Theatre: Theatre in the Raw Connects Today's Youth With Vancouver's 70's Flower Children

Cast of Yippies in Love (Clockwise) Steve Maddock, Rebecca Shoichet,
Artistic Director Jay Hamburger, Music Director Bill Sample, Bing Jensen, Danielle St. Pierre.

It's forty years since the "Invasion of Blaine" and other politically charged antics by local "Yippies" - members of the movement fathered by Abby Hoffman on the East coast primarily to oppose the Vietnam War - and playwright Bob Sarti, worries that the hard won victories his generation fought for may be in danger of being short-lived in light of current socioeconomic attitudes and climates.
With "Yippies in Love", the much anticipated prequel to the 2008 smash hit "Bruce: The Musical". Sarti, a Vancouver Sun reporter when the plays were set, has taken it upon himself to seek out and workshop the play with young people from East Van's Purple Thistle, a youth-run community centre for arts and activism.
"It's important for young people to know that many of the freedoms and challenges we - as a society -are facing today were first brought to light by the Yippie movement.
"Workshopping the play at the Purple Thistle was important to me," Sarti says. "Because i think the Thistle has that "Yippie spirit" and because I wanted to be sure this play has relevance today, too."
The music for this production was once again scored by BC Entertaiment Hall of Famer (and Drive Denizen) Bill Sample, who worked recently with returning star Steve Maddock in the Vancouver Playhouse production of The Fantastiks. Audiences familiar with that production will also recognize Bree Grieg as one of the chorus and taking on several of incidental roles in the show.
Rehearsals are well under way and the show is set to run March 17 - 27 at the Woodwards Sky Room near the site of the notorious Gastown riots (commemorated in Jeff Wall's mural in the Woodwards Atrium).
More info and tickets are available online at:
http://theatreintheraw.ca/tickets.html

Theatre: Bruce the Musical @ The Russian Hall

An original two-act musical drama, Bruce – The Musical recreates key events in the life of Bruce Eriksen, the late founder of the Downtown Eastside Residents Association (DERA), and the individual most responsible for transforming the image of Vancouver’s lowest-income neighbourhood from Skid Road to residential community. It is a story of tragedy and triumphs, told with humour, action, human drama and song.


Writer Bob Sarti in a huddle with Director Jay Hamburger
Photo: Adam Abrams

The play is a blend of historical characters (Eriksen, Harry Rankin, Libby Davies, Jean Swanson) and representative characters (older single men and working people trying to survive and maintain their dignity, Chinese elders in a strange new land, politicians grappling with difficult issues - and you can expect a couple of SRO hotel cockroaches too).

The play chronicles events in the period 1973-76, when Eriksen overcame his addiction to alcohol, went on to become an ironworker on the Knight Street Bridge project and then fought successfully to make the beer parlors and hotels of the Downtown Eastside safer for the old loggers and other retired resource workers who lived there.
Bruce was written by past Sun Newspaper Reporter Bob Sarti, with lyrics by Sarti and music by Bill Sample (recipient of the BC Entertainment Hall of Fame award) and Earle Peach. It features a professional and semi-professional cast of nine, under the direction of Jay Hamburger, artistic director of Theatre In the Raw Society, a professional company which has a long history of commitment and work within the east side of Vancouver and to social justice issues – “Giving Exposure to Voices Seldom Heard” since 1994.

Community members will be admitted at low or no cost. Preview Night Pay-What-You-Can will be on Wednesday, November 5 and a 2-for-1 Matinee November 9, 2008.