Medicine begins its hold over performances this week, and for those who weren’t able to make it the first time, here are some clips of TJ Dawe and Dr. Gabor Mate during the talkbacks. Click here to get your tickets to Medicine!
Videos from Beam and Struts
Adult Weekday: $30
Senior/Student Weekday: $25
Child Weekday: $17
Adult Weekend (Friday/Saturday/Sunday): $35
Senior/Student Weekend (Friday/Saturday/Sunday): $30
Child Weekend (Friday/Saturday/Sunday): $19
Click here to buy yours now!
Saturday, January 19
Firehall Arts Centre
10am to 12:30pm
In addition to choreographing and performing next week in No Exit and Lost & Found, Denise Fujiwara will be teaching a Contemplative dance class as well!
Using Japanese Butoh and creative post-modern dance improvisation principles, participants will work towards becoming more present and creative while expanding movement vocabulary and conditioning the body for strength and agility.
This work can be done at many levels and challenges both the beginner and professional dancer. If you can walk, you can do this dance work.
$15/ $10 for CADA members
Space is limited, so call 604.689.0926 to secure your place in the class!
Thanks to the terrific audience response, Medicine is a hit! We’re pleased to announce we’re holding over performances of TJ Dawe’s newest one-man show January 23 to February 2, 2013, with special appearances by Dr. Gabor Maté in talkbacks January 24, 25, 26, 30, February 1 and 2.
Come get a (second) dose of Medicine!
TJ will continue talkbacks after each show and will be joined by Dr. Gabor Maté January 24 (8pm), 25 (8pm), Jan 26 (5pm), Jan 30 (8pm), Feb 1 (8pm), and Feb 2 (5pm).
Click to by your tickets!
We have added another talkback with Dr. Gabor Maté after Tuesday, January 8th’s performance of Medicine as well as after Sunday’s 2pm matinee!
Audience response has been terrific, and Dr. Maté has agreed to join TJ for these extra post-show talkbacks.
For those of you who tried to buy tickets to Friday and Saturday’s sold out shows, here’s your chance!
Click here to buy tickets!
The Firehall joins the ranks of the BYOV for the fourth consecutive Vancouver International Fringe Festival in September 2013. We will be selecting five shows for six to eight performances each in our wonderful intimate theatre space and two shows for our outdoor enclosed courtyard area, also, for six to eight performances.
To download the application, click here.
The holidays can be stressful, trying to find the perfect gift for friends and loved ones. Let me offer some ideas: what about tickets, a pass or a gift certificate to the Firehall?
We still have many shows left in our 2012-2013 Season: TJ Dawe’s Medicine in January, the incomparable Mary Walsh in Dancing with Rage and Zee Zee Theatre’s My Funny Valentine in February, the new play from Drew Hayden Taylor, God and the Indian, in April, not to mention our dance productions from Fujiwara dance inventions and Arkadi Zaides!
So go forth, relax and enjoy the holidays, now that your quest for gifts is over. Go tobogganing, drink some eggnog or mulled wine and cuddle down by the fire.
You’re welcome.
In this week’s issue of the Georgia Straight, critic Colin Thomas reviewed Kid Gloves and took fault with Firehall Artistic Producer Donna Spencer’s choice to produce an “unpolished” play. This is her full response, a portion of which was sent in to the Georgia Straight as a Letter to the Editor.
Letter to the Editor
Re: Kid Gloves Stylistically All Over the Map, November 22, 2012
In closing his recent review of Kid Gloves, Colin Thomas takes me to task in my role as the Firehall Arts Centre’s Artistic Producer for producing this new play, advising that “Spencer’s biggest mistake was at a programming level … she should have looked beyond the historical and contemporary relevance of the subject matter and recognized it for being the artistic grab bag that it is”. One would assume from this statement that he is suggesting that the play should have never been produced. I am not writing to respond to his criticisms of the play, as they are his personal opinion, but rather to take Mr. Thomas to task for his cavalier and dismissive comments which seem to suggest that only polished and perfect plays should be produced. As a playwright himself, surely he does not truly believe this and if he does, what is it about theatre that keeps him drawn to writing about the imperfections of theatre? Is he questing for the perfect play, which frankly may only exist in the minds of academics and playwrights who have become critics? If only perfect plays should be produced, why are we still enjoying Shakespeare 400 years later?
