Summer is here and it’s time for us to wrap Rumble’s 2018-2019 season.

It’s been a fun and busy year highlighted by new people, new programming, and new directions. We welcomed Jiv as our new Artistic Director and he joined Christie and Kellee to form the company’s shared leadership core. We produced another awesome edition of Tremors, shared four more Living Room sessions with the emerging artist community, continued work on Carmen Aguirre’s adaptation of Medea, and brought Nassim Soleimanpour’s BLANK to the stage. We supported exciting indie theatre productions, including With a Spoon Theatre’s Jessie-nominated The Wolves and Kimmortal and Immigrant Lessons’ multidisciplinary piece X Marks the Movement, which played at the 2019 PuSh Festival opening night party. We also had a hand in producing/presenting community events such as the second edition of Ephemera (at the GVPTA’s Making a Scene Conference) and the national livestream premiere of The Cave. 

Thank you to our funders, donors, Board of Directors, volunteers, artists, and audiences – we’re grateful to all of you who helped us to make this season happen. We hope you’ll join us all again for our 2019-20 season, which starts soon. First up will be our next development workshop for Medea, which takes place in August as part of Boca del Lupo’s Residency Program. We’ll announce the full season’s programming soon, so stay tuned. (If you haven’t already, please sign up for our newsletter to get all of the latest updates.) Until then, have a happy summer!

 – The Rumblers 

Above photos are from Rumble’s Donor Thank You event (Kiwassa Neighbourhood House, June 20, 2019), which featured performances from our friends at the Southeast Asian Cultural Heritage Society (SEACHS) and a first-ever public reading of Medea by Carmen Aguirre.

Welcome to Rumble’s 2018-19 season! It’s been a rocking one so far, marked by exciting theatre-making and new directions for the company. We started things off with Tremors, our festival of emerging talent, in August. Featuring three outstanding contemporary plays by three stellar Canadian playwrights (Selfie by Christine Quintana, Tiny Replicas by Dave Deveau, and Theory by Norman Yeung) and a fierce team of emerging artists, Tremors was a hit with audiences and critics alike.

Meet the Rumblers (l to r): Kellee Ngan, Jivesh Parasram, Carmen Aguirre, and Christie Watson. Photo: Stephen Drover. Location: Postmark Brewing event space.

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created by John Millard, Tomson Highway, and Martha Ross
produced by The Cave Collective
presented at Luminato 2019

Vancouver screening:
Saturday, June 22, 2019
PL1422 | 1422 William Street, Vancouver, BC V5L 2P7
Doors at 4:30pm; live stream of The Cave at 5:00pm
Admission: By donation at the door
RSVP via our FB event page

The Cave

RUMBLE IS THE VANCOUVER LIVE STREAM PARTNER FOR THE CAVE’S CANADIAN PREMIERE

While the forest fire rages all around, destroying everything in its path a group of animals escapes to what they believe will be the safety of The Cave. As they try to wait it out their anxiety grows. Some animals retreat into memories, others become increasingly aware of the centuries of human activity that has led to the obliteration of their homes.

An entertaining apocalyptic cabaret created by celebrated Canadian artists John Millard (composer), Tomson Highway (lyrics), and Martha Ross (dramaturg), The Cave is an intimate, urgent response to our changing environment, that poses questions about climate change, and who is responsible for this land and the lives that inhabit it?

An evening of riveting storytelling and music, told by the innocents, challenges us all. The Cave will be live-streamed to locations near and far on Saturday, June 22nd, including by Rumble in Vancouver. Other partners include the Banff Centre, the National Arts Centre, and Nakai Theatre in Whitehorse. The livestream that is simultaneously watched all over Canada and the world inspires and defines the spirit of the project.

For more information on The Cave, click here.

ReFind Home Furnishings

Sunday, June 23, 2019
12pm to 7pm
at ReFind | 4609 Main Street, Vancouver, BC V5V 3R6

On Sunday, June 23rd we’re partnering with our friend Bart Taylor at ReFind Home Furnishings to host a special Rumble Day at the shop. ReFind is one of the best vintage furniture shops in Vancouver and we’ve had the pleasure of working with Bart before — ReFind provided furnishings for our 2018 Tremors lounge and, more recently, some set pieces for our production of BLANK — and we’re stoked to be able to join forces for this fundraising event.

