Branding (Video Design), Travis Nelson (Tattoo Art), Angela Haggman (Poster), Pink Monkey Studios (Photography) & BFA Design Candidate Maria Fumano (Properties).
"[a] fine play…so concentrated and unflinching that at times it takes your breath away."
– Observer
DOROTHY SOMERSET STUDIO THEATRE: SEPTEMBER 22 – OCTOBER 3, 2009
6361 University Blvd. UBC Campus – Parking: West Parkade 4 min walk to venue. Access University Blvd. off NW Marine Dr. Map: http://tinyurl.com/mq9wo2, 2 for 1 & $5 Students: Sept. 22, 23 & 29, Opening Night: Thurs. Sept. 24, Matinee: Oct. 3 @ 2pm, Curtain: Mon. - Sat. @ 7:30 pm nightly, Tickets: Reg. $25/Senior $20/Student $15 | Mondays $5 for all UBC Alumni | Box Office: 604.822.2678 | More: www.shamelesshussy.com
Warning: Language
Media Contact: Deb Pickman E: publicity.theatre@ubc.ca Ph: 604.319.7656
shameless hussy productions “telling provocative stories about women, to inspire the hand that rocks the cradle to rock the world”
Click here to watch the hussies talk about their upcoming production of FROZEN on YouTube!
Listen to sample sound clips from FROZEN:
Click here to hear sound clip #1
Click here to hear sound clip #2
Adapted from the works of Georg Büchner
Conceived and Directed by Tom Scholte
Frederic Wood Theatre
Oct. 1-10, 2009
7:30 PM
Showsite: click here to visit MK-Woyzeck showsite
MK WOYZECK
Adapted from the works of Georg Büchner,
Conceived and Directed by Tom Scholte
Sept. 30 – Oct. 10, 2009, 2009: FREDERIC WOOD THEATRE
Madness, crime, exploitation. The haunting themes of Georg Büchner's ground-breaking 19th century drama, WOYZECK, are re-examined through a contemporary lens in this original, multi-media, devised performance. Based on a true–life controversial murder trial, Woyzeck follows the story of a poor soldier who submits to army medical experiments in order to supplement his meager income – with disastrous results. The title of this adaptation gives a nod to some of the modern source material utilized. Project MK-ULTRA, or MKULTRA, is the code name for a covert CIA mind-control and chemical interrogation research program, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The program began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, and it used United States citizens as its test subjects. Project MK-ULTRA involved the surreptitious use of many types of drugs, as well as other methods, to manipulate individual mental states and to alter brain function.
Weeks after he began writing Woyzeck, Büchner died of Typhus, leaving behind a magnificent but fragmented and un–ordered text that has been posthumously "completed" by generations of authors, editors and translators. Tackling Büchner’s unfinished play has become a tradition, almost a rite of passage, among theater artists. It has become one of the most often produced and most influential plays in the German theatre repertory.
Every man is an abyss, and you get dizzy looking into it."
– Woyzeck
Theatre at UBC Associate Professor Tom Scholte is a nationally recognized actor in the realms of theatre, film, and television. He was a Genie nominee for his work in the feature film LAST WEDDING and a Gemini winner for his performance on DA VINCI’S INQUEST. As a director he was a founding member of Neworld Theatre and is the founder and artistic director of Theatreshop. He has previously taught acting for stage and screen at the Vancouver Film School and Lyric School of Acting. Tom's feature film directing debut, CRIME, received its world premiere at the 2008 Vancouver International Film Festival.
Playwright, medical student, and social revolutionary Georg Büchner died in 1837 at the age of 23, leaving behind a small trove of exceptional dramatic literature. His works anticipated almost all of the major artistic movements of the twentieth century: Naturalism; German Expressionism; Surrealism; Dadaism; Brecht’s dialectical theater, and many others. Both his focus on the working class and his thematically and structurally unresolved writing, which resists a single interpretation, represent turning points in the development of modern art. Büchner’s own generation was not ready for his startling representations of violence and dehumanization, but such themes resonated deeply with twentieth century audiences and his writing continues to be a source of influence throughout modern theater.
[Woyzeck is] a text that happened to a twenty-three-year-old whose eyelids were cut off at his birth by The Weird Sisters, a text blasted by the fever to orthographic splinters, a structure as it might be created when lead is smelted at New Year’s Eve since the hand is trembling with anticipation of the future...”
- Heiner Müller
Featuring performances by BFA Acting Candidates MariaLuisa Alvarez, Kim Bennett, Ali Glinert, Moneca Lander, Fiona Mongillo and Russell Zishiri. The creative team includes professional artist and Adjunct Professor Patrick Pennefather (Composition/Sound Design) with BFA Design Candidates Chantelle Balfour (Costumes) and Conor Moore (Set/Lighting) and Tim Bellefleur (Stage Management)
MK WOYZECK Sept. 30 – Oct. 10, 2009
Frederic Wood Theatre, 6354 Crescent Rd., UBC Point Grey Campus
Mon. – Sat. at 7:30 p.m. | Opening: Thursday Oct. 1 | Run: Sept. 30 – Oct. 10, 2009 | Curtain: Mon. - Sat. at 7:30 p.m. | Tickets: $20/$14/$10 | $6 Preview: Sept. 30 | Mondays $5 for UBC alumni | Box Office: 604.822.2678 or theatre@interchange.ubc.ca
Watch a video clip from Theatre at UBC's production of MK-WOYZECK. On now!
