The Pearl Company

The Pearl Company Canadian Summer Theatre Festival: August 8 – 23. $15 per show. Three brilliant world-class performers bring their career-topping works to The Pearl Company this year for 3 weekends of captivating, enchanting, intense, thrilling, mesmerizing, challenging and flat-out exciting entertainment. All 3 will perform on each date, so catch ‘em all. Festival opens Aug 8 at 7 pm. All shows $15 each.

Check out a great review of all three plays under  “Read More” below!

We are thrilled to present:

Sean Sullivan: Baby Redboots’ Revenge:  “A virtual Nijinsky of performance art” – New York Times. “Sullivan, with the range of a Chaplin or Keaton, with a touch of Baryshnikov and Danny Kaye, is one in a million” – Performing Arts Review, New York City. “Baby Redboots’ Revenge keeps us on the edge of our seats for 65 breathless minutes.” -NYtheatre.com, 2012.  A “Best of the New York Fringe” play.
Fri. Aug. 8, 7:00; Sat. 9, 9:30; Thu.14, 8:15; Fri. 15, 7:00; Sat.16, 9:30; Thu. 21, 8:15; Fri. 22, 7:00; Sat. 23, 9:30.

The Naked Ballerina: Sarah Murphy-Dyson “Discover the darkness behind the curtain, as the former Royal Winnipeg Ballet first soloist & Gemini Award winner brings you backstage into her world of blood, sweat and secrets. Illusions of perfection onstage and off are shattered as she seeks the courage to expose her truth to herself and the world.” Glenn Sumi, Now Magazine.
Fri. Aug. 8, 9:30; Sat. 9, 8:15; Thu.14, 7:00; Fri. 15, 9:30; Sat.16, 8:15; Thu. 21, 7:00; Fri. 22, 9:30; Sat. 23, 8:15.

Resurrection: Learie McNicolls: – Classical Dancer, actor, director and Two-Time Dora Award Winner Learie McNicolls performs his spoken word and movement magnum opus about Redemption and the Resurrection of one’s Soul. A semi-autobiographical story woven through the experience of a young boy and complex family relationships, expressed through the lexicon of the music of the 50’s and 60’s.
Fri. Aug. 8, 8:15; Sat. 9, 7:00;  Thu.14, 9:30; Fri.15, 8:15; Sat.16, 7:00; Thu. 21, 9:30; Fri. 22, 8:15; Sat. 23, 7:00.

The Pearl Company Canadian Theatre Festival Schedule: Summer 2014 

Tickets available online at www.thepearlcompany.ca Tickets: $15 for EACH show.

For more information: info@thepearlcompany.ca;  905.524.0606 or nltc@bell.net

Link to the Festival Facebook Site: https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Pearl-Company-Canadian-Theatre-Festival/149388245141853

REVIEW OF ALL THREE PLAYS FOR THE PEARL’S 2014 SUMMER THEATRE FESTIVAL:

Hello Pearl Nation!
Robin Pittis here…

Just to say I caught the Pearl Summer Canadian Play Festival last weekend, and they are three very powerful plays, you absolutely won’t want to miss.

A fantastic mixture of talents from across the continent and across the street, the three performances are really breakthrough calibre for this festival. They raise important issues, and each are delivered with emotional honesty and almost unbelievable physical commitment.

With a Dora winner, a Gemini winner, and a man described as a “virtual Nijinski of performance Art” on the bill, you wouldn’t expect anything less, but somehow, you are still likely to be blown away. I certainly was.

Learie McNicolls’ piece, Resurrection, is a combination of contemporary dance and spoken word poetry. The movement can best be described as the meeting point of boxing and ballet that allows Mr. McNicolls to address powerful and important themes of abuse survivor-ship, anger management, masculinity and warrior psychology.

With the sartorial cool and linguistic percussion of a beat poet, McNicolls channels the physical presence of superheroic figures like Bruce Lee, Errol FLynn, and Mohammed Ali, to a sonic backdrop from the musical imagination of fellow baby-boomer Gary Santucci. These men clearly share a sensibility that will carry them into further projects. 

Sarah Murphy-Dyson and her partner/director Wes Berger have a similarly sympathetic understanding. The Naked Ballerina is an emotionally honest and hard hitting examination of the drive for excellence in art, and the personal cost that drive-ness exacts in the form of addictions, eating disorders, and even coercive sexuality.

Ultimately art as expressive tool and intimacy as emotional healer prevail, but it takes an act of generosity, charm and grace to make herself open to scrutiny that is both courageous and remarkable. Oh, and the dancing is pretty gobsmacking too.

Sean Sullivan, the human hurricane at the heart of Baby Redboot’s Revenge, could possibly be the only third party to match McNicolls and Murphy-Dyson for sheer sweaty physical commitment.

While this piece of “avant-vaudeville” that juices the banter of Vaudeville with the drive of contemporary punk-rock, doesn’t have the emotional risk of autobiography to hold an audience, the script and performance are both so dense with variety and energy the performance is unforgettable.

The brain spawn of an American playwright and performer by the name of Philip-Dimitri Galas, who died tragically young, but not without leaving this gem of a tribute to the tenacity of hope in the face of the sheer statistical improbability of achieving stardom, Baby Redboots’ Revenge is a rich theatrical feast. You will need time to digest it, but it really is a dish like none other.

The issues of abuse survivorship, rage, exploitation and expression at the heart of these performances are very timely subjects for consideration, and very generously offered by these three brave souls.