CBC.ca | Manitoba Scene | Theatre Projects Manitoba announces all-new, all-Manitoba season.
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CBC.ca | Manitoba Scene | Theatre Projects Manitoba announces all-new, all-Manitoba season
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Theatre Projects season will kick off with Chekhov
Winnipeg Free Press: republished from May 14th, 2011 print edition
A NEW adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters will have its première at Theatre Projects Manitoba this fall, 110 years after the original play opened in Moscow.
Winnipeg playwright Bruce McManus has updated the tragicomedy to the late 1950s and set it at the air force base in Moose Jaw, Sask.
Christopher Brauer will direct a large cast including Ardith Boxall, Andrew Cecon, Carolyn Gray, Rob McLaughlin, Harry Nelken and Gord Tanner. The show will run Oct. 6-16 at the Canwest Centre for Theatre and Film.
The 21-year-old Theatre Projects is committed to developing and producing Manitoba plays. Its 2011-12 season includes two other productions. Read more of the preview
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Upstaging the competition for two decades
by Kenton Smith, Uptown
A new MTS Winnipeg on Demand doc looks at the dynamic 20-year history of Theatre Projects Manitoba.
A good way to plug the undervalued dynamo of Winnipeg theatre was to bring its story directly into peoples’ homes.
“There’s still too many people who don’t know the organization exists,” says local actor (and first-time documentary filmmaker) Gordon Tanner, director of Between Then and Now: 20 Years of Theatre Projects Manitoba. The 16-minute MTS Winnipeg on Demand doc is now available to MTS subscribers.
The succinct summary of TPM’s history and mandate comes at an opportune time: TPM celebrated its 20th anniversary and 21st season in 2010. MORE >>
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TPM Doc now playing on a small screen near you!
On the occasion of our 20th anniversary, interviews abounded and video was shot… Theatre Projects was made a movie star.
Produced and directed by Gordon Tanner, the footage has now been transformed into a 16 minute documentary called Between Then and Now: 20 Years of Theatre Projects Manitoba.
MTS TV customers can see the program for free 24 hours a day, 7 days a week on MTS Winnipeg On Demand. Not an MTS customer? Make it a movie night with a friend…but don’t miss it! MORE >>
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The Challenge is on!
What CAN we do in 90 Hours? It’s time to find out!
The Winnipeg Foundation’s 90-Hour Giving Challenge began Monday at 6:00am and runs until midnight Thursday, April 21st. Make an online gift during that time to Theatre Projects Manitoba’s Agency Fund and the Foundation will provide additional support.
To check out the nearly 130 participating charities, or to make a gift, go to the 90-Hour Giving Challenge donation page. Results of the Challenge will be announced Tuesday, April 26th at a special news event at 10:30 am, at The Forks Market Atrium.
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Held over – Beethoven Blatz is a hit!
Wowza – the response from audiences has been overwhelming! So…we’ve added one more performance to our run of The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz.
The Holdover performance is:
7:30 PM, Sunday April 17th
Tickets are available online, in person at McNally Robinson or by calling the office: 204-989-2400
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A play they’ll enjoy, Manitobans will
By Kevin Prokosh, Winnipeg Free Press
What wants a man with a broken piano in an isolated woodbox of a home on the windswept Manitoba prairie in the 1930s?
The answer is at the clappering heart of Armin Wiebe’s lusty romantic folk tale The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz, which had its premiere staged before a full house at the Rachel Browne
Theatre Thursday night.For such a man as Obrum Kehler, a Mennonite farmer two years into a happy but childless marriage with his beloved Susch, it is a question of procreation. For the title character, an eccentric Russian immigrant composer tasked with repairing the Klavier, it is all about finding a new muse to spur his creation.
Sure we are not of too much else, as the mischievous Wiebe, the award-winning Winnipeg novelist, makes his successful playwriting debut with a deceptively simple plot complicated by his quirky characters reversing the order of the words they speak like so many Mennonite Yodas. Combine that with Obrum’s knack for talking in metaphors, “he speaks double sometimes,” and communication breakdowns there will be. Did Obrum hire Blatz to tune his piano or his wife?
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Theatre review: “Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz” brings Mennonites gone wild(ish) to the stage
Daria Puttaert, Tracy Penner and Tom Keenan. Photo Credit: Leif Normans
by Joff Schmidt, CBC Theatre Reviewer
Mennonites in lust! But not talking about it.
That’s the Coles notes take on Armin Wiebe’s first full-length play, The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz, which sees a solid world premiere this week from Theatre Projects Manitoba.
It’s the 1930s, and Obrum Kehler (Tom Keenan) and his wife, Susch (Tracy Penner), live on their farm just outside the fictional Manitoba town of Gutenthal. Obrum inherits a battered piano, and enlists the help of Beethoven Blatz (Eric Nyland), an eccentric Russian immigrant, to repair it – and teach Susch to play it. Read more
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Made in Manitoba
Uptown Magazine: Novelist Armin Wiebe makes his playwriting debut with The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz, a folk play with a distinctly Prairie bent
Daria Puttaert and Tom Keenan in The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz. Photo: Dylan Hewlett
From the page to the stage, Theatre Projects Manitoba presents The Moonlight Sonata of Beethoven Blatz, the premiere play by local novelist Armin Wiebe. Best known for a trio of tales — 1984’s The Salvation of Yasch Siemens, 1991’s Murder in Gutenthal and 1995’s The Second Coming of Yeeat Shpanst — all set in the fictional Manitoba Mennonite town of Gutenthal, Wiebe’s theatrical debut is a long time coming. Read the full article in Uptown!
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Welcome to Our 22nd Season!
We are thrilled to bring you three world premieres from the Province, created by fabulous local artists (beloved and emerging) and staged in intimate city venues. Join us at the theatre where you’ll find daring, intelligent and sometimes hilarious stories that will grab hold of your senses and elevate your prairie spirit!
Download our season brochure and mark the dates!
In October, we’ll premiere zone41 theatre’s Three Sisters, by Anton Chekhov adapted by Bruce McManus and set in 1959 in the wilds of Saskatchewan! Come out and be bowled over by the ensemble cast of 11 actors and the intimate alley staging that will immerse you in a living room on the Royal Canadian Air Force Base in Moose Jaw.
In the Chamber: Holiday Special marks the return of our (popular, personal and oft political) writer performer series . Ellen Peterson’s new solo performance is a modern holiday fable sure to get you through the season with a brave smile on your face. Joining her is the Fu Fu Chi Chi Choir led by Michelle Boulet and Sarah Constible in a brand new musical playlet for nine women!
In April Dionysus in Stony Mountain by Steven Ratzlaff brings you thought provoking drama; a challenging, intellectually demanding play – steeped in Nietzsche and set in Stony – to haul you out of the dark winter months and propel you to spring.
It’s going to be an amazing year. Get your season passes now!