Pi Theatre

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We were very excited last week to receive the full reinstatement of our Community Gaming funding for our 2011-2012 year. We’d like to thank everyone who worked so hard for the reinstatement of adult arts and culture funding eligibility. This financial support allows Pi alone to offer employment to over thirty artists and arts workers, and to provide accessible theatre to hundreds of British Columbians. This stream of funding has an overwhelmingly positive impact on the community as a whole.

A sincere thank you to Minister Ida Chong and Premier Christy Clark for the roles they had in the reinstatement. We hope that this is the first step in the revitalization of the arts sector in BC, through the renewed support of the provincial government.

We’d like to thank Skip Triplett, who facilitated the Gaming Grant review with kindness, openness and compassion.

Lastly, we would like to say a huge thank you to all our colleagues and everyone who wrote letters and emails, and gave statements in support of adult arts and culture. We hope you all receive good news too!

In collaboration with Rumble Productions and Touchstone Theatre, we have created an audience feedback form to hear from you, our valued audience members. Now is your opportunity to tell us what you think about what we’re doing now and how we can do it better! Be as honest as you like. All answers are entirely anonymous.

To show our appreciation of your feedback, those who respond before April 16th, will be entered into an early-bird prize draw for two tickets to “A Last Resort” at Rumble Productions’ TREMORS Festival. All respondents are eligible to be entered into a draw for two tickets for a show in each of Pi and Touchstone’s upcoming mainstage seasons.

The survey will take approximately 15 minutes. To complete the survey, click here.

Hello, everyone! My name is Catherine Ballachey and I’ve been working as Pi’s Administrative Intern through the Prime Placements program since September. Becky, the General Manager, asked me to introduce myself and say a few things about what I hope to do in theatre, what I’m learning through the internship and anything else interesting about me.

To start, I’m a graduate of SFU’s Contemporary Arts program in Performance Theatre and French. Since graduating, I’ve been working wherever I can in theatre, which includes front of house, stage managing, admin, directing, writing, producing and even a bit of performance here and there. In 2009, I founded a theatre company with my colleague, Stephanie Henderson, called Resounding Scream Theatre. So far, we’ve produced 3 original plays and 2 fundraisers. Our next project is Hive: the New Bees, an emerging artist version of Hive that is happening May 24-26 at The Chapel Arts. For more information, check out our website: www.resoundingscreamtheatre.com.

From our second production, “Brink: a farce tragedy”
(From left: Nikki Hockey, Victoria Lyons, Manuela Sosa and Stevie Benisch)

One interesting thing about me is that I just came back from Australia where I studied with a physical theatre company, Zen Zen Zo. We stayed in Brisbane, where the Zen Zen Zo training centre is located, for three weeks to intensively study Butoh, Viewpoints and the Suzuki Method of Actor Training. It was an incredibly worthwhile experience and I recommend it to every theatre artist, or artist in general, looking for more training opportunities. I needed something to shake my foundation and this training successfully challenged my assumptions about art and the world around me. If you want more information about the company and their workshops, visit their website: www.zenzenzo.com. Just to warn you, their intensives live up to their name… they’re very… intense.

From Zen Zen Zo’s production of “Zeitgeist,” 2008.

To close my very first blog post with Pi, I would like to talk about why I decided to intern with Pi Theatre and what I’ve been learning through the Prime Placements program. There has been a lot of bleak news about arts in Vancouver lately, but I think we have reason to be optimistic. I originally decided to intern with Pi to learn about the daily functioning of a professional theatre company in order to apply it to my own company. What I’ve learned, which I think is extremely valuable, is how to look at the arts from the business side of things. It may not be exactly creatively stimulating at times, but I think it’s what we’ll need to survive. I know we’re all convinced of the importance of the arts in our community, but we need to find new audiences who may not be and draw them into our theatres. Vancouver is not a cultural wasteland! Many interesting groups of artists from all disciplines gravitate here… and not just for the mountains. The average person just doesn’t know where to find us, so we need to find them. There’s a lot of work ahead of us to keep the arts community alive, but I think it’s worth fighting for. Maybe I already knew it, but that’s just one of many things I’ve been learning with Prime Placements at Pi.