Director Tom Scholte introduces a scene from his conception and adaptation of MK-Woyzeck, adapted from the works of Georg Büchner. MK-Woyzeck plays at the Frederic Wood Theatre, Theatre at UBC from October 1-10, 2009. Featuring Theatre at UBC BFA actors: Ali Glinert and Russell Zishiri. Video clip by Stephen Malloy.
>>View video clip
By Henrik Ibsen
A new adaptation and translated by Errol Durbach
Directed by Gerald Vanderwoude
A co-production with Yorick Theatre
TELUS Studio Theatre
Oct. 29-Nov. 7, 2009
7:30 PM
* Please note: Shows on Monday, Nov. 2 and Tuesday, Nov. 3 will feature Korean surtitles.
Showsite: click here to visit
Halvard Solness, a brilliantly successful architect, has willed his unspoken desire into reality at every turn - but not without a price. Now burned out and at the end of his career he lives in fear that the next generation will rise up and cast him aside. Halvard’s encounter with a fiery-hearted young woman from his past, Hilde Wangel becomes a dramatic enactment of the forces animating, inspiring or destroying the artist in the drawn-out struggle to reconcile the prerogatives of aesthetics and of life. For this new adaptation Ibsen scholar Errol Durbach utilizes source material created by Ibsen including letters, manuscripts and poems. Find out more about this production and our full season of events http://www.theatre.ubc.ca
“Ibsen’s tragic and epic masterwork: the forces of art, religion, sex and nature all converge to raise man up and knock him down." – New York Times
Errol Durbach: Errol Durbach (MA [Cantab.], PhD [London]) began teaching at UBC in 1967, he served as Head of Theatre from 1987 to 1994 and as Associate Dean of Arts between 1995 and 2000. His work on Henrik Ibsen has resulted in three volumes of critical analysis as well as an acclaimed adaptation of Peer Gynt, which earned the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Production in 2006/07. Durbach is a Professor Emeritus at UBC and author of Ibsen The Romantic, A Doll’s House: Ibsen’s Myth of Transformation plus many articles on modern, comparative, and Commonwealth drama.
Director Gerald Vanderwoude has directed over 40 productions in Vancouver, specializing in works by Samuel Beckett. Recent credits includes Bella Luna’s acclaimed productions of Futurisiti and The Return of Futuristi (co-directed with Susan C. Bertoia)and Beckett Cent, a centenary celebration of the work Samuel Beckett
Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906), the Norwegian playwright and poet known as the “father of modern drama,” is best known for Hedda Gabler, the epitome of a realistic play. Right behind is A Doll’s House, The Wild Duck and An Enemy of the People. Where these plays are all realistic and rife with symbolism, The Master Builder practically achieves allegorical heights. A taught psychological drama The Master Builder, along with his other late works Little Eyolf, When We Dead Awaken and John Gabriel Borkman it is known as one of his “symbolic” plays.
“Castles in the air - they are so easy to take refuge in. And so easy to build too. “ - Henrik Ibsen
The Master Builder features best selling novelist and veteran actor Chris Humphreys as the Master Builder (Halvard Solness) who joins fellow professional artists Trish Pattenden (Aline), UBC alumnus Nicholas Fontaine (Ragnar Brovik) and Maurice Verkaar (Dr. Herdal) along with Theatre at UBC BFA Acting candidate Fiona Mongillo (Hilde) and UBC student Odesssa Cadieux-Rey (Kaja). This production welcomes back to the stage - after a 35 year hiatus - Theatre at UBC’s talented Professor Emeritus Norman Young (Knut Brovik). The creative team includes UBC MFA Design Alumna Alison Green [costumes], MFA Design Candidate Ana Luisa Espinoza [Scenic Design] MFA Design Candidate Craig Alfredson [Lighting], BFA Design Candidate Christina Istrate [Sound], with BFA Production candidate Maria Fumano [Stage Manager].
Director Gerald Vanderwoude introduces a scene from the upcoming Theatre production of THE MASTER BUILDER by Henrik Ibsen featuring actors Chris Humphreys and Theatre at UBC BFA Acting Candidate Fiona Mongillo. Video filmed by Stephen Malloy.
>>Watch Video Clip
TELUS STUDIO THEATRE Oct. 28 – Nov. 7, 2009
Chan Centre for the Performing Arts, UBC
The Master Builder, By Henrik Ibsen, In a new adaptation by Errol Durbach, Directed by Gerald Vanderwoude
Run: Oct. 28 – Nov. 7, 2009| Mon. - Sat at 7:30 p.m. | Opening Night: Oct. 29 | Tickets: Reg. $25/Senior $20/Student $15 | | $6 Preview: Oct. 28 | Mondays $5 for UBC Alumni | Box Office: 604.822.2678
Media Contact: Deb Pickman P: 604.319.7656 E: pickman@interchange.ubc.ca
