Glory Days
Ahh, the good old days. We say that often but what does it really mean? In Glory Days presented by The Boys Upstairs Equity Co-Op, those were the days in high school where everything felt complicated but really was simpler than we thought. Glory Days follows the story of four high school friends that reunite a year after graduation to find each other changed. A pop-rock theatre musical that illustrates a group of friends trying to figure out how they grew up.

Playing at Jan. 18th until 28th at The Clutch, click here for tickets!

HERE’S OUR PuSh FESTIVAL PREVIEW + MORE ON THE SHOW!

PuSh Festival: Amarillo
Amarillo is a multi-media performance by Teatro Linea de Sombra, a Mexican touring ensemble that incorporates dance, projections, lost objects and complex layered sound scores to tell the story of an absent man that heads out towards the US – Mexican border only to never make it to his destination of Amarillo, Texas. The geographical landscapes illuminates travels and journeys of the absent man and the thousands of other migrants like him and their changes in identity as they leave their homes and family behind for unfamiliar land. We’re interviewing the director, Jorge A. Vargas on today’s show

Playing next week from Jan. 17th – 19th at Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre and Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, click here for more information.

Plus… coverage on Arts Funding in BC and our usual books segment with Maegan Thomas… “What I Read Over Christmas Break” and of course, more PuSh!

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Dr. Quast and Mr. Skinner’s Christmas Dinner: A Civilized Yuletide for Civilized Folk
Aside from winning our award for one of the longest title ever, this radio play feature from Spectral Theatre society that shows a christmas dinner tale that is less than civilized. Come meet Dr. Quast and Mr. Skinner, two best friends and well intentioned cannibals that run into the typical (or atypical?) troubles during a Christmas family dinner. Written by David Quast (if you enjoy this, there’s a whole series about this meat-eating pair), the play features live sound engineered effects.

Happening from now until the 17th, check here for more dates!

Waiting for Godot
Blackbird Theatre performs a rendition of the classic Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett. An comedic existential piece where everything or nothing at all happens with two men, Vladimir and Estragon, waits by a tree for Godot to appear. They’re not sure whether today is the right day to meet him or if this is even the right place but they know that the meeting place is by a tree and the play elapses as they pass the time. Come for a good laugh and some slight thinking at The Cultch.

Playing from Dec. 27th to Jan. 21st, click here for more information.

Film Festival 4 Peace: Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up?
The 8th Annual Film Festival 4 Peace kicks off this Saturday through Sunday. One of the feature films this year is “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand Up?” that is an in-depth documentary directed by Saul Landu into the US/CUBAN relations through a documentary on the Cuban 5. The Cuban 5 were spies that were sent to investigate the anti-Cuban, anti-Communist terrorist organization Miami about the several bombings in Havana. After finding evidence of the terrorism, the Cuban turned the information to the FBI and were in turn arrested and serving time while the confessed members of the terrorism group roam freely. This film illustrates the Cuban/US tensions from the 1960s until today.

Catch this film this weekend at the Britannia Community Centre along with guest Saul Landu, click here for more information.

Plus… if you’re looking for a more traditional Christmas, check out A Dylan Thomas Christmas with Child’s Christmas in Wales this Friday and Sunday by the Vancouver Chamber Choir.

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Happening from now until Dec 17th at The Cultch.

Shadow Catch
Intertwining the pre-war history of Powell St. and Japanese-Noh influenced chamber opera, Shadow Catch illustrates the colourful Downtown Eastside narrative. Echoing the classic tale of Christmas Carol, the opera features a young runaway newly arrived in Vancouver and decides to stay the night at Oppenheimer Park and meets four spirits that tells of the stories of the area. Vancouver’s finest poets and composers including Daphne Marlatt, Dorothy Chang, Jennifer Butler, Farshid Samandari, and Benton Roark.

Playing from this weekend on Dec. 2nd – 4th at the Firehall Centre for the Arts.

Plus… DareArts and False Creek School are collaborating to Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company for a production of La Cages Au Folles to address gender roles and bullying.

A refreshing twist on Wizard of Oz at the Carousel Theatre that is fun for the whole family.

Dancer Transition Resource Centre is having their 25th anniversary Gala tomorrow night called Choreographing Change.

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FUNDRIVE
Yes, we’ll be fun-driving all through our show today so it would be incredibly and extremely awesome if our listeners could support us by donating towards our goal of $700 dollars. All the money goes towards bringing you the best arts and culture coverage for all of Vancouver and contributes to CiTR Radio’s continual efforts in teaching you guys broadcasting skills and stuffs and airing epic tunes 24/7. Click here to donate to The Arts Report.

OR help us out by participating in our silent auction at our TUNE IN TO THE FUTURE FunDrive Finale where we have lots of great stuff to bid for.

Thanks everybody!

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The 13th Chair
Love a good game of Clue? Addicted to Agatha Christie? Then ‘The 13th Chair’ is the show for you! Harkening back to the roaring 20s in New York City, the Crosby’s are throwing a party in celebration of their son’s engagement. To add some excitement, a medium, Madame Rosalie La Grange, was invited to conduct a seance and during the darkness of the ritual, a murder occurs. A detective comedy of sorts, ‘The 13th Chair’ has lots of clues and hints that’ll keep the audience following along and of course, no murder mystery is complete without shocking plot twists.