Please pop by, say hi, grab a snack and a drink, and shop ReFind’s excellent selection of mid-century modern home furnishings. 10% of all purchases made on the day will be donated to Rumble, so this is a great opportunity to support a local business and a local theatre company!

Ephemera 2: An Archiving Party/Tim Matheson

at the Greater Vancouver Professional Theatre Alliance’s 2019 Making a Scene Conference
presented in partnership with Rumble Theatre, Theatre Replacement, and SFU

Thursday, May 30, 2019, 6:30pm – 9pm
The Post at 750 | 110-750 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, BC V6B 2R5

Following the first successful Ephemera event in 2018, we’re pleased to announce that we’re doing it all again!

We, along with our friends from Theatre Replacement and SFU, are partnering this month with the GVPTA to present Ephemera 2: An Archiving Party. Join us as we close the 2019 Making a Scene conference with snacks, drinks, and socializing, while creating a collective time capsule for the performing arts.

Performance is unique and ephemeral, to be experienced in the moment. But once it has passed, what remains? Many wish to retain some tangible trace of the experience, a narrative that serves as a memory of past events, an interpretation of what we’ve done and where we’ve been. What can we do with the material detritus that represents the path and process of our creative works, from initial idea to development to performance?

Guided by Melissa Sarlin, Head of Special Collections and Rare Books at the SFU Library, members of the performing arts community are invited to create a paper trail contributing to a physical repository which will be incorporated into SFU’s Special Collections. As a group, we’ll organize, structure, catalogue, and preserve detritus of past performances, and through the process will celebrate our shared memories and our history.

In advance of this year’s event, we sent Jiv to SFU’s Special Collections to study the current Ephemera archive. You can read his thoughts and reflections on the 2018 collection, and his suggestions on how to frame the direction for this year’s gathering here: Reflections on Ephemera

As Jiv notes in his reflection, you can be part of the event by both being present and by bringing artefacts to the gathering. To paraphrase Jiv:

“[Bring] more artefacts. Things that speak to process by their existence. I’m also interested to see more artefacts that speak to what it is that’s most valued by artists – strange loaded items. So bring your process and creation bits, your weird thing kicking around your office that can provoke an imagined story; hell – bring your strategic plans and let’s see where we all think we’re headed. Bring your bad reviews. Please bring your bad reviews. We all have them. And beyond being hilarious in retrospect, they speak a lot about the landscape we’re creating in.”

We also encourage you to bring a guest who might be interested in, or who you think should be at this event. All are welcome.

Refreshments, snacks, and cash bar will be available.

This is a FREE EVENT but RSVP required. Space is limited. Click this link to reserve your spot.

By Nassim Soleimanpour

Produced by Rumble Theatre, in association with Aurora Nova

April 30 – May 4, 2019
Tues. to Sat. evening performances at 8pm; Sat. matinee at 2pm
PL1422 at 1422 William Street, Vancouver, BC

Tickets: $20 (plus service fees) – Click here to buy now at Theatre Wire!

Rumble Theatre, in association with Aurora Nova, is pleased to present the Canadian premiere production of BLANK by Nassim Soleimanpour, an interactive experience where Audience and Performer collide and collaborate to spark a new, moving life story each night.

Known for creating plays without directors, sets and rehearsals, acclaimed Iranian playwright Soleimanpour (White Rabbit Red Rabbit) takes it to new extremes with BLANK. As formally inventive as it is engaging, BLANK reverses the typical theatre experience: A script riddled with blanks leaves the audience in charge of how the story will unfold. The concept might be simple, but the result is nothing short of empowering as a random audience member sees their own future determined by the imagination of others.

Each night (and matinee) will feature a different performer who, like the audience, will be interacting with the blank-riddled script for the very first time. We’ve got a terrific line-up of theatre talent who will be taking the stage for our production of BLANK, including Dave Deveau as his alter-ego Peach Cobblah, Kim Sənklip Harvey, Allan Morgan, Emelia Symington Fedy, Hazel Venzon, and Maiko Bae Yamamoto.

For more about BLANK, please follow this link.