Right Now:

Bridging That Gap

Rumble Productions, The Theatre Centre and The Youssef-Warren Foundation have joined forces to offer a unique residency opportunity for one British Columbia based and one Ontario based emerging theatre company. Chosen companies from each region will be offered resident company status with both The Theatre Centre and Rumble. During the course of the two-year residency the emerging companies will develop, produce and tour a new work with the support and guidance of our combined artistic and administrative staffs. Intensive development workshops for both productions will take place in Toronto and Vancouver with local emerging company playing host to the visiting company for two weeks each year. The first of these creative exchanges has just wrapped up. Venue and dramaturgical support was generously provided by Vancouver’s Playwrights Theatre Centre.

Participating Companies:



Why Not Theatre (Toronto)

An international ensemble of performers dedicated to creating a theatre that engages its audience by opening new possibilities of how stories can be told. Essential to our process are the collisions that arise from our different cultures, languages and experiences, provoking us to seek new styles, stories and new ways of communication. Why Not is a question, a provocation, an investigation into what seem at first to be boundaries and limitations. It is a limitless exploration of possibilities, potential energy and naïve expression.

Project Working Title: I’m So Close It’s Not Even Funny



A man, too busy with work, realizes he is late for his own funeral…

This piece will explore our relationship to TIME.  By examining our obsession with multi-tasking, short cutting, texting and various ways of speeding up, we will explore the world we live in that is geared by ticking and beeping clocks.  Starting with images, investigations and the central text of Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, we will examine our desire to understand and control something that is constant and which, no matter how hard we try to fight it, will lead to our inevitable end.  In a world that is speeding up and where Global warming and over consumption is ringing alarms to a possible end, what are we rushing for?  And where are we rushing to?  And when will the time bomb go off?

In this investigation we hope to explore the absurd, the burlesque and the clownish way in which we humans behave with regards to time. Everyone is exhausted and too busy for anything. We hope to laugh at our selves and provoke the questions “why are we so busy?” “why are we doing all the things we are doing?” and “what for?”

 

The Chop (Vancouver)

A Vancouver-based theatre company dedicated to producing work that draws from clown and bouffon traditions for modern theatre creation in a way that is relevant and fresh. Artistic directors Emelia Symington Fedy and Anita Rochon, push to present work that is artistically challenging while remaining accessible to a diverse audience. The work often addresses social concerns and does not shy away from political commentary always with a goal to find hope, humor and humanity.

Project Working Title:  99 out of 100
The Chop is in the early development stages for a new piece currently entitled 99 out of 100. The basic concept is that we conduct and record 100 interviews with 100 people from across Canada about what they would most want to see in a play and what they would least like to see in a play. We would then compile all the feedback and create a piece based on the information given. Recordings from the conversations would also become soundscape and potentially dialogue in the work. The piece intends to both initiate a theatrical dialogue with a diverse audience and explore the idea of relevancy, populist theatrical desires and cultural leadership. We’re also investigating the possibility of using a very popular play like The Phantom of the Opera, The Mousetrap or Hamlet as a structure and container for the piece.

This piece was partially inspired by a visual art project. In 1995, two Russian emigrant visual artists, Vitaly Komar and Alex Melamid undertook  project intending to discover what a true "people's art" would look like in America. They polled thousands of people about the elements that people like most in a painting. The result was America's Most Wanted and America's Least Wanted paintings (pictured below), which were exhibited in New York at the Alternative Museum under the title "People's Choice". The paintings are an odd amalgamation of the preferred and detested elements.



To track the progress of these companies and their work please visit the Bridging That Gap Blog at http://bridgingthatgap.blogspot.com/





       

Cozy Catastrophe


Winnie: Erin Mathews
Walter: Andrew McNee
Hume: Michael Rinaldi
Rhonda: Juno Ruddell
Directors: Courtenay Dobbie & Craig Hall

Rumble and emerging super group Theatre Melee collaborate on the dark, apocalyptic comedy, Cozy Catastrophe.

Horrific events are overwhelming the entirety of human civilization. Four strangers must decide what to do with what could be their final hours. Should they pray? Fight back? Repopulate the earth? Or just get to know each other a little better. Cozy Catastrophe is a dark comedy about ordinary folks bonded together by extraordinary circumstance.

A twenty minute workshop version of Cozy Catastrophe recently premiered as a part of HIVE 2 at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival.

"Rumble Productions takes us to a post-apocalyptic future for a funny encounter with four survivors, two guys and two gals, who are collectively the stupidest set ever to end up as breeding stock for the very dubious future of the human race." -The Vancouver Sun



A full version of the piece will premier at Toronto’s SummerWorks Festival in August, followed by a Vancouver run (TBA).

Summer Works
Time
Thursday Aug 7 6:00pm
Friday Aug 8 10:00pm
Saturday Aug 9 4:00pm
Thursday Aug 14 6:00pm
Saturday Aug 16 8:00pm
Sunday Aug 17 4:00pm

Venue
Factory Studio Theatre


 

Rumble is hiring!

Rumble Productions is currently seeking a full-time Operations Coordinator. Visit our "About Rumble" page and select Auditions/Jobs for more information:

http://www.rumble.org/about-rumble/