Rumble Theatre shakes up Tremors Festival

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      Imagine a multiplex, except with live plays going on in each theatre instead of movies, and a bar and patio instead of a concession stand.

      That’s the best way to describe Rumble Theatre’s ambitious Tremors Festival, which aims to showcase new plays and some of the city’s most exciting young artists.

      “The idea is shows running all the time, so you can see more than one a night, and between shows you can go to a bar and hang out and listen to music,” explains Rumble artistic director Stephen Drover to the Straight over the phone, stepping outside his East Side headquarters for a break in planning the three-show festival. “It’s difficult to find a venue, because we really want them [the productions] to be close together, in somewhat soundproof rooms.”

      For 10 days, the event will take place in spaces throughout the Italian Cultural Centre, with three scripts—Dry Land by Ruby Rae Spiegel, Better Angels: A Parable by Andrea Scott, and Bull by Mike Bartlett—brought to life by emerging directors, designers, and actors. Drover says the facility provides the rooms (seating an intimate 20 to 50 people) as well as easy access to transit.

      Britney Buren stars in Better Angels: A Parable by Andrea Scott.
      Tim Matheson

      But to really understand the one-of-a-kind theatre party that will happen next week, it’s important to understand where it’s coming from.

      When Norman Armour and Chris Gerrard-Pinker founded Rumble 26 years ago, boosting emerging talent was always part of their mandate. In those days, names like Adrienne Wong and Maiko Yamamoto would be invited to hang out and work with its artists—and Rumble witnessed those talents becoming major innovators in the theatre community here. As Drover puts it, “We’re old enough as a company to have seen those investments pay off.” Later on, Rumble formalized the program, eventually—under Craig Hall, who took over in 2006—launching the Tremors Festival, which would focus on the work of emerging companies.

      But Drover, who took the reins in 2012, saw a need to renew the programming once again. “That was at a time when Vancouver really didn’t have a whole lot of young companies,” he explains of the older version of Tremors. “I think we’ve come out the other side and now there are a lot of young companies. I’m not convinced the community needs to help build small theatre companies anymore, as much as it needs to build artists.” The result, under Drover’s vision, is a fest that offers those upstart talents a chance to collaborate with mentors and have their work seen. Under the new Tremors banner, Rumble is the only company producing the shows, with Drover curating the mix of 45-minute to one-hour plays and assembling the creative teams.

      The scripts Drover has found all centre around searingly contemporary issues. Bull (written by the same Brit playwright who penned Cock, a hit for Rumble last year) immerses its audience in a toxic corporate office where three coworkers battle it out to keep their jobs. “It’s this idea that bullying survives the playground, and it’s about larger questions about survival of the fittest,” Drover says. “I’m taken by his work because it really gets down to the actors’ experience. There’s something very immediate and visceral about the interrelations between the actors—something animalistic and tribal.”

      Adam Olgui and Lucy McNulty in Mike Bartlett's Bull.
      Tim Matheson

      Dry Land, whose writer was only 21 when she created it and which scored a prestigious Susan Smith Blackburn Prize last year, centres on two teen girls in an empty locker room, and takes a harrowing look at the abortion issue. And Andrea Scott’s Better Angels: A Parable focuses on a girl who moves from Ghana to Canada, only to find herself caught in a situation of modern-day slavery.

      “After they were all selected, I said, ‘What do they have to say about today?’ And I think that’s the experience of the outside, the other, the odd person out who’s kind of watching their dreams fade in front of them,” Drover says. “Maybe this is the optimist in me, but though all three of the plays are dark, hope is the way around that, and the only way to combat that loneliness is empathy.”

      He adds, “I hope that the experiences are related enough that, even though we are producing three plays, we try to look at it as one big play.”

      Under Drover’s new direction, there’s one other major difference to the Tremors Festival: it’s held in August, whereas the last installment of the biennial event was held in November at the Russian Hall (which is now under renovation). Definitely no patio bars at that time of year.

      “It was so cold! I remember I had to take the ice off my motorcycle each night to get home,” Drover recalls with a laugh. “So this will be very different. A lot of places do well by summer theatre, and we’re hoping a summer festival will do well here, too.”

      The Tremors Festival runs from next Thursday (August 11) to August 20 at the Italian Cultural Centre.

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