Theatre in Coquitlam
Theatre Backstage Roles
PRODUCER
In charge of the entire production, overseeing everything from choosing the production, working with a director, budgeting, venues, and hiring staff.
Director
Overseeing the on-stage production, working in collaboration with other departments and actors to ensure a complete and high quality show.
Stage Manager
In charge of organizing and coordinating the productions. Oversees rehearsals, communicating between departments and actors, and supporting the director.
Dramaturge
An editor in theatre and opera who researches, adapts, and edits scripts and other texts to ensure a cohesive show.
Props Manager
Buys, manages, and keeps stock of props for each show. Making sure the correct props are in the correct places.
Set Designer/Stage Designer/Scenic Designer
In charge of designing the overall look of a show and creates sets for each scene. Bigger productions often have smaller departments within set design such as carpenters, electricians, painters, etc.
Stage Hand/Technician
Responsible for coordinating and setting up scenes, ensuring everything on set is ready.
Wardrobe Supervisor/Costume Designer
Making sure costumes are clean, ready, and assigned to the right actors. On smaller productions, the role of wardrobe supervisor and costumer designer are usually the same person, while on larger productions there would be a separate costumer design department.
Lighting Designer/Technician
In charge of lighting each scene. Lighting designers design the lighting of each scene while lighting technicians make sure it is carried out.
Sound Technician
Supports the audio during performances, in charge of tasks such as adjusting volumes, mixing sounds, and providing additional sounds as needed.
Composer
Person in charge of the music for the production, either creating and/or playing the music themselves or overseeing a live band or orchestra.
Choreographer
In charge of designing the sequence of movements for scenes involving dancing, fi ghting, or other action scenes.
Stagecraft and Prop Making
Behind the scenes look written by Caroline Alarie who is the Theatre Supervisor - Stagecraft Technician Properties and Scenic Painting at Douglas College.
“Early 1920 – 1930’s Cash Register prop. A Vampire Story, Douglas College
Part of the play takes place in an old brothel; the actors had to move a cash register around. The Director and Set Designer requested an antique, early 1900 gold cash register. After doing some research, I found out that these antique pieces were exclusively made of brass, steel and cast iron, weighing between 100 to 150 pounds, and the actors would not have been able to move them. Original cash registers are also very expensive. So I decided to make one, it is not a perfect replica but an adapted one to fit a small set piece at the director’s request.
I 3D printed many of the parts, the type keys and many of the decorative ornaments. I used a laser cutter to shape the sides, the plexiglass windows and the drawer. Some fabric trims and poly clay were used as decorative elements. The base is made from wood, including the curved front panel.
I used four different shades of gold for the paint, and dry brushing to make it look used and dirty. ”
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Early Theatre in BC
The Dramatic Association was founded in Victoria in 1862, and New Westminster set up the Amateur Dramatic Club in 1866. The establishment of the railroad also connected BC with the rest of the country which allowed for travelling theatre troupes to visit the province. Soon, multiple theatre venues were built throughout the late 1800s and early 1900s.
Victoria’s Theatre Royal 1860’s (Image courtesy of BC Archives)
The Victoria Theatre at Douglas and View opened in 1885 replacing the Theatre Royal (Image courtesy of the BC Archives)
Inspiring Playwrights
Kevin Loring an Indigenous playwright from Lytton BC wrote the play Where the Blood Mixes, which won the Governor General’s Award in 2009 and toured nationally throughout the country.
Shayna Jones is an award winning professional performance artist specializing in the Traditional Oral Storytelling of African and Afro-Diasporic Folklore. She is a professionally trained actor. In her play she creates a sensitive portrait of a lone Black woman living in the country. The play is derived from interviews from dozens of Black women and men living countryside across Canada. Black & Rural is a story of “vulnerability, quiet triumph, and striking humanity.” (Vancouver Presents) A guest production from Pi Theatre. Pacific Theatre, March- April 2023.
Hiro Kanagawa is a Port Moody based actor, playwright, and screenwriter. His play Indian Arm received the 2017 Governor-General’s Literary Award for Drama. Other distinctions include Jessie Richardson Awards for both acting and playwriting, an Asians on Film Award, and an MFA from Simon Fraser University.
