I'm very happy to report that Norm Foster's "The Melville Boys" was a resounding success both artistically and financially! A huge congratulations to Taryn Kleeband and her amazing cast! Well done and thank you.
Todd-Elliot Gates is busy in rehearsal three times a week with Vann Besth (Mr. Green) and Simon Mortimer-Lamb (Ross) as they prepare for the heartwarming "Visiting Mr. Green" by Jeff Baron. Mr. Green, an elderley, retired dry cleaner, wanders into New York traffic and is almost hit by a car driven by Ross Gardiner, a 29 year-old corporate executive. The young man is given a community service of helping the recent widower once a week for six months. What starts as a comedy about two men who do not want to be in the same room together becomes a gripping and moving drama as they get to know each other, come to care about each other, and open old wounds they've been hiding and nursing for years. Translated into 22 languages, with over 200 productions in large and small venues, it has won numerous best play and best actor awards throughout the world.
"A cannily crafted comedy-melodrama about friendship, family, and forgiveness. Baron's play runs like a well-oiled express." -New York Newsday
"A wise, absorbing and funny play that packs quite a punch. Sparks fly."
-The Sunday Telegraph (Australia)
"Delicate, compact and compelling. A powerful play."
-Volkskrant (Holland)
"Baron tells his tale with discerning freshness and originality. One of the best shows around."
-The Chicago Daily Herald
"It is doubtful you are likely to encounter a play more enjoyable, more honestly funny and in the end, more moving than this delightful two-hander by Jeff Baron."
-The Johannesburg Citizen
"Visiting Mr. Green" runs from March 8 to March 24, 2012 (Thurs., Fri. and Sat., evenings only)
All performances are at The Tsawwassen Arts Centre, 1172 56th Street, Tsawwassen
(building nestled between Home Building and Petrocan)
Box Office opens at 7:00 pm
House opens at 7:30 pm
Curtain is 8:00 pm
(latecomers will be seated at back)
Adults: $18.00 Seniors (60+) and Students (12-18): $15.00
We are pleased to present our plays in a bistro/cafe setting. We have tables, chairs and snacks, beverages (hot and cold), pop, juices and wine available for purchase. All can be enjoyed during the performance at your table. Our audiences love the atmosphere we've created and this is becoming the place to go in Tsawwassen for excellent entertainment and an evening out locally. All at very reasonable prices and parking is free!!!
Make an evening out of it like many do...dinner across the street at one of the several excellent restaurants and then across the street for the play and an after dinner drink.
Reservations are now being taken. Call 604-288-2415 and reserve your tickets. Please leave your name, phone number and number of tickets your require (Adult/Senior) and which performance you wish to attend. You can pay for your ticket at the door the night of your performance...CASH OR CHEQUE ONLY.
If you are a subscriber, please make sure you identify yourself as one!!
PLEASE BE ADVISED...WE WILL NOT CALL YOU BACK. THE PHONE RESERVATION IS YOUR CONFIRMATION. WE WILL CALL YOU BACK IF WE ARE SOLD OUT FOR THAT PERFORMANCE.
Seating is limited so reserve early! The last three performances sell-out quickly so don't miss out!
We have sold-out 80% of our houses for every production this season!
Once we get Mr. Green up and running, I'll be back with news about our last production of the season, Norm Foster's "The Affections of May". The play will be cast this week and I'll have news for you in early March!
Right now, your Board of Directors is busy reading a dozen scripts and will be selecting next season, our 16th, very shortly. Hopefully I'll have that news for you as well and then we open up our subscription orders. Lots of "stuff" to look forward to.
Please fee free to pass this along...share...whatever! And please become a member. It's very easy!!! We'd love to see your smiling face on this page up there on the left!!!
See you in TAC in a few weeks!!
Break-a-leg...
Carroll....
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Welcome to Sidekick Players!
Over the years (almost 15 to be exact), we've tried newsletters, e-mails and a fractured web-site and all of them worked...for a while. Now we have decided to create a "blog" for Sidekick and keep everyone up-to-date on our productions and just stuff that is going on in our amazing little theatre company.
Sidekick Players Club became a registered society on August 19, 1997 and we haven't looked back a day! We are Delta's number one, longest running, award-winning theatre company and we have no intention of slowing down in the future. We started with one of our largest productions to date, "The Wind in the Willows" which brought us many talented adults and children and teens to our auditions and we cast nearly all of them! It was, without a doubt the biggest cast ever and a super bunch of people to "play" around with. After filling a 400 seat theatre with nearly every performance, we were on our way.
Our next production was "Waiting for the Parade" and my full-length directorial debut. We joined Theatre BC and entered the Vancouver Zone Festival so that we'd learn more about our venture in theatre. Surprisingly, we won 7 out of 10 awards, including Best Production! We didn't win Best Male Actor or Best Supporting Male Actor (our cast was 5 women) and we didn't win Best Set (our set was minimal), even though our adjudicator, Martin Kinch loved what we did with the set. From there we represented the Vancouver Zone in the provincial theatre festival, Mainstage and we wowed the audience (99% theatre folk) in our Theatre BC debut. No one knew who we were! We won 2 awards (Best Actress and Best Costumes) and several honourable mentions (2nd or 3rd place). We were on cloud nine! And to top it all off, I was approached to run for office and became a Vice President of the organization. Sidekick had made its mark on the theatre community of British Columbia.
