Ensemble Theatre Company Summer Repertory Festival: Win Passes

Ensemble Theatre Company’s 7th Annual Summer Repertory Festival includes an uplifting comedy set in a doughnut shop, a classic political satire and a celebration of the power of storytelling.

Tracy Letts’ Superior Donuts, Garson Kanin’s Born Yesterday, and Michael Healey’s The Drawer Boy promise to provide local audiences with a reason to see theatre during the warm summer months.

Ensemble Theatre Company Summer Repertory Festival

• When: July 10 to August 16, 2019 (no performances July 15 & 16)
  • 7:30pm nightly, 2:00pm Sundays, July 21, 28 & August 4
• Where: Jericho Arts Centre (1675 Discovery St, Vancouver)
• Tickets: From $25, Festival Pass: $88. Brunch readings $10.

Brought to vivid and powerful life by Ensemble’s talented group of actors, directors, and designers, this year’s selection of plays showcases the humour, insight, and risk that only live theatre offers.

The Drawer Boy By Michael Healey
Preview Performance: July 10 / Opening: July 12

Set in Ontario in the early seventies, Michael Healey’s 1999 play was inspired by an innovative 1972 project called The Farm Show. In response to that work, which was based on interviews with rural Ontario farmers, Healey came up with a story about a young theatre actor, Miles, from the city who arrives at the rural home of Angus and Morgan, two aging bachelor farmers. Miles intends to write a play based on their stories about the rural life experience but soon discovers that the history shared by these two men is based on half-truths and mis-rememberings, and that uncovering the truth could deal a fatal blow to the tenuous strands holding together the shared lives of these two men.

Born Yesterday By Garson Kanin 
Preview Performance: July 11 / Opening: July 13

Best known for its movie adaptations, including the 1950 classic with Judy Holliday, Broderick Crawford and William Holden, Garson Kanin’s play is a comic masterpiece that is as relevant today—maybe more so—than when it was first produced on Broadway in 1946. When self-made junk man Harry Brock comes to Washington, D.C. to grease some palms, he sees that his efforts could be undermined by the presence of his uncouth girlfriend, ex-chorus girl Billie. But after Brock hires newspaperman Paul Verrall to launch Billie on a path to self-educating, the would-be tycoon gets more than he bargained for.

Superior Donuts By Tracy Letts 
Preview Performance: July 18 / Opening: July 19

In this lighthearted comedy, a former sixties radical see his run-down family doughnut shop in Uptown Chicago radically transformed when he hires a young black man with visionary zeal and an appetite for change. What happens next in this wonderfully poignant comedy-drama from Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Tracy Letts (August: Osage County, Bug, Killer Joe) challenges our assumptions about immigration and racism, while presenting the dangers of looking backward in a rapidly changing world and the redemptive power of hope and friendship.

Brunch Readings

There will be three brunch readings at 11:00am that include: Kanin’s Hollywood on July 21, The Pawnbroker on July 28, and The Farm Show on August 4. On August 11, a concise and entertaining one-man play on the life and works of Oscar Wilde, written by Micheál Mac Liammóir, will be performed at Aberthau Mansion.

Win a Festival Super Pass

Thanks to Ensemble Theatre Company, I’m giving away a pair of Festival Super Passes that includes tickets to all three shows, the brunch readings, and the one man show on Oscar Wilde. Here’s how you can enter to win:

• Leave a comment on this post (1 entry)
• Click below to post an entry on Twitter

Follow Ensemble Theatre Company on Facebook and Twitter for more info. I will draw one winner at random from all entries at 12:00pm on Wednesday, July 10, 2019.

UPDATE The winner is: Neena!