Playhouse finale leads to Rumble premiere
Penelope
Sept. 26 to Oct. 13 | Historic Theatre at The Cultch
Tickets: from $ 18 at tickets. thecultch. com
The end of the Vancouver Playhouse sparked the beginning of Rumble Theatre’s new season, which debuts Sept. 26 at The Cultch.
Director Stephen Drover was attending the press conference announcing the demise of the city’s venerable theatre when playwright Kendra Falcone suggested he check out a script she’d been reading, a modern comic twist on The Odyssey by Irish writer Enda Walsh.
“She pulled Penelope out of her purse,” Drover told The Sun. “It’s a funny brutal play.”
In case it sounds like the pair were cheerfully chatting while part of the city’s cultural landscape was crumbling, or rumbling, Drover explains they had no clue the press conference was about the theatre closing.
“I had gotten an email saying, ‘ come to the Vancouver Playhouse for an important announcement,’ and a lot of members of the theatre community were there milling around in the lobby,” said Drover. “Nobody knew anything and there was some speculation about what the announcement was. Nobody thought it would be a big deal, we thought it might be a season announcement — so it was a mood of levity and lightness. It was a very different mood leaving the press conference when we learned what the news was. So in that beautiful moment of lightness and levity before a great door was closed was when this play fell into my lap.”
The script has an eclectic global pedigree. Walsh took her inspiration from Homer’s Odyssey, and her commission funding from a German theatre company. The play tells the story of the suitors hoping to woo the lonely Penelope while her hubby Odysseus is away on his adventures.
“The play kind of takes place in a contemporary world but it kind of hearkens to Greek tradition as well,” said Drover. “It’s about the last four men who have been vying for Penelope’s love and they’ve basically camped out in Odysseus’s swimming pool and they made the pitch for their love hoping that one of them would be the choice for her new husband. Through the course of the play they realize that Odysseus is going to come home and invariably he will kill them all ... It kind of has a Bachelor, Bachelorette, Big Brother feel to it. She’s watching them on a closed circuit camera and it certainly has a Greek mythology flavour to it and a little bit of Samuel Beckett, a little bit of absurdity.”
Despite his love for the script Drover wasn’t sure he had the resources to produce it.
“At the time I wasn’t with Rumble, I was just running Pound of Flesh Theatre, so I read it and I thought this was fantastic.”
But when Drover took over the 23- year- old company founded by PuSh Festival poobah Norman Armour, he knew he had to produce it. His debut production as the company’s new artistic director features Sean Devine, Alex Lazaridis Ferguson, Kyle Jespersen, Patrick Keating and Lindsay Winch.
Drover was working for The Electric Company as a project co- ordinator when Rumble announced plans to choose a new Artistic Director.
“I had just directed The Last Days of Judas Iscariot that was presented by Rumble so I had already started a relationship with the company and so the posting came up, it was very attractive to me, I threw my hat in the ring and I was lucky enough to get it.”
Drover was drawn to Rumble’s three- part mission statement, which covers producing contemporary theatre from the Canadian and world repertoire, commissioning and produced new Canadian adaptations of established texts and working with both emerging and established artists.
Born and raised in Newfoundland where he received a degree in Theatre from Memorial University, Drover moved to Vancouver to earn his Master’s Degree in directing from UBC ( which he received in 2002).
“I’ve done freelance work and taught a little bit at UBC and Douglas College — but I was very interested in finding something that allowed me to have a long term focus.”
Rumble is presenting Penelope postshow Q& A sessions Sept. 29, Oct. 1, 6, and 8.