The following season, we continued with a Christmas musical, "Charlotte's Web" and then another Canadian play by Wendy Lill, "The Fighting Days". Again, we won the Vancouver Zone Festival and went on to our second Mainstage where we won another award (Best Actress) and again, several honourable mentions. And, I was elected President of Theatre BC which lasted another 6 years in that role.
Our third season had us hosting the major provincial theatre festival, Mainstage in Ladner at Delta Secondary School. It was a huge success and talk about the "little engine that could"...with a core group of 7 people we managed to bring 10 mainstage productions, 18 workshops, 4 scene development plays and 7 green rooms (cast parties for 300 people) and one amazing awards night and dinner and dance. We were rocking!
Gradually, we left Theatre BC as it became more than a friendly competition and we wanted to focus on our audiences more than competing and winning. In those early days we rehearsed in the old Variety Farm building (no heat and lots of mud to clomp through) and then we moved into a classroom at the old Sacred Heart school. We stayed in that room until 2010 when we moved into The Tsawwassen Arts Centre (TAC). We used to perform in the cavernous Genesis Theatre that wasn't working for anything but large musicals, which we abandoned after 5 years. Since being in TAC (now in our full second season in there) we have grown immensely. We now bring our audiences 4 productions a year and in an intimate and very friendly atmosphere.
No more sitting in rows of seats where you are lucky if you can bring in a noisy plastic bottle of water! But we have tables, chairs, tablecloths, and wine and other beverages and snacks to enjoy during the performance. It's a huge success and we love it as well! PLUS...after 13 years we were finally able to set up a subscription series. Something we couldn't do when we were at the mercy of the school's timetable in Genesis. Our first season (2010/11) in TAC we had 32 subscriptions and we were elated! Our seating capacity per show is 75-80. By August, 2011 we had our 2011/12 subscriptions coming in and we started the season with 132! That's a pretty incredible growth pattern! And...we brought in a few more during our first production of this season and many enquiries about subscriptions at our second production (which we just closed to sell-out houses nearly every night). We have no doubt next season our subscription list will grow again to record numbers!
We have an excellent Board of Directors who work very hard to ensure the best theatre and the best prices be presented to our community. We have kept our prices low in comparision with other similiar groups in the Lower Mainland. We are committed to bringing excellent Canadian plays to the stage and this year we have two, both by Canada's most prolific playwright, Norm Foster. Right now, the board is reading a dozen scripts to decide about next season's (16th) playbill and it will be another season of top notch productions!
We opened this season with "Twelve Angry Men" which sold out and kicked off the season with a bang! We just closed Foster's "The Melville Boys" which warmed the hearts of everyone as well as keeping them in side-splitting laughter all night! We are thrilled to be bringing "Visiting Mr. Green" to the stage in March (8-24th) directed by Todd-Elliot Gates and starring two of our "Twelve Angry Men", Vann Besth and Simon Mortimer-Lamb. It is beautiful story with lots of laughs and compassion that will entertain our audiences from the opening to the last bow. More on Mr. Green to follow in the next blog.
So that's "us" in a nutshell. We will bring you news on a regular basis and keep everyone up-to-date on what we are doing. We will also be putting out the call for volunteers and members and will look forward to hearing back from you! Express your views...volunteer...HAVE FUN and PLAY around with us! You'll love it.
More history and pictures will be included and news about Sidekick! I encourage you to share these on your Facebook and Twitter pages and spread the word. We also have a Facebook Page that you can "Like" and become a member (of the page...not the club!). To become a member of Sidekick is easy! By becoming a member you have a "say" in the club. Everyone who works on a production has to become a member. If you'd like to join at this mid-way point in our season, the cost is $10 per person. If you join after June 30th., the cost is $20 Adults and $35 for a family of 4 (living in the same house). We do have young Sidekickers who help with painting, set dec and front-of-house, but don't encourage kids younger than 12 if at all possible. Although we've had 8 year olds out painting flats with their parents. It's a real "family" oriented organization and everyone does their own thing.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or ideas! And make sure you check these blogs for audition notices as well!
Copy and paste the URL and send to friends by e-mail if they aren't on Facebook! Let's get the word out there and let's try to increase our membership and volunteer base! You won't regret it and will meet new friends and possibly re-connect with old ones. We'd love to meet you and hear from you.
Break-a-leg,
Carroll
President, Sidekick Players Blub
Sidekick Players Club became a registered society on August 19, 1997 and we haven't looked back a day! We are Delta's number one, longest running, award-winning theatre company and we have no intention of slowing down in the future. We started with one of our largest productions to date, "The Wind in the Willows" which brought us many talented adults and children and teens to our auditions and we cast nearly all of them! It was, without a doubt the biggest cast ever and a super bunch of people to "play" around with. After filling a 400 seat theatre with nearly every performance, we were on our way.
