Welcome to Pacific Theatre's 27th season! With more shows on our stage than in any previous year, we celebrate the artistry and passion of our company members with an extraordinary range of theatrical adventures.
It's fitting that we launch things with The Busy World Is Hushed, a Guest Production that features the kind of initiative and collaboration that make this season what it is.
A couple years back, Richard Wolfe – then newly-appointed Artistic Director of Vancouver's celebrated Pi Theatre – approached me with a project he wanted to see on our stage. The play engages so many of the questions our company loves to wrestle with, and while it didn't quite fit in the season that was then taking shape, I kept it close at hand.
Early this year, as we turned to planning the current season, Adam Bergquist – a one-time PT apprentice you'll remember from Chickens, Last Train To Nibroc, A Man For All Seasons and any number of shows at other theatres in town – proposed a Guest Production of another piece we both became very excited about. When we learned that the rights had already been secured by another Vancouver theatre, I handed Adam a stack of other potential scripts – with Busy World on the top of the pile.
Adam loved the play, loved the actor challenges of the piece and the spiritual questions at the heart of the story. Exhilarated by the idea of working with Richard, and seeing an ideal role for Gina Chiarelli – another core company member, long overdue for a role on our mainstage – Adam made arrangements with Actors Equity, procured the rights, and we had our Season Opener.
This small, carefully drawn portrait of three complex and recognizable human souls is perfectly scaled for our intimate theatre. Chamber music if you will, a nuanced, understated contemplation of subtle and intriguing themes. For close listening.
I love this play. I love the fact that Hannah's theology, her understanding of God, is not my own – but that her God is unmistakably the same. And that her love for God, and for her son, resonate so strongly with the loves in my own life. How different we can be from one another, and yet so much alike.
I trust this play will challenge you, and move you, as much as it has me.
Ron Reed,
Artistic Director
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