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Free Events

Free things you can do during Spark (and an amazing workshop at a great price).

SATURDAY, MARCH 7 @ 2 PM – PAY WHAT YOU CAN EVENT

Worldplay - Romania

Insomniacs: The Far Side of the Accordion

by Mimi Branescu (Romania) / Translated by Andrei Marinescu
Directed by Mercedes Bátiz-Benét

The Man and The Other Man meet in the middle of the night and go on a philosophical journey together to explore the nature of living. Nothing is what it seems. Towards the end they meet The Wreck and realize the repetitive and inescapable nature of things. A talkback follows the reading.

SUNDAY, MARCH 8 @ 4 PM

Hootenanny - All Ages Dance Party

Kids welcome! An all-ages dance party of awesome starring Brooke Maxwell and the Neighbourhood Hootenanny Dance Machine with Avram Devon McCagherty (guitar/vocals), Peter Dowse (bass), Kelby MacNayr (drums) and Brooke Maxwell (piano/vocals).

MONDAY, MARCH 9 @ 7:30 PM

Play Reading - Same Old

Written & performed by Jan Wood & James Fagan Tait

A new two-person play-in-development, about an aging married couple. Through a series of short vignettes, the play is equal parts celebration and lament of aging and love.

WEDNESDAYS + THURSDAYS @ 7 PM + 7:15 PM

FRIDAYS + SATURDAYS @ 7 PM  + 7:20  PM + 7:40 PM

mini plays

Every year the mini plays push the envelope in new and intriguing ways. This year you can see 3 ten-minute plays created by Krystal Cook, K.P. Dennis & Tobin Stokes.

SOLD OUT

Acting Shakespeare

This two-day workshop will be taught by Michael Elliott (Assistant Professor, UVic Theatre Department) and Michael Shamata (Artistic Director, Belfry Theatre). The fee – which includes both days – Saturday & Sunday – is $80 for adults and $40 for students.

Two different—and complementary— approaches to acting Shakespeare. The two Michaels will work together and separately — providing the participants with practical tools that will open up and reveal the text in all its glory.

Participants are requested to bring a Shakespeare monologue of their choice—written in verse—and preferably committed to memory.

To register or learn more about the professional development workshops please call 250-385-6815.

SATURDAY, MARCH 14 @ 2 PM – PAY WHAT YOU CAN EVENT

Worldplay - Botswana

Motswana: Africa, Dream Again

by Donald Molosi (Botswana) / Directed by Taiwo Afolabi

Motswana simply means “citizen of Botswana.” The Republic of Botswana is one of Africa’s wealthiest countries. This intimate multi-lingual show satirically questions who exactly can claim to be a Motswana. What unexpected revelations come up once we acknowledge that African borders were drawn as a fiction fabricated to serve European greed? Is “Motswana” perhaps a misnomer given the migratory nature of African peoples before borders? 

Motswana:  Africa, Dream Again is the story of Botswana and its people as they transition from a British colony to an independent state. The play premiered off-Broadway in 2012 where it won an award at the United Solo Festival, the world’s largest solo theatre festival. Written, directed, and performed by Molosi, the play has been performed across the US and is on tour in Botswana and South Africa. A talkback follows the reading.

SUNDAY, MARCH 15 @ 7:30 PM

UVic - Belfry New Play Cabaret

Actors & Directors from the UVic Theatre Department collaborate to bring to life scenes from plays-in-progress by graduate and undergraduate playwrights in UVic’s Writing Program.

MONDAY, MARCH 16 @ 7:30 PM

Play Reading - Women In Clothes

By Sheila Heti, Heidi Julavits & Leanne Shapton, Adapted by Michael Shamata & Paula Wing

Just as women use clothes to strengthen and express themselves, so too, this play uses clothes to address some of the larger issues of society and life—while celebrating daughters, mothers and the “sisterhood.”

WEDNESDAYS + THURSDAYS @ 7 PM + 7:15 PM

FRIDAYS + SATURDAYS @ 7 PM  + 7:20  PM + 7:40 PM

mini plays

Every year the mini plays push the envelope in new and intriguing ways. This year you can see 3 ten-minute plays created by Krystal Cook, K.P. Dennis & Tobin Stokes.

SATURDAY, MARCH 21 @ 2 PM – PAY WHAT YOU CAN EVENT

Worldplay - Canada

Burning Vision

by Marie Clements (Canada) / Directed by Corey Payette

Marie Clements’s play sears a dramatic swath through the reactionary identity politics of race, gender and class, using the penetrating yellow-white light, the false sun of uranium and radium, derived from a coal black rock known as pitchblende, as a metaphor for the invisible, malignant evils everywhere poisoning our relationship to the earth and to each other.

Burning Vision unmasks both the great lies of the imperialist power-elite (telling the miners they are digging for a substance to “cure cancer” while secretly using it to build the atomic bombs that devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki); and the seemingly small rationalizations and accommodations people of all cultures construct to make their personal circumstances yield the greatest benefit to themselves for the least amount of effort or change on their part. It is also a scathing attack on the “public apology” as yet another mask, as a manipulative device, which always seeks to conceal the maintenance and furtherance of the self-interest of its wearer. A talkback follows the reading.