Western Gold Theatre will present its inaugural Have a Senior Moment Festival, featuring three new plays by Vancouver senior artists.
The trio of plays were chosen through a call for submission and with the support of an adjudicator who did not know the name or gender of the playwrights to allow for an unbiased decision. Each playwright receives a four-hour workshop of their play with professional actors, a public reading at PAL Studio Theatre, and a digital recording of the event.
“I wanted to turn the notion of ‘have a senior moment’ on its head,” says Western Gold’s artistic director, Tanja Dixon-Warren. “I wanted to change the perception of seniors’ having a moment’ while simultaneously giving senior artists ‘a moment’.”
Opening the Festival on October 5 is playwright Jay Brazeau’s Fortunate Sons, the story of four generations of fathers and sons taking audiences from 1937 to beyond.
On October 6, the Festival presents Susinn McFarlen’s They’re Naked, They’re Ugly and They Owe Us Money, a feminist comedy about a theatre company forced to rehearse in a decrepit biker clubhouse when the last rehearsal space in town closes.
Closing the Festival on October 6 is The Monarch by Michael Vairo. Set in a dingy boxing club in the basement of a rundown hotel in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, an aging boxer and his one-time prodigy search for meaning in their lives and contemplate what could have been.
“My hope is the Have a Senior Moment Festival will discover new things for us all and morph into an annual festival celebrating the Western Gold Theatre motto: creativity has no expiry date,” says Dixon-Warren.
Have a Senior Moment Festival takes place at the PAL Studio Theatre (581 Cardero St, Vancouver) from October 5-7. Visit westerngoldtheatre.org for tickets and information.