Category Archives: News
An Interview with Ellen Peterson & The Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir!
On the eve of In the Chamber: Holiday Special, Playwright Rick Chafe catches up with this year's artists for a glimpse of their new creations.
Every year, Theatre Projects commissions two or more theatre artists to create a new piece for straight-from-the-oven-to-the-audience performance. December 8-10, In the Chamber: Holiday Special premieres a music/theatre mashup of the artistry of Ellen Peterson and the Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir (aka creative cyclones Sarah Constible and Michelle Boulet plus ten or so best friends) for two plays wrapped in one glittery package. Rick Chafe stopped the panting artists long enough to get a preview.
Rick: Overview please, what are the two shows in one about?
Sarah: The Fu Fu Chi Chi part takes place in hour 36 of a 12-day Christmas TV marathon. The host, Bobbie Lager, was supposed to be relieved 8 hours ago, and she’s very sick. She shows a selection of musical numbers, each one, coincidentally enough, performed by the choir.
Michelle: And then Sarah and I are sort of the accent in Ellen’s piece, because she’s doing monologues and we’re the ones who give her the chance to change costumes. We wrote all new songs for the choir for our show, and songs that resonate a lot with Ellen’s themes for hers.
Ellen: Mine is The Eight Tiny Reindeer of the Apocalypse. It’s about how the end of civilization as we know it is brought to collapse by Christmas. I play 3 characters over the span of 20 years. The first is an economics professor who’s seen the signs everywhere and is trying in vain to get people to stop the madness. Her students wouldn’t listen and she becomes a doomsday prophet, standing out on the corner of Portage and Vaughn. The next character is a woman who is married and has children, but she had a breakdown the previous year. She’s trying to get her Christmas mojo together, trying to make the magic happen, but it’s not going very well. The third is a preacher of a so-called church—but there’s no 2-sentence version of this, so you have to come see.
Rick: Where did the Christmas theme come from? MORE >>
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It’s a Handmade Holiday Special!
The "Knit the Bridge" Giant Ball of Yarn courtesy Jennifer Smith & Kristen Nelson (and over 117 other local knitters)will be installed in the theatre lobby!
TPM is getting crafty with our Holiday Special themed In the Chamber!
To compliment the performance on stage, we’ve invited local artists to display and sell their handmade creations in the lobby.
There will be a variety of items, from original gift cards & writing journals to hand printed t-shirts, beautiful felted creatures & hand sewn monsters! Expect a little cheekiness and a lot of talent!
Here’s the Handmade line up:
- Heather Bays
- Tamara Rae Biebrich: lady.t tees
- Maurice & Jeanette Dzama
- Kami Goertz: Marathon 1981
- Andee Penner: Sew Dandy
- Alix Sobler: Summertime Crafts
So arrive early and bring cash! We’ll even have hand stamped wrapping paper and an elf or two to tie up your packages. Oh…did we mention the photo booth?!
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Theatre Projects’ Holiday Special is coming soon!
The Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir Photo: Leif Norman l to r: Michelle Boulet, Jacqueline Loewen, Sarah Constible, Janice Skene, Elizabeth Quesnel & Marina Stephenson Kerr
In the Chamber 2011: Holiday Special
Featuring Ellen Peterson & The Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir
Directed by Ardith Boxall
8PM December 8th, 9th & 10th
The Asper Centre for Theatre & Film – University of Winnipeg Campus – 400 Colony (Entrance from Balmoral)
TPM is preparing for the holidays – constructing a darkly comic theatrical tonic for the madness of the season. Ellen Peterson and the Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir are the elves In the Chamber workshop, building us two new plays.
This year our writer/performer series that begs for the personal explores our society’s relationship to the holidays, our economy and the individual pursuit for meaning in the current economic climate.
Ellen Peterson brings us The Eight Tiny Reindeer of The Apocalypse and the Fu Fu Chi Chi will give us a playlet in four part harmony, so fa la la promises to be ha ha ha – we hope you can join us!
With just three performances, seating is limited - get your tickets now!
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An interview with Bruce McManus
Two Chekhov enthusiasts, Mike Bell and Bruce McManus, met for coffee to discuss the impending world premiere, 11 years in the making, of Bruce’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters.
Scene:
Mike enters Bruce’s home. Bruce offers coffee. Mike can’t say no because he loves “the java”. During the interview, sometimes Bruce stands up to get coffee. But, for the most part, Mike and Bruce are sitting at the kitchen table.
MIKE: Why is the story of Three Sisters important to you?
