Pi Theatre

Archive for September, 2009

After the Quake lighting Designer Itai Erdal is working with James Fagan Tait on a new play at Studio 58. Check it out!

Pi Theatre is looking for emerging artists who might be interested in participating in our Prime Placements program. This year, we will be offering several placements as part of our production for HIVE 3, which will take place from March 11-20 at The Centre for Digital Media. We are currently looking for artists to fill the following roles:
- costume designer
- lighting designer
- set designer
as well as a Technical Director, and possibly a projection designer (this last is subject to grant funding which is not yet confirmed).

Qualified applicants will have significant design experience as students or amateur artists. They will likely be senior students or recent grads, or artists new to Vancouver, or artists looking to change disciplines.

We are able to offer a small honourarium for these positions, as well as the opportunity to work along side some of Vancouver’s most exciting professional theatre artists. We are also happy to work with course requirements to allow students to use these placements to fulfill any production hours they may be required to meet.

We are asking interested artists to submit a resume to by October 23.

Haruki Murakami’s acceptance speech for the Jerusalem Literary Prize has some interesting things to say about art and politics:

I have come to Jerusalem today as a novelist, which is to say as a professional spinner of lies.

Of course, novelists are not the only ones who tell lies. Politicians do it, too, as we all know. Diplomats and military men tell their own kinds of lies on occasion, as do used car salesmen, butchers and builders. The lies of novelists differ from others, however, in that no one criticizes the novelist as immoral for telling lies. Indeed, the bigger and better his lies and the more ingeniously he creates them, the more he is likely to be praised by the public and the critics. Why should that be?

My answer would be this: Namely, that by telling skillful lies — which is to say, by making up fictions that appear to be true — the novelist can bring a truth out to a new location and shine a new light on it.

You can read the entire speech here.

Today is the launch of our 2009-2010 season and I’m extremely pleased to welcome everyone to a monumental milestone in the history of our company. 2009-2010 marks 25 years of vibrant and vital performances driven by stellar playwrights. This 25th anniversary season celebrates the spirit of our times with relentless style and passion. Come join us for the party, all season long!

We kick off the season with the Canadian premiere of after the quake, co-produced with Rumble Productions, November 19-December 5, 2009 at Studio 16. Then, together with 11 partners from Vancouver’s and Victoria’s independent theatre scenes, Pi co-presents HIVE 3 with Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad, March 11-20, at the Centre for Digital Media. Click the links for all the details.

And for a trip down memory lane, check out highlights from the last 25 years, our history, and the archives of our past shows.

Join the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance for their 10th Annual Making a Scene conference in late October on Granville Island.  Check out all the details here.

See you there!

Thursday, October 15, 2009, 5:30pm at Pi Theatre’s office in the Carousel Theatre building at 1411 Cartwright St. on Granville Island, Vancouver

Come meet the Pi team. This is a chance to hear all about our 25th Anniversary Season and learn more about Pi Theatre. We’d also love to hear 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 support in the community.

The AGM will consist of directors’ reports, season launch, presentation of 2008-2009 financial statements, and election of the Board of Directors for 2009-2010.

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 our mainstage show 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, courtesy of Rocky Mountain Flatbread and La Baguette et l’echalote.

Tara Travis - photo by Richard Wolfe

On Wednesday September 9th, well over 500 people who believe that culture matters came together at the Vancouver Art Gallery to protest the dismantlement of government involvement in Arts and Culture in British Columbia. According to the Alliance for Arts, between 85% and 92% of core provincial funding for arts and culture will be cut by 2012 from both tax-based and non-tax-based (gaming) streams. No other province in Canada has reduced support for the arts sector during the current recession because they understand that the cultural sector makes both social and economic sense. In fact, the arts are a critical part of many stimulus strategies being enacted around the world.

If you’d like to stay in touch with what’s going on in the struggle to keep the cultural sector working in BC, visit www.allianceforarts.com

If you care that the arts touches your life in a way that matters - at home, in the streets, in the schools, in the community centres, on TV, in your music, in video games and theatres, you may want to write your MLA or the premiere of the province.

The arts are not a frill.

This grey and empty rectangle is being adopted as a metaphor for a world without art and culture.