Oct. 12, 2011 - Issue #834: Protest in the riot
Prevue
Reasons to be Pretty
REASONS TO BE PRETTY
On the precipice of her first season as the artistic director of the Walterdale theatre, Sarah Van Tassel seems adjusting to the shift from her own independent company, Guts & Guile, to working within the confines of a the long-established community theatre she'll be heading up artistically for the next two years."There's a fairly large learning curve," she admits, adding quickly, "It's been really nice so far."
Van Tassel had to pitch her proposed season to the Walterdale's board of directors for approval, and all but one of her scripts got the thumbs up. The replacement for one that didn't is Neil LaBute's Reasons to Be Pretty, which opens the season with an exploration of perception and obsession with image, channeled through four struggling, working class friends and their interlocking, increasingly complicated relationships with each other.
Reasons to Be Pretty, and the rest of her Walterdale season—a reimagining of a certain Shakespearean tragedy called Wyrd Sisters, Michel Tremblay's Albertine in Five Times, and The Love of the Nightingale, an adapted Greek legend—continues to develop similar themes to what Van Tassel's been exploring with her own company. In the case of this particular show, it's the archetypes that women play. She's hoping her selections let audiences see a lot more of the population of strong female actors around town.
"[In] theatre in Edmonton, and theatre in general, there's such great female actors out there, and you hear often that there's not enough roles for all these women. I think that there are," Van Tassel says. "It's just a matter of whether or not people are doing them."
Until Sat, Oct 22 (8 pm)
Directed by Sarah Van Tassel
Walterdale Playhouse, $12 – $16 vueweekly.com comments: powered by Disqus
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