Playing from Nov. 17th – Dec. 4th at Studio 58, click here for more information.

Crazy Love
If you ever thought your ex-girlfriend was crazy, think again. Crazy Love is a documentary that follows the insane relationship between successful attorney Burt Pugach and the beautiful Linda Riss in the 1950s. All high glamour and ritz of a wealthy lawyer, the whirlwind romance continued until Linda found out about Burt’s real family, his distraught wife and his disabled daughter. When Linda leaves and settled down with another man, Burt’s love turned obsessive and the affair turned violent.

Playing tonight at 7:30pm, tickets at the door!

Plus… we’ll be looking at the results from Alliance for Arts and Culture’s survey with the candidates in the municipal election all over the Lower Mainland. The questions are focused on their views on the issues that local neighbourhoods and communities are facing in regards to arts, culture and heritage.

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Barr Bros
Evidently, the Barr Brothers are named after the brother duo, Brad and Andrew Barr! Along with Sarah Page and Andres Vial, the Barr Brothers formed this melodic rock band in the heart of Montreal. With guitars, drums, harps and experimental instruments, they create a dark and haunting rhythm that mimic the whispers from a spirit or perhaps the footsteps of a shadow. The Barr Brothers were only recently featured on The CBC Radio Q and now brings their music to Caravan Farm Theatre.

They will be playing on Nov. 9th at 7pm, click here for more information.

Snowman
After travelling for years and years, Denver and Majorie discover they’ve stumbled onto an obscure northern town where lives are consumed through chopping firewood, watching stolen adult videos and snorting cocaine. Along with Jude, a gay man abandoned by his family, they continued with this life until they encounter a primordial boy frozen in ice within the glacier. As this phenomenal event occurs, this style of living begins to shift in unpredictable ways. As a part of Rumble Productions, Snowman by Greg MacArthur has artistic producer Craig Hall returning after working on the premiere and Derek Metz will be also be returning in the 2003 Jessie Award winning role as Denver.

Freezing up the Revue Stage on Granville Island, click through for tickets and info.

Plus…
we’re also be talking about Penelopiad by the Arts Club and checking back up with Vogville Presents and their webisode with David ‘Boxcar’ Gates and the new book called “Shag Carpet Action” by Matthew Firth.

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It’s a scary Halloween version of the Arts Report!

The House of Faerie Bad Things
The folks at In the House Festival have created a haunted house, using fantasy elements of fairys and gnomes to spice up the genre. Artistic Director Myriam Steinberg is on the show to tell us about it!

The house is alive from October 29-31, 2011 and you can get tickets here!

Other Halloween features on the show: Debts from Itsazoo Productions, Parade of Lost Souls, and the Here Be Monsters Festival.

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Art = Liberation
Stemming from the Automatic Artiste revolution period, Pierre Gauvreau and Janine Carreau created works with vivid colours and variety of texture that leaps beyond the bounds of realism to celebrate and revere: life. A husband and wife dynamic, they worked together to produce the 47 pieces available at the “Art = Liberation” exhibition at Baron Gallery. Curated by a long-time friend of the couple, Ray Ellenwood, the exhibition is a memoir to their whirlwind creative life of Pierre who passed away earlier this year as well as to the couple’s continuous creative dedication. Today we have both Ray Ellenwood and Janine Carreau talk to us about the exhibition.

Showing from now until Spring 2012 at the Baron Gallery, for more information click here.

VIWF Features:

Charlotte Gill
With her extremely sharp piece of fiction, LadyKiller, Charlotte Gill launched herself into the scene as a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the winner of both the Danuta Gleed Award and the BC Book Prize for Fiction. LadyKiller is a collection of witty and odd stories about the rather concealed side of sex in Vancouver. There are bizarre and quirky metaphors sprinkled throughout the novel with stories about a scandalous affairs between a college professor and a naive young woman and the spotlight ‘ladykiller’ character who enjoys sidling up to strange and anonymous women in random public places. On the other hand, Charlotte also writes non-fiction pieces about her twenty years experience in working with trees! So she talks with us today about her two seeming disparate writing subjects.

Appearing in two events on Oct. 20th and 22nd at VIWF, get tickets here!

Zsuzsi Gartner
Zsuzsi Gartner’s debut into the fictional world, All the Anxious Girls on Earth is another collection of stories that put an even crazier spin on the absurd and surreal. A woman finds her self calling in bomb threats as a way to cope with her live-in boyfriend making her iron the tuxedo for a wedding to another woman while another olfactory-fixated elementary school teacher chases after her pupils who smell of earth and ignores older men that smell like wet metal. Also winning multiple awards as a journalist, Gartner’s foray into fiction is well received with Better Living Through Plastic Explosives story collection. Gartner will join The Arts Report to talk about her writing.

Also in two events on Oct. 18th and 22nd, more information can be found here.