Our next production was "Waiting for the Parade" and my full-length directorial debut. We joined Theatre BC and entered the Vancouver Zone Festival so that we'd learn more about our venture in theatre. Surprisingly, we won 7 out of 10 awards, including Best Production! We didn't win Best Male Actor or Best Supporting Male Actor (our cast was 5 women) and we didn't win Best Set (our set was minimal), even though our adjudicator, Martin Kinch loved what we did with the set. From there we represented the Vancouver Zone in the provincial theatre festival, Mainstage and we wowed the audience (99% theatre folk) in our Theatre BC debut. No one knew who we were! We won 2 awards (Best Actress and Best Costumes) and several honourable mentions (2nd or 3rd place). We were on cloud nine! And to top it all off, I was approached to run for office and became a Vice President of the organization. Sidekick had made its mark on the theatre community of British Columbia.
The following season, we continued with a Christmas musical, "Charlotte's Web" and then another Canadian play by Wendy Lill, "The Fighting Days". Again, we won the Vancouver Zone Festival and went on to our second Mainstage where we won another award (Best Actress) and again, several honourable mentions. And, I was elected President of Theatre BC which lasted another 6 years in that role.
Our third season had us hosting the major provincial theatre festival, Mainstage in Ladner at Delta Secondary School. It was a huge success and talk about the "little engine that could"...with a core group of 7 people we managed to bring 10 mainstage productions, 18 workshops, 4 scene development plays and 7 green rooms (cast parties for 300 people) and one amazing awards night and dinner and dance. We were rocking!
Gradually, we left Theatre BC as it became more than a friendly competition and we wanted to focus on our audiences more than competing and winning. In those early days we rehearsed in the old Variety Farm building (no heat and lots of mud to clomp through) and then we moved into a classroom at the old Sacred Heart school. We stayed in that room until 2010 when we moved into The Tsawwassen Arts Centre (TAC). We used to perform in the cavernous Genesis Theatre that wasn't working for anything but large musicals, which we abandoned after 5 years. Since being in TAC (now in our full second season in there) we have grown immensely. We now bring our audiences 4 productions a year and in an intimate and very friendly atmosphere.
No more sitting in rows of seats where you are lucky if you can bring in a noisy plastic bottle of water! But we have tables, chairs, tablecloths, and wine and other beverages and snacks to enjoy during the performance. It's a huge success and we love it as well! PLUS...after 13 years we were finally able to set up a subscription series. Something we couldn't do when we were at the mercy of the school's timetable in Genesis. Our first season (2010/11) in TAC we had 32 subscriptions and we were elated! Our seating capacity per show is 75-80. By August, 2011 we had our 2011/12 subscriptions coming in and we started the season with 132! That's a pretty incredible growth pattern! And...we brought in a few more during our first production of this season and many enquiries about subscriptions at our second production (which we just closed to sell-out houses nearly every night). We have no doubt next season our subscription list will grow again to record numbers!
We have an excellent Board of Directors who work very hard to ensure the best theatre and the best prices be presented to our community. We have kept our prices low in comparision with other similiar groups in the Lower Mainland. We are committed to bringing excellent Canadian plays to the stage and this year we have two, both by Canada's most prolific playwright, Norm Foster. Right now, the board is reading a dozen scripts to decide about next season's (16th) playbill and it will be another season of top notch productions!
We opened this season with "Twelve Angry Men" which sold out and kicked off the season with a bang! We just closed Foster's "The Melville Boys" which warmed the hearts of everyone as well as keeping them in side-splitting laughter all night! We are thrilled to be bringing "Visiting Mr. Green" to the stage in March (8-24th) directed by Todd-Elliot Gates and starring two of our "Twelve Angry Men", Vann Besth and Simon Mortimer-Lamb. It is beautiful story with lots of laughs and compassion that will entertain our audiences from the opening to the last bow. More on Mr. Green to follow in the next blog.
So that's "us" in a nutshell. We will bring you news on a regular basis and keep everyone up-to-date on what we are doing. We will also be putting out the call for volunteers and members and will look forward to hearing back from you! Express your views...volunteer...HAVE FUN and PLAY around with us! You'll love it.
More history and pictures will be included and news about Sidekick! I encourage you to share these on your Facebook and Twitter pages and spread the word. We also have a Facebook Page that you can "Like" and become a member (of the page...not the club!). To become a member of Sidekick is easy! By becoming a member you have a "say" in the club. Everyone who works on a production has to become a member. If you'd like to join at this mid-way point in our season, the cost is $10 per person. If you join after June 30th., the cost is $20 Adults and $35 for a family of 4 (living in the same house). We do have young Sidekickers who help with painting, set dec and front-of-house, but don't encourage kids younger than 12 if at all possible. Although we've had 8 year olds out painting flats with their parents. It's a real "family" oriented organization and everyone does their own thing.
Please feel free to contact me with any questions or ideas! And make sure you check these blogs for audition notices as well!
Copy and paste the URL and send to friends by e-mail if they aren't on Facebook! Let's get the word out there and let's try to increase our membership and volunteer base! You won't regret it and will meet new friends and possibly re-connect with old ones. We'd love to meet you and hear from you.
Break-a-leg,
Carroll
President, Sidekick Players Blub
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