Photo Credit: Don Lee
After the happy flurry of holiday activities, January can feel like an impending quiet time. The solution: plan to take advantage of one of the city’s top-notch arts and culture events.
Coming early next year is the world premiere of The Full Light of Day, a technological marvel that melds film and theatre in order to tell a story of one family’s corruption, despair, and ultimate redemption.
In association with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and BMO, Electric Company Theatre presents The Full Light of Day (January 7-12, 2019) at the Vancouver Playhouse (600 Hamilton Street). Written by Daniel Brooks and directed by Kim Collier, the play is a bold and technologically innovative depiction of issues that are pressing in 2019.
Set in a Canadian urban environment, the narrative is centred on a privileged Canadian family who has been living an idyllic, complacent life up until this point. Mary, played by veteran actress Gabrielle Rose, has long cherished her husband, Harold (played by Jim Mezon), and her family, but the sudden disappearance of her son Joey, played by Jonathon Young, causes her to question all that she has previously taken for granted.
Photo Credit: Don Lee
Along with struggling with her own terminal illness and mortality, Mary must confront her husband’s and her own complicity within the corruption and underhanded profiteering of real estate and corporate finance. Is her own previous ignorance enough of an excuse for certain questionable business transactions? How is she connected to questions surrounding ownership, property, capital, and colonization? Should her own family’s well being supersede the wealth of others? On the verge of death, Mary must take a risk that will potentially save her family and redeem them from their quagmire of wealth.
Photo Credit: Don Lee
As the production depicts Mary’s unraveling of her own supposed truths, it uses a highly creative technological means to show this ambiguity and fragmentation within the matriarch’s perception of reality. The show will feature projected imagery and video and live cameras in order to enhance the potentials of the stage. In addition, Electric Company Theatre Co-Founder Kevin Kerr has produced short films that are from the viewpoints of specific main characters. Shot in 360 degree virtual reality, the audience is placed within the perspectives of the individual characters, forcing the audience to consider how location affects truth. The films will be played at special installations in the theatre lobby and are both separate from, and yet interconnected with the main narrative. They’ll also be available for watching the afternoons prior to the performances of the production.
Photo Credit: Don Lee
The Full Light of Day is part of an ambitious plan on Electric Company Theatre’s part to bring large-scale theatre back to the Vancouver Playhouse, which saw its own theatre company sadly close in 2012.
Further information and tickets ($19.99-$59.99) can be found on-line.
