Today is the first day of the Neanderthal Arts Festival at the Vancouver Eastside Cultural Centre (July 21 to 30), a developmental festival featuring new and experimental work by local theatre companies, and one from Montreal. This year’s line-up includes a play about a pregnant man (My Pregnant Brother/Freestanding Productions), a musical about a bigamist […]

One of my all-time favourite plays, Shakespeare’s Richard III, will be opening at Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival this Saturday night at Vanier Park. Directed by Kathryn Shaw, Richard III completes a two-play lineup (the first being Henry VI: The War of the Roses–an amalgamation of Henry VI part 1,2, and 3) in the […]

Theatre Under the Stars (“TUTS”) first premiered at the Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park in 1940 and it’s still going strong. On stage for July and August 2011 TUTS presents Bye Bye Birdie and Anything Goes. Bye Bye Birdie “Rock and roll returns to Malkin Bowl as Bye Bye Birdie, written by Michael Stewart with […]

While most Vancouverites know Bard on the Beach, and how their plays are set up against a backdrop of sea, sky and mountains, not many may be aware of Seven Tyrants Theatre and how their performances are also set up against a natural landscape—only it’s the lush gardens of the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese […]

July 5th, 1959 was the opening day of the Queen Elizabeth Theatre in downtown Vancouver and a few weeks later Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II personally gave it her name. The venue accommodates 2,781 patrons and over the years it has hosted some of the world’s greatest plays, musicals, operas, ballets and concerts. 1957, excavation […]