One of the mission statements of the Firehall is to give voice to new and emerging works from both established and emerging theatre artists which have relevance to Canadians. That indeed is a risky business and one that allows for failure and success. Our thirty-year history reveals that we take our mission seriously, with the most recent evidence of that being our highly successful production of Chelsea Hotel. Not a perfect play but indeed a highly imaginative artistic expression. And our production of Kid Gloves is a continuation of that mission.
I would remind Mr. Thomas of the purpose of theatre through two quotes from playwrights whom I am certain he has admiration for: “I regard theatre as the greatest of all forms, the most immediate way in which a human being can share with another the sense of what it is to be a human being”- Oscar Wilde. In response to his suggestion that the perfect play should take precedence over relevance, I remind him of the words of Dario Fo, famed Director, Playwright and Activist whose plays are recognized for their criticism of organized crime and political corruption, “A theatre, a literature, an artistic expression that does not speak for its own time does not have relevance”.
Sally Stubbs’ Kid Gloves is indeed an artistic expression that does speak for its time, has relevance and does share with another the sense of what it might have been like to be the first women in Canada sworn in with full police powers. It does “hold a mirror up to nature” (Shakespeare) and reminds us that women still go missing; gender bias still exists and good people still fight for positive change.
Marlene Ginader just came off her second successful run as “The Woman” in our production on Chelsea Hotel and has jumped right into her role in Kid Gloves.
GD: Tell me about your character in Kid Gloves.
MG: Mai Ji is a tough, strong, young woman who’s been through a lot but doesn’t pity herself and I really admire that about her. She finds opportunities and strength in all sorts of ways (laughs) and is working really hard to get herself out of it, but at the same time doesn’t feel bad about where she’s come from or what she has to do to do that.
GD: Do you feel like a staple here at the Firehall now?
MG: Well, I have sublet my apartment for the last two months.
(Laughter)
But it really is like a home away from home right now. I haven’t even moved my stuff (points to dressing table). The people around me have changed, but I’ve stayed the same.
GD: What do you like to do when you’re not working?
MG: When I’m not working…I’ve also decided to become a traveler recently. I went to New York for the first right before Chelsea, and I’m going to Mexico to take some Spanish lessons right after Kid Gloves closes. I’m trying to take little trips here and there and become a traveling type.
GD: How long are you going to Mexico for? Is it a Spanish retreat?
MG: About 12 days. I’m taking a program and living with a family. It’s all very new.
GD: That’s exciting.
MG: I’m making myself sound more interesting than I actually am.
(Laughter)
I listen to a lot of stand-up and watch a lot of stand-up.
GD: I recently listened to a Steve Martin album from the 70s.
MG: Ooh! I think I burned one of his in high school and I don’t remember it very clearly, but I used to listen to it while driving a lot.
GD: What are you doing after your time off?
MG: I’m taking some time to do some film and television. I got an agent about a year ago but then did a lot of there so I’m going to take some time now to see what will happen.
GD: I’ve been asking everyone would you rather questions, but I’m totally blanking on one right now.
MG: You know what’s funny? It’s not funny. You know what is?
(Laughter)
I just joined Twitter but I’ve just been posting Would you Rathers but as a person who doesn’t understand them. Like, ‘Would you rather have sex with a person you really like, or eat glass?’ It doesn’t make sense and people are all, ‘you don’t get it!’ But, yea, I do. Like, ‘would you rather get your MacBook stolen or go to a petting zoo with your best friend?’
(Laughter)
GD: Ok then, give me your lamest Would you Rather.
***Marlene is thinking but then my amazing powers of observation note the mug of tea in her hands ***
Would you rather burn your mouth on really hot tea…
MG: Which I am about to do. Where did you get that idea Gabby?
GD: You know, they just come to me. I’m really creative. Or…get a hug from a furry.
MG: One has a physical after effect and one has an emotional one.
GD: Yup.
MG: Hugging the furry!
GD: You’d rather hug a furry?!
MG: Yea, I’d be ok with that! I probably have hugged a furry.
(Laughter)
And by furry I mean mascot.