Theatre Life Skill/Stagecraft
Theatre training, no matter what age you are, comes with many benefits such as increasing self-confidence and empathy, learning to collaborate, leadership skills, and increasing communication skills. Theatre also provides a creative outlet for people, whether that be on stage or behind the scenes. Many skills are developed through theatre stagecraft, with work such as costume design, management, audio, lighting, set design, and creating props. All of which allows people to gain skills in problem solving, cultural awareness, working with technology, and other creative advancements.
Theatre itself also provide a space for emotional expression in different forms, with many therapy programs using theatre practices to encourage sharing and working through difficult subjects.
Theatre Training
There are many dedicated theatre training programs within Coquitlam, Place des Arts itself has three different theatre programs ranging from youth based theatre companies, junior theatres, and summer theatre troupe programs. One of the largest training schools in Coquitlam is the Lindbjerg Academy of Performing Arts which focuses on musical theatre training, with classes in Broadway productions, ballet, jazz, tap, lyrical, hip-hop, and show choir. They produce multiple local shows each year along with recitals, and provide students with the opportunity to train internationally as well, with show choir recitals in California and sending students to the Broadway Student Summit in New York.
Evergreen Cultural Centre
The Evergreen Cultural Centre is a non-profit cultural centre and venue focusing on live arts events, exhibitions, and experiences. Their Studio Theatre presents multiple shows each season, featuring numerous productions from local and independent theatre companies and performers.
Evergreen Cultural Centre 1205 Pinetree Way, Coquitlam
Stage 43
One prominent theatre local theatre company is Stage 43, a non-profit community theatre group that has been producing high quality and affordable theatre within the Tri-Cities since 1983. They produce three shows each season at the Evergreen Cultural Centre, and are members of the Theatre BC Fraser Valley Zone and the Community Theatre Coalition.
They have won the Theatre BC’s Best Production Award in 2010 for their production of Ravenscroft, won five awards at the Fraser Valley Zone Festival in 2017 for Bingo! which was also the production that represented the Fraser Valley Zone at Theatre BC’s Mainstage, getting honoured with two additional awards.
