SPARK Festival starts Sunday, March 16—great new work and many free events
This year the Belfry’s festival features new work from Halifax, Toronto, Calgary, Victoria, Saanich, Oak Bay and Fernwood. From March 16 – 30, 2014 the Belfry Theatre presents its sixth annual SPARK Festival of new plays and new ideas.
SPARK features over 40 free events and five big shows including:
Toronto’s Outside The March Theatre tackles Terminus by Ireland’s Mark O’Rowe. Called “a Tarantino film set to poetry”, Terminus inaugurated the Off-Mirvish series at the Royal Alex Theatre in Toronto – following a hugely successful debut at the Summerworks Festival.
Firewall, a new piece from Victoria’s Target Theatre is a lyrical fusion of nostalgia and technology.
Halifax’s 2b theatre brings us When It Rains – by turns blackly funny social satire, heartbreaking drama, and visually arresting theatrical illusion – from one of Canada’s most heralded companies.
When It Rains – written and directed by Anthony Black
2b theatre, Halifax
Little Iliad from Toronto’s EW&FCO is an intimate, disarmingly simple play, where one performer is live and the other performs via Skype. The audience, limited to 34 people, listens on headphones.
Little Iliad – created and performed by Evan Webber & Frank Cox-O’Connell
EW&FCO, Toronto
B101 Live – High school students in our Belfry 301 Ensemble have been watching Belfry plays and working their creative muscles. Now they reveal their own collectively created piece of theatre.
The forty plus free events at SPARK include:
Free play readings of Blood: A Scientific Romance by Governor General’s Award nominee Meg Braem and Emil Sher’s adaptation of The Boy in the Moon, Globe & Mail writer Ian Brown’s memoir of life with his severely challenged son.
This year’s crop of miniplays include Hell Is A Teenage Girl (and three more pieces performed by teenagers in cars throughout Fernwood), a dance piece performed in the smallest venue you can imagine, a Bar Mitzvah remembered, a gothic puppet tale, a new piece from the crazy minds of Heather Lindsay and Janet Munsil at Intrepid Theatre, and Paper Street Theatre’s Dave Morris, Missie Peters, Scott Thompson and Chris Gabel improvising science fiction, in space.
While last year’s Midway Party is hard to beat, this year we’re turning up the heat with a Midway Inferno. Featuring late night exclusive miniplays, burning beats, infernaoke, and more red-hot surprises, this is not to miss. Dress up and prepare to get down, there will be prizes.
Full details are available at www.belfry.bc.ca/spark.
Ticket Information
Tickets for Terminus, Firewall, and When It Rains are $20, tickets for Little Iliad are $15, and tickets for Belfry 101 Live are $10.
Post Secondary Students get 25% off and High School Students get 50% off. Tickets are available at 250-385-6815 or online at https://tickets.belfry.bc.ca. Professional Development Workshops are $25. To register for a workshop please call our Box Office at 250-385-6815. Miniplays, new play readings and the Midway Party are free – they are first come, first served.
The SPARK Festival is generously sponsored by Canadian Heritage / The Zone 91.3 / 100.3 the Q / Hillside Printing / CVV Magazine / The Joint Pizzeria & Deli. The Belfry’s Season Sponsors are Thrifty Foods, Times Colonist, Cook’s Day Off, the Canada Council for the Arts, the Province of BC, BC Arts Council, and CRD Arts Development.
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