BRUCE: It resonated with me because the theme of happiness has dropped out of literature to some extent. Except for children’s literature. The characters in the play need to find some kind of place in the world, but also find happiness. Find happiness whatever that is…whatever that means. It’s intriguing to me.
MIKE: What do you find more challenging? Writing an original play or adapting a pre-existing one?
BRUCE: With my own plays I’ve lived through that period. Adaptations you have to research time, place, and who the characters represented in their own time. And when you’ve got the story and structure most of your work is done. Yet you still feel this obligation to enlighten and enhance what is there. That poses its own challenges. But there’s no easy writing. Everything’s hard about writing.
MIKE: How would you describe Chekhov as a writer? MORE >>
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A warning from Chekhov – get out and vote Manitoba!
“Wherever there is degeneration and apathy, there also is sexual perversion, cold depravity, miscarriage, premature old age, grumbling youth, there is a decline in the arts, indifference to science, and injustice in all its forms.”
-Anton Chekhov in a letter to A.S. Suvorin, Dec. 27, 1889
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New adaptation of Three Sisters by Bruce McManus – running October 6th – 16th.
Three Sisters
By Anton Chekhov
Adapted by Bruce McManus
October 6th – 16th, 2011
Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film
University of Winnipeg Campus – 400 Colony (entrance from Balmoral)
Directed by Christopher Brauer
Featuring an ensemble cast of 11!
a zone41 theatre production
110 years since the original opened at the Moscow Arts Centre. McManus has moved the action from turn of the century Russia and centered it instead on The Royal Canadian Air Force Base at Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan in the late 1950′s. In doing so he weaves a prairie story from the essential threads of the original remaining faithful to the tragic comedy of Chekhov’s characters in an environment often hostile to dreams.
Three Sisters explores our obsessive desire to look elsewhere, to ignore our reality in pursuit of an imagined salvation, and confronts us with the impossibly perfect designs we hang on both our past and future.
Three Sisters has an artistic team of 20! Learn more about the artists and the show on the Three Sisters Page on this site.
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Launching a season and introducing a new theatre company to Winnipeg audiences
On October 6th, 2011, Theatre Projects Manitoba is launching our 22nd season with zone41 theatre’s production of Bruce McManus’ Three Sisters. We are excited to partner with them for their inaugural production and introduce our audiences to this new theatre company committed to reimagining classics.
We asked Matthew Handscombe – one half of zone41 to describe the genesis of their new company .
Matthew Handscombe:
“Two years ago this fall, our lives changed. It began with a show, Tom-Tom’s co-op production of The Winter’s Tale that was a revelation to me as an audience member and just had the magic for Krista as a veteran actor. If you were lucky enough to have seen it, you too may fondly recall how Christopher Brauer and his team of actors were able to transform two trestles, a door and a piano into the richest of sets. The quality of the work being done on stage was staggering and moments of obvious, unbridled joy were received by the audience with vocal thanks. I wasn’t the only one in tears. MORE >>
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The Book of Vaudeville premieres with TPM Doc in support of PAL Winnipeg
On the occasion of TPM’s 20th anniversary, interviews abounded and video was shot… Theatre Projects was made a movie star. Produced and directed by Gordon Tanner, the footage became a 16 minute documentary called Between Then and Now: 20 Years of Theatre Projects Manitoba for MTS On Demand.
Now you have a chance to see Between Then and Now: 20 Years of Theatre Projects Manitoba on a double bill from MTS on Demand with the premiere of The Book of Vaudeville in support of Winnipeg’s Performing Arts Lodge.
MTS Winnipeg on Demand Presents a Farpoint Films Production
The Book of Vaudeville Premiere
A Fundraiser for the Performing Arts Lodge of Winnipeg
Friday, September 23
Two Screenings: 1:30pm & 7:00pm
Aqua Books
274 Garry Street
Winnipeg, Manitoba
This is a fundraiser for the Performing Arts Lodge of Winnipeg (PAL). Tickets are $20 (cash sales only please) and are available in advance at Aqua Books, Theatre Projects Manitoba (204-245 McDermot Ave) and the Farpoint Films office at 202-1335 Erin St.
Click here to watch the trailer for The Book of Vaudville on YouTube
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TPM AGM this weekend!
Join us this Sunday to hear the fabulous news from last year’s10/11 Season. It’s also a great opportunity to chat with the staff and the Board of Directors about your TPM experiences over coffee and cookies.
Theatre Projects Manitoba’s 22nd Annual General Meeting 3PM Sunday January 22nd, 2012 504 – 100 Arthur: Manitoba Association of Playwright’s Rory Runnels Studio Beverages & nibbles will be servedHmmm…cookies and good conversation about theatre…very hard to go wrong with that plan.