Image: God of Carnage - April/May 2023
2023 April/May God of Carnage
2023 January Calendar Girls
2022 October Footloose the Musical
2022 April/May Skin Flick
2022 January The 39 Steps
2020 January The Lion in Winter
2019 October The Creature Creeps!
2019 May One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
2019 January The Odd Couple (Female Version)
2018 October M*A*S*H
2018 April/May The Ladies Foursome
2018 January Looking
2017 October Bare Bear Bones
2017 April BINGO!
2017 January The Fantasticks
2016 October Bench in the Sun
2016 April Five Women Wearing the Same Dress
2016 January I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change
2015 October Men Are Dogs
2015 April Secrets of a Soccer Mom
2015 January Steel Magnolias
2014 October Mama Won’t Fly
2014 April Seduced by Moonlight
2014 January Love Letters
2013 October Dearly Departed
2013 April Woman in Mind
2013 January Murder on the Rerun
2012 October Dead Serious
40 Years of Plays
2012 May Mauritius
2012 April Play On!
2012 January A Talent for Murder
2011 October Ethan Claymore
2011 April Hay Fever
2011 January Charlie’s Aunt
2010 October The Importance of Being Earnest
2010 April Ravenscroft
2010 January Hobson’s Choice
2009 October The Good Game
2009 April Crimes of the Heart
2009 January Accommodations
2008 September The Rainmaker
2008 May Sylvia
2008 January Mousetrap
2007 September Barefoot in the Park
2007 May Marvin’s Room
2007 March The Unexpected Guest
2007 January Blithe Spirit
2006 September Guilty Conscious
2006 May On Golden Pond
2006 March Caught in the Net
2006 January Any Number Can Die
2005 September Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Here
2005 May Greater Tuna
2005 March Moonlight & Valentino
2005 January Witness for the Prosecution
2004 September You Say Tomatoes
2004 May Turn of the Screw
2004 May It Runs in the Family
2004 January Mousetrap
2003 September The Affections of May
2003 May Don’t Dress for Dinner
2003 January Deathtrap
2002 October Rumors
2002 May Zoo Story
2002 May The Foreigner
2002 March Norman, Is That You?
2002 January Boeing, Boeing
2001 November Who’s Under Where?
2001 July Face on the Barroom Floor
2001 April Ladies Who Lunch
2000 May Send Me No Flowers
2000 March California Suite
1999 October I’ll Be Back Before Midnight
1999 April Sylvia
1999 April The Whole Truth
1999 February The Tomorrow Box
1998 October Steel Magnolias
1998 May No Exit
1998 May Death Knocks
1997 December Aladdin 1997 November Women and Wallace
1997 Nov. When God Comes to Breakfast…
1997 October The Dining Room
1997 May The Boys Next Door
1996 November God’s Favourite
1996 July Dirty Work at the Crossroads
1996 May Murder Deferred
1995 November Nurse Jane Goes to Hawaii
1995 April Jake’s Women
1993 November June Groom
1993 April The Gin Game
1992 November California Suite
1992 July Lily the Felon’s Daughter
1991 December Pink Thunderbird
1991 December Laundry and Bourbon
1991 July Pure as the Driven Snow
1990 October Having a Wonderful Time, Wish You Were Here
1990 April Jennie’s Story
1990 February Deadly Theatre
1989 November It’s My Murder
1989 July Just Desserts
1989 April The Treasure Party
1988 October The Last Real Summer
1988 April All That Glitters
1987 July Dark Deeds at Swan’s Place
1986 November Towards Zero
1986 July Dirty Work at the Crossroads
1986 March Island of Demons
1985 July Deadwood Dick
1985 January The Fantasy Machine
1984 November See How They Run
1984 November Plaza Suite
1984 July Love Rides the Rails
Monster Theater
Some other theatre companies that produce work shown around the Tri-Cities includes Monster Theater, a company founded in 2000 that creates plays which aim to challenge preconcieved notions, excite imaginations, and embodies stories that are strange, twisted, and bizarre. Their latest shows are Crisis on Planet Z! which is a science-fiction play for youth focusing on environmental topics and sustainability, and Juliet: A Revenge Comedy which follows Shakespeare’s Juliet as she refuses to die and teams up with an assortment of other famous female characters from Shakespeare on a literary adventure.
Crisis on Planet Z! is an environmental, science-fiction play for young audiences. Zephyr and their alien species the Alphabetians are celebrating 100 years of being on Planet Z when Zephyr makes a new friend and a horrifying discovery: a fuzzy Ziffle shows them how Alphabetians haven’t been ‘improving’ the planet, they have been slowly destroying it! Together, the Ziffle and Zephyr try to warn the Alphabetians, but it’s too late!
Crisis on Planet Z!
Written by Carly Pokoradi and Ryan Gladstone Featuring Joylyn Secunda and Chloe Payne. Costumes by Nita Bowerman.
Juliet: A Revenge Comedy
Written by Pippa Mackie and Ryan Gladstone Featuring Lili Beaudoin and Carly Pokoradi.
Who Killed Gertrude Crump?
Written by Ryan Gladstone Featuring Tara Travis. Puppets by Dusty Hagerüd.
Aenigma Theatre
Aenigma Theatre produces plays often shown at Evergreen and around the community. They were founded in 2013 by Tanya Mathivanan who wanted to focus on exploring the complexities of the human condition. The company is made up of like-minded artists from diverse backgrounds, which allows them to present unique points of views through a variety of different shows. This year, their Evergreen production was The How & The Why, a play which sees two women biologists sparing over contrary views of science, career, and feminism.
How and Why - 2018
Dying City - 2016
Turn of The Screw - 2019
“Sarah Treem’s The How and The Why is a fascinating piece of modern theatre… The first act whizzes by with animated conversations about primates, sperm, pathogens, grandmothers and plenty more. The swift pace of the dialogue and the commitment to the scientific language created an immersive, engaging atmosphere… Leave your pre-conceptions at the door and you will almost certainly learn something about a topic that is woefully underdiscussed (and still misunderstood). What’s more, you will be engaged and entertained throughout.”
