Monthly Archives: February 2016

News Flash

Make a Map and Win a Camping Trip

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Parks Canada and Confederation Centre of the Arts invite Prince Edward Island youth to participate in the Road to 2017 Poster and Graphic Novel Contests. The contests are open to youth in grades 6 to 8, or ages 11 to 14. Classes and organized youth groups falling within the age range are also invited to submit group posters or graphic novels.ExperiencesCanada_800x600-01

Participants in the poster contest are asked to illustrate the map of Canada’s journey to its 150th anniversary in 2017, including stops along the way reflecting important Canadian events, people, or places. Participants in the graphic novel contest must create a book with a maximum of eight pages that tells a part of Canada’s story and its development as a nation.

Individual grand prize winners will receive a free weekend of camping in P.E.I. National Park, and the grand prize and second place winners will receive a seven-day family combo pass for P.E.I. National Park and Green Gables Heritage Place. The grand prize winning class or youth group will receive an exclusive art class with visual artists Jeff Alward or Maurice Bernard. Top placing groups will also receive a copy of the DVD A Building of Destiny and a special class trip to the Confederation Chamber for a tour with a Confederation Player.

Full contest details can be found at parkscanada.gc.ca/ph-contest-2016. The deadline for entries is March 11, 2016.

News Flash

Mack Gets Nom Nod Again

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For a second consecutive year The Mack theatre at Confederation Centre of the Arts has been nominated for Venue of the Year by a jury with the East Coast Music Association. A much loved Island venue, The Mack was selected as a top-5 finalist in this Atlantic Canadian-wide category, which also includes fellow PEI theatre Harmony House. The ECMA’s will be handed out in Sydney, Cape Breton, April 14-17, 2016.

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“On behalf of all management, staff, crew, and the board of directors at Confederation Centre, we are very honoured to be recognized with an ECMA nomination,” says Darcy Campbell, director of winter programming at the Centre. “We congratulate our fellow nominees and thank the many patrons who support us year-round through Sobeys LIVE at the Centre, The Charlottetown Festival, and many private bookings of this great space.”

A key part of Confederation Centre, The Mack is listed on TripAdvisor’s Top-15 things to do in Charlottetown. Upcoming performances at the 200-seat cabaret theatre include the dance umbrella musical Flapper!, singer-songwriter Ian Sherwood, Canadian pop star Royal Wood, and the musical Spoon River, playing July 6 to August 20 at The Charlottetown Festival.

State of the Art

Gillis House Moves Indoors

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ROAD TRIPS & other diversion, the first comprehensive overview of Regina-based artist David Thauberger, opens March 5th at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery.

One featured art work in this style that may be of interest to Islanders is Chappell Picture, a portrait view of the handsome Gillis House found at 48 Great George Street, now part of the Great George Hotel. This engaging work is from the Gallery’s permanent collection, and depicts the former Queen Anne-inspired double tenement in bright pastel colours as featured during the painting’s creation in 1993.

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The opening reception for this and other winter exhibitions is on Saturday March 5 at 7 p.m. and the show runs to June 5, 2016. Thauberger will give an art talk and tour of the exhibition on Sunday March 6 at 2 p.m. in the gallery. There is no cost to attend either event. Co-curated by Sandra Fraser and Timothy Long, David Thauberger: ROAD TRIPS & other diversions is funded in part by the Museums Assistance program at Canadian Heritage.

State of the Art

On the Road Right in Town

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Regina-based David Thauberger is nationally recognized as a painter, printmaker, and ceramist whose practice employs a firm conviction that the local is as important as the global. Opening March 5 at the Confederation Centre Art Gallery, ROAD TRIPS & other diversions is the first comprehensive overview of this remarkable artist.

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Organized by the Mendel Art Gallery, Saskatoon and the MacKenzie Art Gallery, Regina, this installation explores how the idea of place has shaped the artist’s work. The exhibition brings together some 70 paintings, prints, and ceramic works, produced from 1971 to 2009. Clusters of art works ranging from New York pop art to Chicago imagism to Saskatchewan folk painting highlight his process of assimilating visual information through the process of collecting.

Born in Holdfast, Saskatchewan in 1948, Thauberger is one of the most significant artists on the Prairies. Whether in patterned watercolours, flocked prints, ceramics, or taped and stenciled paintings, he has played with the line between industrial and handmade techniques, his work reflecting both his formal art school training and his rejection of the limitations of a strictly fine art approach.

Thauberger is known for his particular approach to painting vernacular architecture, such as legion halls, false-front businesses, churches, and houses, as if they were portraits. Tourist postcards have been another influential source and his work has the ability to transform the imagery of popular culture – both the everyday and the spectacular – into symbolic icons of places in much the same way that postcards can.

Thauberger also made an important impact on the national scene through his work on boards with UNESCO, Canada Council, and the Canada Council Art Bank. He was named to the Order of Canada in 2008, and acknowledged for “his promotion and preservation of Canadian heritage and folk art in Saskatchewan, in addition to his work as a painter, sculptor, and educator.”

On Stage

Cead Mile Failte, in Other Words

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Watermark Theatre is delighted to bid Céad Míle Fáilte – A Hundred Thousand Welcomes – to Irish Director Alan Kinsella, who will be staging Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit for the 2016 Watermark Summer Season.