Plus… we also will have two additional VIWF features with Thomas Pletzinger who writes the very well reviewed book, Bestattung eines Hundes (Funeral for a Dog) and Dennis Bolen , Jen Sookfong Lee who are appearing with Kevin Chong (we interviewed him last week!) and Zsuzsi Gartner on “Vancouver Seen” at VIWF. PLUS, another interview with Us and Them with Liza Lindgren!

Of course, we also have free tickets to… RE: UNION at Pacific Theatre

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Playing at tonight at 8pm at The Wise Hall, get your tickets here!

VIFF: Nuit #1
Nuit #1 is an intimate exploration of contemporary short-lived sexual encounters. After a rave, Nikolai and Clara goes back to Nikolai’s place for what appears to be a one night stand to the audience. However, it only evolves into something more when Clara gets up to leave and Nikolai invites her to come back. As the two converse and exchange their stories, a riveting vignette of intimacy far beyond sex is revealed through their short relationship in one night. Anne Émond will join us today to discuss her direction for the movie.

Playing tonight at 9pm and Oct. 14th at 4pm, find out more information here.

Book Feature: Beauty Plus Pity
Beauty Plus Pity is a narrative following Malcolm Kwan, an Asian – Canadian slacker residing in Vancouver. Then his filmmaker father dies and his fiancée leaves him. Later on, he finds out that his father had an affair and meets his half-sister, Hadley. This dramatic turn causes Malcolm to explore his cultural identity in a way that he has never done before. Kevin Chong will join us to talk about novel! Below is an excerpt:

“It took me a moment to find the person my aunts had been talking about. She had hidden herself in a far corner of the room, and sat on the bench of an electric piano that had been pushed aside, a piece of gauzy tarp thrown over it. On a plate balanced between her knees was a piece of coffee cake. She didn’t look much older than sixteen or seventeen, a tall, robust-looking girl with big walnut eyes, a bell-shaped forehead, and a buttery complexion. One corner of her face was curled into a deeply preoccupied expression.

She was in a dark crushed velvet dress with large buttons running down the middle, green tights, and boxy platform shoes. She was my newfound sister, and when she caught me looking at her, the corners of her mouth turned down. Who was that starting back at me? “

Plus, we’re also talking to Ryan Mooney, Pseudolus from A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to Forum and a feature on Vancouver Celebrates Diwali.

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The Crucible
When teenage girls are discovered trying to conjure spirits in the forest, the 17th century town of Salem explodes with accusations of witchcraft. The vicious trials that follow expose a community paralyzed by fear, religious extremism and greed. Jane Heyman directs this timeless tale of individual conscience and social tyranny by one of the greatest American playwrights of all time.

It’s on now, until Oct 16. Get tickets here!

VIFF Features

The Provider
This short film was made in 48 hours and yet swooped a Coup De Coeur award at the Cannes Film Festival after winning ‘Best Overall’ award in the contest it was made for: Bloodshots Canada 48-Hour Film Making Contest. ‘The Provider’ is a film set in a parallel dimension where in WWII, Japan had engaged the US in biological warfare after Hiroshima and an injured man looks for help in the 1940s home of a doctor and runs into the doctor’s wife instead. But of course, we learn in the film that it’s never safe to trust anyone in a post-apocalyptic world. With the film’s Canadian star-studded crew, actor Andy Thompson (who we also interviewed before) and director Brianne Nord-Stewart, it’s not a surprise it’s back at VIFF and also winning awards. The director joins us today to talk about traversing around the world after the success of a 48-hour made film.

Playing as a part of Air and Spirit of the Bluebird, get more information on showings here.

Comforting Skin
“Koffie, always full of insecurities, had led a dangerous life. Finally, she’s attempting to straighten things out and has stopped peddling drugs for her ex-boyfriend and began working three minimum-wage jobs. But she still struggles with her confidence as she rekindles with her family again whilst her ex tries to solicit new women and attempts to imbue her life with more excitement via a tattoo. Little does she know that the tattoo has a life of its own and begins to fill her with new whispers and desires.” This dark and intriguing expose in to the psychological framework of the human mind is Derek Franson’s feature film. We caught up with him just as he finished ‘Comforting Skin‘ and gets his first-hand experience at realizing the film.

Playing on Oct. 10th and 12th, get your tickets here before they sell out soon.

Wait for Rain
After so much horror movie news, we have ‘Wait for Rain’! It’s is a surprisingly fresh short comedy film about the scarcity of water as the Earth warms where the ultimate self-promoting accessory isn’t an iPad anymore but rather a photosynthesizing plant. James, an unfortunate office worker, tries to win the over his co-workers and the girl of his dreams by nurturing his own plant and ends up rising everything trying to not wait for rain. After a winning awards from National Film Board, Bravo!Fact and National Screen Institute, the producer Josh Epstein and the director Kyle Rideout show us their reactions to their accomplishments.

Playing as a part of Water, click here for more information on the limited showings.

Plus, we’re also talking to Richard Wolfe from Pi Theatre about the old time radio drama-inspired play, Visions of Vancouver!

And.. of course free tickets to The Trial of Judith K.

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