— Lillian Jasper, Two Cents & Two Pence
Cantonese Opera
BC saw an increase in live theatre during the Gold Rush, when amateur theatre groups began popping up through diff erent mining and logging communities as a form of entertainment. Among the theatre groups that became popular were Cantonese Opera troupes which were fi rst introduced into the province in Victoria during the 1860s by immigrant Chinese workers. Cantonese Opera was so popular that by the 1880s, there were fi ve theatre buildings constructed in Victoria purely for opera performances. By the 1920s, local companies began to be established, training local performers and putting on shows, since the the implementation of the Head Tax made it difficult for Chinese performers to enter the country.
Coquitlam Queens - Drag Culture in Theatre
One of the first drag shows in Coquitlam was Spring Queening, which opened on March 24, 2018 at the Evergreen Cultural Centre. It was produced by the Coquitlam Queens, Daniel Mason and Steve Johnson (aka Jakyllyn Hyde and Flannery Pajamas), who wanted to start a drag community in Coquitlam after noticing the lack of one. Drag performances have been a big part of theatre culture going all the way back to Ancient Greece and the Elizabethan era, when women were not allowed to perform on stage so all female roles were done through male actors in drag. Contemporary theatre has taken on drag in many ways, through having drag performers play female characters like in Hairspray and Chicago, to incorporating drag and gender topics into shows itself like in Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Some Like It Hot, and much more.
“The very first drag queen that really inspired me was Divine, and Divine was a pop culture icon in the 80s – And I remember seeing her in Hairspray when I was young, and Hairspray, the original non-musical version, by John Waters, it came on TV, and it was one of the fi rst references that I had for an actor playing a female character. He wasn’t playing a drag queen, he was playing a female character, in drag.”
— Daniel Mason (Jakyllyn Hyde)
Vancouver Sath - Punjabi Writers Collective
From March 6th to April 10th of 1988, the Vancouver Sath Theatre collective performed two plays, A Crop of Poison and Picket Line (both written by Sadhu Binning and Sukhwant Hundal) for the CFU cultural program called Picket Line Tour. Over 1,000 people attended four venues in the Fraser Valley. Funded by Canada Council Explorations Grant, Picket Line is based on the Hoss Farm women mushroom workers who joined the CFU and fought to improve working conditions. Vancouver Sath, formed in 1983, is a collective of Punjabi writers from the Lower Mainland, BC.
Sadhu Binning co-founded Vancouver Sath collective in 1983. From 1983 to 1995 Sadhu Binning was an integral part of Vancouver Sath. The writers collective produced plays that addressed societal issues. The main purpose of the group was to acknowledge problems in Punjab and within Canada. They produced a play about Punjabi female farm workers. Many women who worked on farms were not aware of unions and their rights. As a result, many were exploited.
Dr. Binning strongly lobbied for Punjabi language education and it was this involvement that helped him become a Punjabi instructor at the University of British Columbia from 1988 to 2008.
School Theatre
Theatre plays an important role in many school curricula, with the programs off ered in several of Coquitlam’s secondary schools, including Centennial Secondary, Pinetree Secondary, Riverside Secondary, and Gleneagle Secondary.
Centennial Secondary School, in particular, has put out at least one theatre production per year since its inception in 1967. From Cabaret (1976) to Les Misérables (1989) to Grease (2009) – which had a record-breaking 11 sold-out shows in a row – Centennial’s theatre productions comprises of its Drama, Band, and at one point, even a Stagecraft program. This year, Centennial’s theatre students went back to 1987 with a winter production of Rock of Ages.
“Les Misérables was a more than apt title for the show. Miserable is the only way to describe the fi rst-time readings, the costume confusion, and the overall mad rush to pull the whole show together. There were times when the hours of rehearsals seemed to last “19 long years”, and of course there were other technical difficulties.”
“It was the set, the costumes, the people, the moments... the mistakes. The performance was an experience for the cast, crew, and the audience. A little piece of Broadway made its home here in the school and in our lives. Thanks to everyone, we wouldn’t have made it alone.“
— Centennial Yearbook Review of the extravaganza “Les Misérables” by Mercedes Dunphy (1989)
