Our next session of Reading Theatre is on June 11. We will be reading The Refugee Hotel by Carmen Aguirre. Reading begins at 2pm at the Plaskett Gallery so please show up by 1:45pm if you wish to have a chance to read.
We have obtained the play reading set from the Vancouver Public Library which comes with twelve scripts. We encourage you to bring your own copy if you have it or borrow it from your local library. We won’t be making paper copies to reduce waste.
ABOUT THE REFUGEE HOTEL
Set in a run-down hotel in 1974, only months after the start of the infamous Pinochet regime, eight Chilean refugees struggle, at times haplessly, at times profoundly, to decide if fleeing their homeland means they have abandoned their friends and responsibilities or not.
Laid bare in the fictionalized autobiographical details of this Jessie Award-winning play are the universal truths the victims and survivors of political oppression continue to experience everywhere: the terror of persecution, arrest and torture; the exhausted elation of escape; the trauma of learning to live again with the losses, betrayals and agonies of the past; the irrational guilt of the survivor – even the tragedy of surviving the nightmares of the past only to have them return to challenge any hope of the future.
ABOUT CARMEN AGUIRRE
Carmen Aguirre is an award-winning theatre artist and author who has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, including Chile Con Carne, The Refugee Hotel, The Trigger, Blue Box, Broken Tailbone, and Anywhere but Here, as well as the #1 national bestseller Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter (winner of CBC Canada Reads 2012), and its bestselling sequel, Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution.
Carmen is currently writing an adaptation of Euripides’s Medea for Vancouver’s Rumble Theatre, and Molière’s The Learned Ladies for Toronto’s Factory Theatre. She is a Core Artist at Electric Company Theatre, a co-founding member of the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition (CALTAC), and has over eighty film, TV, and stage acting credits, including her award-winning lead role in the Canadian premiere of Stephen Adley Guirgis’s The Motherfucker with the Hat, and her Leo-nominated lead performance in the independent feature film Bella Ciao! She is a graduate of Studio 58.
Reading Theatre is created for those with a passion for live theatre. A live play reading of iconic plays over the ages. All are welcome and encouraged — from the seasoned professional to the inquisitive amateur and everyone in between.
Show up and read, or listen to others read these incredible shows. A short discussion may take place…or not. This is an event led by the cast and audience.
Readers will be chosen just before the play reading begins and will be cast by those who show up and express an interest in being involved. Some roles may be double cast.
This event is being led by Allan Morgan, Senior Artist in Residence and Vancouver theatre scene stalwart. We’d love to see you there!
ABOUT ALLAN MORGAN
Allan has been a stage actor for more than thirty years. Some highlights include appearing in London, GB, Adelaide Australia, Wellington NZ and San Francisco, all with The Overcoat. He appeared for several seasons at Bard on the Beach, notably in The Tempest as Prospero, as well as King John, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Much Ado About Nothing.
He has toured across Canada with the Electric Company in Studies in Motion. He has appeared at The Belfry, notably in The Drawer Boy, Dirty Blonde, and I am My Own Wife for which he received the Victoria Critic’s Award for best performance. Other favourites include Red, Thinking of Yu, and Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre for ATP in Calgary.
Allan has two solo plays: I Walked the Line; and PRIDE: For the Young Gay, the Un-Gay and the Jaded Queen in All of Us.
