arts // no. &

Broadway 1n your backyard.

> A look at community theatres in the Lower Mainland

Jerrison Oracion
Senior Columnist

 

ne of the most popular things to

do in New York is to see a musical
or play on Broadway. You probably
would want to see one because you'd
like to see a musical that everyone is
talking about like Hamilton and Dear
Evan Hansen, to sing along to your
favourite show tunes, or to see a play
that has your favourite actor in it.
However, what if you do not have a lot
of money for a trip to New York? The
next best thing is to go to your local
community theatre. Community theatre
is a place where you can see high quality
productions made possible by local
residents and that encourages people
to be involved in the arts community.

There are a lot of community
theatres in the Lower Mainland. The
most notable community theatre
company in the area is the Arts Club

Theatre Company with their three
theatres: The Stanley Industrial Alliance
Stage, the Granville Island Stage, and
the Goldcorp Stage. There is also the
Gateway Theatre in Richmond, the
Touchstone Theatre, Studio 58, the
Waterfront Theatre, and youth theatre
companies including Theatrix and the
Carousel Theatre for Young People.

Before musicals and plays become
famous, they begin in these theatres,
being developed and tested before
they are premiered. If the production
is successful, it will be performed in a
major city like Broadway in New York,
the West End in London, or Toronto.
A few examples of this rise to fame is
the hit Canadian musical Come From
Away, which was developed in Sheridan
College before it opened on Broadway,
and Hamilton, which had a test run
in The Public Theatre Off-Broadway
before everyone was amazed by old
school rap making history look cool.

A few productions started out in the

Lower Mainland before they received—
or will soon receive—a lot of attention.
There is Onegin, which is considered
to be Vancouver’s Hamilton, and the
opera Eugene Onegin as a musical; the
Mom’s the Word series, which follows
the lives of five women and which has
been so successful that the shows are
being performed around the world; and
Nine Dragons, which premiered in the
Gateway Theatre recently, written by the
theatre’s artistic director Jovanni Sy and
starring Kim’s Convenience star John Ng,
who you may remember as Mr. Chin.
The Gateway Theatre is a great
example of a community theatre because
it is right next door to Richmond
Hospital, a field, and a church. When
I saw Nine Dragons there, | thought
that it was the best play performed
in the Lower Mainland this year. The
quality of it feels like watching a play
on Broadway because of how it is
presented, and its running time of two
hours makes it feel like watching a

theotherpress.ca

film. The play and its potential sequel
might just inspire a film or a miniseries
involving its lead character Tommy Lam.
Productions in community theatres
will have local actors and actors in film
and TV. For example, Supernatural star
Briana Buckmaster was in the Arts
Club’s production of The Humans, and
Andrew McNee, who was in Onegin
and is currently in the Arts Club’s
production of Misery, also acts in
the Diary of a Wimpy Kid film series
and Adventures in Public School (now
released in theaters). Local theatres
also do programs to train future actors
and develop script-writing skills.
Community theatres have the
magic of Broadway at a cheap price and
there are a lot of productions to see
this summer, including the Arts Club’s
productions of Mamma Mia! and the
musical version of Once, Bard on the
Beach, and Theatre Under the Stars.

Narratives abound in latest Amelia Douglas
Gallery exhibit

> Ocean-themed paintings and glasswork

Caroline Ho
Arts Editor

 

he Amelia Douglas Gallery’s new

exhibit brings together unique
glass sculptures with rich histories
and colourful, evocative abstract
paintings overlaid with text.

Titled The Pacific and Other
Stories, the exhibit opened on April 26
and features the artwork of realistic
and abstract artist Denise Dupre,
based in Port Moody, and glassblower
Robert Gary Parkes, who runs a
studio in Surrey. The two artists were
selected by the gallery to create the
exhibit together, with their works
complementing one another in colour,
theme, and narrative potential.

Dupre’s abstract acrylics on canvas
are composed of bold areas of colour,
predominantly sweeping marine
hues and sepia tones across busy
compositions full of textures and spaces.
Each painting also contains words and
letters strikingly arranged in elegant
typefaces. Along the wall of the Laura
C. Muir Theatre hang three larger 36”
by 60” canvases with vast, mesmerizing
expanses of oceanic blues and greens.

The artist told the Other Press at
the show’s opening reception that she
considers all of her works in this exhibit
to form a complete body of work, but
that they also all stand individually,
with each combination of text and
imagery telling its own unique story.

“There are a couple that relate
to the West Coast, our Pacific Waters,
but the others really are narratives
in their own right,” she said.

Dupre does not only do abstract
art: She began in the style of realism,
and still returns frequently to realistic
painting between creating series of

abstract works. While her realistic
works are often planned out in advance,
based directly on photoshoots she does
of the West Coast and its surrounding
life, her abstract pieces develop far
more fluidly and organically.

With abstract art, Dupre said,
“I get to play and alter and shift
that composition as | paint from
beginning to the end, and even
then, I continue painting, altering.
[It’s] a lot more exploratory.”

Parkes’ glass-blown pieces are
also full of individual stories. His
masterfully-crafted vases and pots, with
their dazzlingly intricate swirls, spots,
and other vivid textures beneath the
smooth glass surfaces, are the result of a
lifetime of practicing, making mistakes,
and learning from others and from the
glass itself, he told the Other Press.

“That’s what | love about this
particular field is no two glassblowers
are the same. As you learn, [through]
the learning process, the glass starts to
talk to you or speak to you,” he said. Like
with other crafts, the glass is “making an
expression through the artist’s hand.”

The pieces in this show, and many
of Parkes’ other works, are made partly
from scraps and broken pieces of glass
from previous creations out of his
studio. For example, he said, when he
trims the lip of a vase, he will take that
little piece of cut-off glass and reuse it
for the ornamentation on a new piece.
This repurposing is both economically
practical and serves to enrich the
artwork’s ornamentation, he said.

“We don’t throw anything away,”
said Parkes. “We use as much as we
can. It’s kind of neat to be able to take
stuff that a factory or something would
just throw away, and turn it into a little
bit more, enhance the decoration.”

 

Parkes also emphasized the
centrality of glass in our everyday
lives and throughout history,
although this importance often goes
unacknowledged. Glass was essential
for building cities in creating windows,
tools, and other utilitarian items.
Today, it’s everywhere—in our homes,
in our phones, and in so many other
things we largely take for granted.

“I try to remind people to sit for
a minute and try and imagine your
life doing everything you do everyday
without glass,” he said. “If you start

Photos by Analyn Cuarto

thinking about it, we can’t live like we
do without this amazing material.”

In fact, if you go down deeply
enough, Parkes explained, it’s at
the heart of the Earth itself.

“Our continents are floating
on liquid molten rock, which is
what glass is. Our whole planet is
basically a liquid glass ball, and I
get to create stuff with this.”