Pi Theatre

Archive for October, 2008

Welcome to Pi Theatre’s 24th season! I’m very excited to bring you the western Canadian premiere of Morwyn Brebner’s translation of Evélyne de la Chenelière’s beautifully human portrait of Bashir Lazhar, starring one of Vancouver’s finest actors—David Marr. We’re also extremely pleased to be bringing back Carole Fréchette’s John & Beatrice, brought to life with the new and powerful paring of Patricia Drake and Vincent Gale. These two plays represent the very best in Quebec drama and reflect our mission to provide a theatrical lens through which we can view the world in new and exciting ways. Welcome to Pi Theatre’s world. Global thinking. Local acting.

Monday, November 10, 2008, 5:30pm
At our office in the Carousel Theatre building
1411 Cartwright St. on Granville Island, Vancouver

Come meet our new team. This is a chance to hear all about our 2008-2009 season and learn more about Pi Theatre, and to share your thoughts and ideas.

We hope that you can come out and demonstrate your support for Pi Theatre. Our funders see attendance at AGMs as an indication of our value to the community.

The AGM will consist of directors’ reports, season launch, presentation of 2007-2008 financial statements, and election of the Board of Directors for 2008-2009.

Annual Memberships will be available at the door for $3.14, if you don’t have one already. We can also renew your membership on the spot! Membership benefits include: invitations to Pi events, voting privileges at the AGM, and Free Tickets for the first week of each of our shows this season to the first 20 members at the door! You can also get your membership here:

Open to all members and the public. Refreshments provided.

I’ve just gotten home from Saskatoon, where I directed the world premiere of Bite the Hand, by Mansel Robinson, the show that launched Persephone Theatre’s Deep End Series and opened Persephone’s brand new black box theatre, The BackStage Stage.

Last July, Del Surjik, Persephone Theatre’s new AD and my predecessor here at Pi, asked me to consider directing Bite the Hand to open the company’s studio theatre in October, 2008. As I sat in the Vancouver sun reading Mansel Robinson’s new play I found myself laughing out loud. Here was an original voice I thought, a writer with a big palette, an artist with a lot to say using characters that speak with irrepressible energy. Bite the Hand takes the viewer on a discursive road trip through a meta-theatrical landscape that features art and politics in the land of moose. What better way to open Persephone’s Deep End series than with a play that blows apart the realistic genre with humour and humanity? It was a real pleasure to be in Saskatoon and I was extremely impressed by the high level of talent surrounding the show: a magnificent cast, wonderful designers and a stellar stage manager. It was a first-rate experience to work with GM Sheldon Born and the entire Persephone organization and I wish them the very best in their new building this season and beyond.

You can read a review of the show here

Welcome to our new website! Check out our fantastic 2008-2009 season, the archives of our past shows, learn all about our new team and find out how you can get involved. We’re pretty excited about the site and we’re looking forward to hearing what you think.

In fact, that’s one of the things we’re so pleased about with this new site—we want to keep you in the loop about what we’re up to, and we want to hear what you think about what we’re doing and how we’re doing it. So we’ve created this blog to share ideas, news, projects, and opinions. Add us to your newsreader or sign up for our mailing list (just enter your email address in the box to the right) so you don’t miss a thing. We invite you, encourage you, entreat you! to comment on the blog, send us an email telling us what you think, or just call us up and share—we want to hear from you!

Special thanks to Adam Bognar, our web designer, who was fantastic to work with. Thanks Adam and Andrew!