soul food menu

If you'd like to receive occasional Soul Food emails - news about art around Vancouver with a spiritual flavour - just like this, but in your very own in box - let Andrea Loewen know: andrea@pacifictheatre.org. No spam, nobody gets your email address, and you can opt out any time.

Pix & Raves

I've posted some more of my Playland photos on the blog. Need to see it again this week: shook me to the core. Some other people too: here's a sample of our viewer responses. 
"By far the most powerful and the most beautiful play I have ever seen..." 
"I'm often frustrated (with myself) coming out of a play when I know the story didn't 'get me' like I know it was meant to. Tonight, I was got. There were snot and tears... The kind of theatre that makes me so grateful for Pacific Theatre..." 
"powerful, hard-hitting: it's no playground, but Fugard does leave a spark of hope..." 
"Some of the best acting you'll see on any stage in our city. Honestly, if you have a cultural bone in your body you'll buy a ticket for you and someone else and go..." 
"A thought-provoking story of redemption..."
"Powerful storytelling..."
"Drew Facey’s set design is a marvel..."

Soul Food 2.0

Now, just so you know I'm no mere huckster, I will say there was one stalwart PT attender who wrote me with a divergent opinion. You can weigh this into the mix as you consider attending. "Too much anger. Too much strong language. No sense of a significant change of hear at the end: there was movement to reconciliation and forgiveness but a sense that they only got a quarter of the way to where I hoped it might have gotten to. I am often moved to tears by many of the Pacific Theatre plays but there was not even a hint of that emotional connection." As my friend writes, "you can't please all of the people all of the time, so we shall look forward to plays that have more resonance for us in the days to come." 

Playland Deets

One friend asked me if there are still tickets available. You don't even need to ask: when it's not a comedy, a musical, or something everybody's already seen, there will be tickets.  The strange thing is, substantial, human-scale stories like Playland are why people love Pacific Theatre -- though they don't necessarily show up!  So when you see a play like this on our calendar, make sure to add it to your own. Unless you'd rather we switch over to a steady diet of musicals, comedies, and things you've already seen...

Playland

by Athol Fugard

closes November 27

Michael Kopsa, Tom Pickett, directed by Anthony F. Ingram

Tickets: 604 731-5518 | www.pacifictheatre.org

Christmas Campaign

Pacific Theatre has launched its annual Christmas silly-postcard-asking-for-money campaign. Check it out: it's kinda cute, and I make a great Grinch if I do say so myself.  (Though my most Grinchly pose won't show up until you hold the actual postcard in your hands.)

Other Soul Food

There's also a swell Playland video by The Province you'll want to check out, as well as notes from the director and artistic director....  Dan Amos (The Quarrel, This Wonderful Life, A Bright Particular Star) and Erin Pennington (Remnants) launch a new web series today...  Kat Gauthier (Godspell, You Still Can't) is onstage now in Hamlet...  Diane Tucker ia reading at the Jewish Book Festival this Sunday... That huge favourite The Foreigner opens next week at Trinity Western University...  And there's some Noah's ark, literary tattoos and whole pile of photos on the Oblations blog....  Also, do you know TWU grad Kaylee Harwood?  Guess where she just got a job....

Soul Food Movies

We've got a Catholic-O-Rama coming our way!  With a single imminent screening of the Cannes-winning Of Gods And Men (the Soul Food film of the year, in my opinion), and a week-long run of the Hildegard biopic Vision, not to mention the DVD release of the previously unfindable Edith Stein film The Seventh Chamber, we've all of a sudden got monks and nuns all over the place!  Heck, there's even a showing of The Portuguese Nun pending, but it's not right away, so I'll post on that in a bit.
Bit of a lull in the commercial big screen new releases just now, before the end-of-year stuff really kicks in - I can't wait for The King's Speech, and Julie Taymor's Tempest - but you can  catch an old Soul Food favourite, Millions at Cinematheque this Sunday, or The Maltese Falcon at some multi-plexes November 28. A new Roy Anker faith-and-film book "Of Pilgrims And Fire: When God Shows Up At The Movies" will point you to lots of rentable Soul Food, and hopefully this weekend I'll get around to posting something about the bumper crop of small, independent and foreign films we've had so far in 2010 - check back to the Soul Food Movies blog in a couple days for some titles to consider renting, including Please Give, Animal Kingdom, Me & Orson Welles, Winter's Bone....  And how great is this: Of Gods And Men is the hottest movie in France right now! One of the most deeply Christian films you'll ever see, a boffo box office smash in "godless France." Go figure. Hope it gets a decent run here in Vancouver....