Do you like eating delicious food, sampling artisan beer, and making new friends? Then join us for our upcoming Pi Dinner Circle, on February 10th, 2012.

This dinner circle is a six-course meal, held in the home and studio of a prominent Vancouver theatre artist. Each course will feature an artisan beer pairing by local brewmaster Claire Connolly.

Tickets are only $100, and include dinner, beer pairings and a tax receipt for $35. We can also offer a dinner-only option for $80.

Past dinners have sold out quickly and seating is quite limited. If you would like to book your tickets or if you would like more information on the evening, please email info@pitheatre.com or call 604-872-1861.

Please consider joining us for what is sure to be a wonderful evening.

As many of you know, in 2009 it was decided that adult arts and cultural organizations would no longer be eligible for funding through Gaming grants. Pi was just finishing the last year of a three year commitment from Gaming as the cuts were announced. Between Gaming eligibility changes and cuts to the BC Arts Council, Pi lost over 20% of our funding between 2009-2010 and 2010-2011. The past two years have been undeniably challenging. We’ve been incredibly fortunate in our fundraising, and are hugely grateful for our amazing community of supporters for helping us get through.

After a months-long public review that engaged 1,700 British Columbians across the province, Premier Christy Clark announced last week that adult arts and cultural groups will again be eligible to apply for gaming funding. We are heartened by this news, as we are by the admission that the cuts were “a mistake”. The total amount available to charities through gaming grants is still 13% lower than 2008 levels so there is still a great deal of uncertainty, but we believe that this is an important step in a positive direction.

We attended and spoke at the Vancouver stop of the review, and were assured by both the leader of the review (the affable Skip Triplett) and by other presenters that adult arts organizations are a integral part of life for people across the province. We are proud to be part of such a vital and resiliant community and we want to thank everyone who has contributed to the ongoing success of the arts in BC.

You can read the full report generated by the review here and you can read what Pi had to say at the Vancouver session here.

Pi Theatre staff and board had a lovely dinner at Nuba in downtown Vancouver on December 19th to mark the end of the year. Great food. Great company. Bring on 2012!

(In the photo: Pi GM Becky Low, Secretary Dawn Padget and President Ben Unterman.)

Pi’s playwright in residence Sean Devine unveiled his newest work-in-progress at CBC Studio 700 Thursday night in front of an enthusiastic crowd of more than thirty people. “Except in the Unlikely Event of War” takes a look at whether peace is actually desirable or is war, in fact, better for us all.

The actors from left to right are Alex Ferguson, Vincent Gale, Kathleen Duborg, Todd Thomson and Richard Wolfe. Except will have its second workshop this summer.

Thanks to all who came out to support Sean and new play development in Vancouver.

Tired of buying people things they don’t need? Fed up with spending money on more useless tat? This year, avoid waste, give theatre. This holiday season, give ethically with Pi.

We have a wide variety of gifts for everyone on your list. You can buy a gobo for your landlord, fifteen sound cues for your aunt and an actor for a day for your sister. With items starting at $5, it’s affordable for everyone to contribute, and play a vital role in creating contemporary theatre. For gifts over $20, you will receive a tax receipt for the full value of your donation. Finish your holiday shopping now at www.pitheatre.com/ethicalgiving/.

Carmen Aguirre is recently returned from London where she was promoting her new book Something Fierce.

Read a wonderfully written profile of Carmen in The Guardian.

Obstructions was launched at last night’s AGM-apalooza which took place at PL 1422.

March 31, 2012
May 19, 2012
June 9, 2012

More dates to be announced.

Stay in the loop about upcoming Obstructions events. Check out the website coming soon: progresslab.ca