7th Annual Summer Repertory Festival

7th Annual Summer Repertory Festival Ensemble Theatre Company

An uplifting comedy set in a doughnut shop, a classic political satire for the age of Trump and a celebration of the power of storytelling make this year’s Annual Summer Repertory Festival from Ensemble Theatre Company one of its most thrilling yet.

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.

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. As Tariq Leslie, Artistic Director of Ensemble Theatre Company says: “Theatre brings us together to celebrate, challenge and provoke through the telling of stories. The plays we have programmed for our seventh season embrace conversations about what our culture was, is, and could be – the stories we tell ourselves and the truths we all share – each one filled with humour and with pathos.”

For Vancouver theatregoers, the company’s annual repertory festival is a highlight in an otherwise dry time for theatre in the city.

Dates: July 10 – Aug 16th, 2019 (no performances July 15 & 16)

Times: 7:30pm nightly / 2pm Sundays, July 21, 28 & August 4

Venue: Jericho Arts Centre, 1675 Discovery Street, Vancouver, BC

Tickets: From $25. Single tickets on sale June 1. Festival Pass: $88.

Available online at: http://www.ensembletheatrecompany.ca

7th Annual Summer Repertory Festival:

The Drawer Boy

By Michael Healey

Directed by Alan Brodie / Asst. DirectorCaitlin Fysh

Set Design and Costume Design by Alaia Hamer

Lighting Design by Sara Smith / Sound Design by Michael Chambers

Stage Managed by Emily Chen / Props by Samantha Lam

Featuring James Gill, Darcey Johnson, Chris Lam

Preview Performance: Wed. July 10 /Opening: Friday, 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. Canadian novelist and poet Michael Ondaatje wrote that “The Drawer Boy is a beautifully written play. It moves from toughness and hilarity to something devastating and tender.”

Born Yesterday

By Garson Kanin

Directed by Shelby Bushell and Michael Scholar Jr.

Set design by Naomi Sider / Lighting Design by Celeste English

Costume Design by Julie White / Sound Design by Rick Colhoun

Props by Samantha Lam

Featuring Alexis Kellum-Creer, Paul Herbert, Tariq Leslie, Kira Fondse, David Wallace, James Gill, Kenneth Tynan and Steven James

Preview Performance: Th. July 11 /Opening: Sat., 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

Directed by Keltie Forsyth

Set design by Ariel Slack / Lighting Design by Patrick Smith

Costume design by Liz Gao / Sound Design by Rick Colhoun

Stage Managed by Anita Jiang / Props by Samantha Lam

Featuring Ron Reed, Chris Francisque, Steve James, Darcey Johnson, Lindsay Nelson, Alexis Kellum-Creer, Anthony Santiago, Richard Meen, Kenneth Tynan

Preview Performance: Th. July 18 /Opening: Fri., 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.

Individual tickets go on sale June 1st, 2019 – but you can buy a 2019 Festival Pass (a savings of over $20) NOW!

About Ensemble Theatre Company

Ensemble Theatre Company first began performing in the late 1990s in the former chapel of a Victoria, BC church. The company is the ambitious brainchild of Tariq Leslie and Elvy Del Bianco, who trained together at The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art (LAMDA). Now, some 20 years later – and based in Vancouver since 2001 – Ensemble Theatre Company is well-regarded for its choice of heady, intelligent, and thoughtful productions with accolades that include Jessie Award nominations and high praise from our audiences and local critics alike.

Ensemble operates as a non-profit organization relying on community support to produce our annual Summer Repertory Festival, our readings, and other events each year. We draw a multi-generational audience of nearly 10,000 from the greater Vancouver area, but our impact reaches well beyond this region with several American and European patrons returning each summer.

Media release and images provided by Marnie Wilson, Artsbiz Public Relations. All photos by Emily Cooper.

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