Theatre Thursday: Theatre for Living – Headlines Theatre
byI am proud to once again be the Social Media Sponsor of the Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards (the Jessies) and as such, I am featuring a local theatre company every Thursday.
The Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards are an annual awards ceremony and party produced by the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award Society to celebrate and promote the outstanding achievements of the Vancouver Professional Theatre Community. The Awards have been presented since 1982, originally by the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance, taken over in 1997 by the newly formed Society. Over 35 statues are awarded each year to outstanding theatre companies and artists.
These profiles contain basic information about each company, as supplied by their team, and a list of their upcoming productions that you can check out in the coming season. Today’s feature company is: Theatre for Living formerly Headlines Theatre:
Maladjusted (2013) Pierre Leichner. Photo by: David Cooper
Theatre for Living (Headlines Theatre)
Date Established: 1981
First Play Produced: Buy,Buy, Vancouver (1981)
Founders: Nettie Wild, John Lazarus, Beth Kaplin, Suzie Pasyne, Anne Hungerford, Norbert Rubesaat and David Diamond.
Artistic Director: David Diamond
Total number of plays/events produced: 500+ Theatre For Living projects, including workshops, trainings, and main stage productions.
Mission Statement
Our mission is to create theatre that functions as both a “true voice” of a community and also an aesthetic space in which community dialogue (not monologue) takes place.
Coming Soon
A BC/Alberta tour of ‘Corporations in our Heads’ for Fall/Winter 2013 which will include 26 events across BC and Alberta and 7 around Vancouver. The project will launch on October 10, investigating how corporate messages have planted themselves in our collective psyche, and how we can use theatre to “evict” these messages.
Anecdote About the Company
Our audiences are very diverse. Something happened during “maladjusted” that often happens at our shows. A “buzz” was on about the play, we played to full houses for the last half of the run. People interested in innovative theatre were coming from the “mainstream”, as were people living in extreme poverty, (some homeless) via our voucher program. This puts people who would never otherwise find themselves in the same physical space together, crammed into an intimate theatre, side by side, experiencing interactive theatre that links their lives together. You can taste the transformational power of this in the theatre when it happens and for us, it happens often.
Follow
It was announced this week that Headlines Theatre has changed their name to Theatre for Living. Stay up to date on the latest from Theatre for Living by following them on Facebook and Twitter.
