Two innovative B.C. theatre companies are featured at Shadbolt Centre for the Arts in the next two weeks.
This week – Wednesday, April 27 to Saturday, April 30 – audiences can catch Peace Country, the latest offering from Rice and Beans Theatre.
Pedro Chamale's newest play follows the relationship of five friends who grew up in a small B.C. town in the Peace Region. It's based on Chamale's own experiences growing up in Chetwynd as a first-generation Guatemalan child separated from any kind of Latinx culture, other than what his family brought with them.
"I was inspired to write this piece as a love letter to the folks I grew up with who were all thrown together and became friends across cultural differences – which came with a whole mishmash of good and bad things," Chamale said in a press release.
"I don't often see the small town or small-town folks represented in ways that ring true for me. It's either that it's a backwater experience or that we are this wise noble bumpkin there to provide sage advice for an urban character's development."
Chamale said he was also inspired by the climate crisis and by imagining how areas such as the Peace Region will be affected – "and how we can include them in the change that has to happen, not just condemn them for their jobs, not just focus on the call for real change in coastal urban Vancouver."
Then, from May 3 to 7, audiences are being treated to a new sci-fi mystery by A Wake of Vultures, a Vancouver-based interdisciplinary performance collective led by Conor Wylie.
K Body and Mind blends "overloaded 90s anime and cyberpunk aesthetics with an off-kilter and mesmerizing performance style," as a press release puts it, in a two-performer sci-fi epic.
Tickets for both live productions are $35 regular, $30 for seniors/students, and $15 for youth 12 and under. Livestream tickets are available for $15. You can call the box office at 604-205-3000 or buy tickets online.
What's onstage in May at Shadbolt Centre
Wednesday, May 4: OKAN
OKAN is a JUNO award-winning contemporary Afro-Cuban roots and jazz ensemble. Taking their name from the word for "heart" in the Afro-Cuban religion of Santeria, this women-led ensemble fuses Afro-Cuban roots with jazz, folk and global rhythms in songs about immigration, courage and love.
Wednesday, May 25 to Saturday, May 28: Spooky Action
Inverso Productions’ Spooky Action is inspired by Einstein's famous phrase referring to particles that are so closely linked, they share the same existence. A collaboration with poet/performer Barbara Adler, this new interdisciplinary work weaves together contemporary dance, poetic storytelling and original composition to extend the theory to human connections.
Follow Julie MacLellan on Twitter @juliemaclellan.
Email Julie, jmaclellan@newwestrecord.ca.