Mr. Kinsella is a native of County Wexford, Ireland, who began his career as an actor at the famous Abbey Theatre in Dublin, and continued in Ireland as a director of plays such as “Dedalus Lounge”, “Decadence”, and “Angels in America”, as well as musicals such as “Victor/Victoria”, “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”, and “Singing in the Rain”.

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An accomplished director of the classical theatre, Mr. Kinsella has staged plays such as “Edward II”, “Henry IV”, “Major Barbara”, and “A Streetcar Named Desire.” In 2010, he made his Off‐Broadway debut, directing Stephen Berkoff’s “Lunch”. Above all, Mr. Kinsella has made himself a master of the works of Noel Coward, having directed Coward’s “Still Life”, “While We Were Dancing”, and “Ways and Means”, at the Civic Theatre in Dublin as well as the Coward musical reviews “Marvelous Party”, and “Noel and Cole”.

Mr. Kinsella settled in Canada in 2013 and over the past three years has directed more than 20 Canadian productions in Toronto including “The Woman in Black”, “Jesus Christ Superstar”, “Hair”, and “Anything Goes”.

In the hands of an experienced and able director – and one with such an extensive background in Coward’s works – the Watermark Theatre production of Blithe Spirit promises to deliver all the wit, dazzle and spark which marks the comedy of one of modern theatre’s great playwrights.

 

On Stage

Cast of Spoon River Surfaces

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Confederation Centre will play host to one of the most celebrated new musicals in Canada this summer. Today, the Centre announced an impressive 11-member ensemble for Spoon River, a mystical, musical celebration of life, co-produced by Soulpepper Theatre Company and The Charlottetown Festival.

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Playing The Mack cabaret theatre from July 6 to August 20, this uplifting hootenanny is composed and adapted by Charlottetown’s own Mike Ross and directed by Albert Schultz. The cast features a who’s who of Canadian musical theatre, including eight Charlottetown Festival veterans. They are:

Alana Bridgewater – Hairspray, Mirvish’s We Will Rock You, Gemini-nominated vocalist

Matt Campbell – lead in The Full Monty and Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad, Canada ROCKS!

Jonathan Ellul – Forever Plaid, King Lear and Oklahoma! at Stratford Festival

Susan Henley – ‘Rachel Lynde’ in Anne of Green Gables—The Musical, Evangeline, Hairspray! 1st U.S. National tour

Amanda LeBlanc – lead in Dear Johnny Deere, 2016 National Arts Centre Ensemble

Mary Francis Moore – co-writer of Bittergirl and Bittergirl-The Musical, lead in TPM’s The Thing Between Us

Alicia Toner – Evangeline, lead in the Centre’s Cinderella, Mirvish’s Once

Sandy Winsby – four seasons as ‘Matthew’ in Anne, Jesus Christ Superstar on Broadway, Mirvish’s Kinky Boots

The ensemble also features three Soulpepper Theatre Company regulars marking their first performances with Charlottetown:

Richard Lam – Spoon River world premiere, The Crucible and Of Human Bondage

Brendan Wall – Spoon River world premiere, War Horse for Mirvish and London’s West End,  Mirvish’s Once

Daniel Williston – Soulpepper’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead and Death of a Salesman, Mirvish’s Kinky Boots

Based on the seminal Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters, townsfolk of long ago are brought to life in this dream-like production whose soundtrack calls to mind the music of O Brother, Where Art Thou?. Spoon River’s residents raise their voices in song in an immersive portrait of early 20th-century rural life. The production won the 2015 Dora Award for Outstanding New Musical as well as the 2015 Toronto Theatre Critics’ Association Award for Best Musical.

Mike Ross is thrilled to bring this production to his home province. “Spoon River is a show dear to my heart, and I think that Charlottetown is the perfect place to tell these incredible stories about small town living, and love and loss,” he said. “I know this very talented cast will make the show an unforgettable musical and theatrical experience this summer.”

News Flash

Pick 3 Ending Soon

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The Pick 3 Pass for customized Charlottetown Festival ticket packages is available for just two more weeks, closing March 5. Patrons receive 30% off and can book any three Charlottetown Festival shows and select from the best available seats.three-fingers

 

Please visit confederationcentre.com or contact the box office, toll-free, at 800-565-0278.

Confederation Centre wishes to recognize CIBC as the title sponsor of The Charlottetown Festival. The Centre also acknowledges the Department of Canadian Heritage; the Government of P.E.I., through the Department of Education, Early Learning, and Culture, and the City of Charlottetown for continued support.

Media sponsors are The Guardian, Hot 105.5, Ocean 100, and CTV.

On Stage

One Reason There is (Almost) No Winter Theatre

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PEI STORM

Near the Confederation Centre for the Arts, Charlottetown

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Outside the Victoria Playhouse, Victoria-by-the-Sea

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National Park, North Rustico, near the Watermark Theatre

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Driving to The Guild, Charlottetown

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Summerside, near the Harbourfront Theatre

On Stage

Lately at the Victoria Playhouse

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Rope’s End by Doug Bowie, directed by Mark Fraser, 2015

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Kiss the Moon, Kiss the Sun by Norm Foster, directed by Ted Price, 2014

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Having Hope at Home by David Craig, directed by Ron Irving, 2013

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Trudeau Stories by Brooke Johnson, directed by Allyson McMackon, 2012

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‘Till It Hurts by Doug Bowie, directed by Erskine Smith, 2011