GD: What was the first show you were ever in?
MG: Aside from some long-form improvised shows that my parents indulged me in, in grade six my class had to write a Christmas play and I took it upon myself to write most of it. It featured me as a lawyer with a monologue and I cried. I gave myself a crying monologue in a school Christmas show. I killed it too. It was staged crying during a trial because there was a legal case about Santa.
(Laughter)
GD: Oh, ok. I was wondering how lawyers and Christmas went together. So you put Santa on trial?
MG: Santa was on trial and I had to fight for him.
GD: What do you think audiences will take way from Kid Gloves?
MG: Most people probably don’t know about this story. I know I didn’t know about these two women. I think their story is incredible the things they were up against and what they fought for [to give us] what we have now. It’s really profound to see Dawn [Petten] and Colleen [Wheeler] bring that to life, it’s really moving to see.
Steve Martin image from here, bear hug from here and Looney Tunes court room drama from here
Deborah Williams is a fixture in Vancouver’s theatre scene and is behind some of the city’s most fun and interesting offerings. Today, she tells us a little bit about them…
GD: Hi Deb, who are the characters you play in Kid Gloves?
DW: I play Bella Boychuk, who is a syphilitic prostitute and is middle-aged, which is old for a prostitute 100 years ago. She has brain damage from her syphilis and is very well-equipped to live where she does. She’s based on a true character who could bend iron bars. All the police officers were frightened of her, apparently it took ten men to get her under control. So that’s kind of fun. I don’t think I’ve ever played a character that powerful.
The other character I play is Gertrude Crane, the wife of Alderman Crane, and she is the chair of the Central Mission Rescue and Protection Society which is an actual society that existed here in Vancouver. They were created to rescue and protect women of the night. ‘Wayward women and girls’ is another term they used for prostitution at the time. She is very Christian, a temperance believer and her goal is to protect these women at all costs.
GD: How does it feel to play two characters that are so completely different?
DW: That’s why I took the part, because it was so extremely different. One is from the Ukraine, and one is very Canadian and one is not educated and all and the other is highly educated and yet they’re both really intelligent, well-adapted women. Which is always fun, and certainly in the time before women had the vote – we were still chattel at that time, we were belongings so to have these women who were very powerful and in control of their lives in many ways – they’re obviously not in control in many ways too – I like to look at what they are doing and how powerful they are.
GD: What do you do in your spare time?
DW: I produce a lot of theatre, and I have a couple TV shows in development and I work a lot. I’m a middle-aged actress and I’m working more than I have ever, which is really great. I spent the last 19 years doing Moms the Word, and now that my kids are grown I’m able to take a lot of different roles, and go from role to role to role.
Besides that, I produce The Flame which is my heart project. I produce it at a restaurant around the corner from my house, it doesn’t take any sets or smoke, lights or mirrors to make it happen, my friends and neighbours can walk to the event. I produce that once a month, the first Wednesday of every month at the Cottage Bistro on Main Street.
GD: When’s the next one?
DW: The Flame Christmas Special is airing on Shaw TV all through December. We’ve got some really great storytellers at that one. And the one after that, January 2nd.
Other than that, I garden, I’ve got chickens. I’m very in love with my chickens, so I spend a lot of time watching them. We’ve raised them since they were a day old, so we’re kind of attached to them. They’re very funny, they’re good clowns. 
GD: Do you have any roosters?
DW: No, you’re not allowed in the city. We’ve had a couple roosters and we’ve had to send them off to send them off…to dinner and farms.
(Laughter)
GD: What do you think the audience will take away from Kid Gloves?
DW: I think they’re going to be interested in what was happening in this neighbourhood. I love that we’re doing this show about this neighbourhood in this neighbourhood. In some ways, it hasn’t changed at all. This was an entertainment district for men because everyone was in industries such as logging and so the women working down here were ‘working’ women and part of the entertainment as dancers and prostitutes. All these vices, and they’re still part of this neighbourhood. I find it quite fascinating. I don’t know why people want to chase it off so fast. It’s just part of it. And the women are fantastic. Those two women must have been really ballsy. To say that you wanted to be a police officer when there were no other women police officers ever in Canada. What incredible guts.
Chicken image from here