May 31 Soul Food: REMNANTS, IDIOTS, Hart and Soul Food Movies

REMNANTS (A FABLE) at Pacific Theatre
Must close June 9
The problem with putting your heart and soul into creating a piece of theatre is that there may not be enough of either left over to also get around to letting people know about the darn thing! As you may have noticed, Soul Food has been quiet lately while the head chef was off in pre-Holocaust Poland and Depression-era Canada, deep in rehearsals for REMNANTS (A FABLE) which runs this week and next at Pacific Theatre. Very proud of this epic story that brilliantly interweaves the biblical tale of Joseph and his brothers with Canada's little-known history of anti-Semitism in what is ultimately the journey of a human soul toward hard-won reconciliation.
I've posted further details (and excerpts from a glowing Vancouver Sun review) at the Soul Food Vancouver blog, and over at the Pacific Theatre blog you'll find a Langley Times profile of a couple of our Emerging Artists. I'll likely add more bits and pieces over the next week or so.
(Oh, and did you know? Pacific Theatre led the Small Theatre category in 2007 with eight Jessie Richardson Award nominations, including a heap for GRACE.)

VILLAGE OF IDIOTS at Gallery 7
Jun 1-16
I always think of Abbotsford's Gallery 7 Theatre as something of a community theatre counterpart to Pacific Theatre. This weekend they open a show that's sort of a comic counterpart to PT's production of REMNANTS (minus the Joseph part): both works are by acclaimed Canadian playwrights, and deal with the persecution of Jews in eastern Europe in the early part of the 20th century. (But REMNANTS closes a week earlier, so you know which one you need to see first....) Details here.

MICHAEL HART CONCERTS
Jun 9: Nanaimo
Jul 19: Regent College (with Spencer Capier)
Upcoming opportunities to hear Michael, as well as a free downloadable instrumental mp3: details here.

SOUL FOOD MOVIES
Pacific Cinematheque brings us three certified Soul Food Movie masterpieces as part of their retrospective on arthouse distributor Janus Films: SEVENTH SEAL, DAY OF WRATH and WILD STRAWBERRIES are neatly clustered from June 15-18, details here. There's not a lot on regular screens right now with a distintly spiritual flavour, but I've got some tips at the Soul Food Movies blog about a handful of other films that are worth seeing, in amongst the requisite summer blockbusters and sequels of sequels.