RICE AND BEANS THEATRE SOCIETY

Our DBLSPK program entered its seventh year supporting the development of two new multilingual works: 'Hymn of the Weaver Birds' by Johnny Wu and Jocelyn Yuchia Chang (Mandarin) and 'Emberré Váltam' by Oliva Etey (Hungarian). Both workshop presentations were presented in-person as well as online reaching audiences both locally and internationally and had ASL interpretation available. The program continues to thrive and see audience growth thanks to support from Canadian Heritage and other funders as well as our new partnership with the Vancouver Public Library. We held our second annual Polyphonic Residency in 23-24 as funded by the BC Arts Council Arts Impact Grant and Department of Canadian Heritage. This extension of our DBLSPK program provided a 10-day residency for two multilingual works in development one by a BC artist and one by an out-of-town artist. Our playwrights were Carolyn Nakagawa with her piece 'Anne’s Cradle' (Japanese) and Yulissa Campos with her piece 'I Frida' (Spanish).

In our 2023-24 season we produced two mainstage productions. The first was 'Peace Country' by Pedro Chamale presented by the Firehall Arts Centre and developed in association with Playwrights Theatre Centre and Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre and with support from the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival. 'Peace Country' was met with community and critical acclaim as it provided an accessible entry point to the climate conversation that left audiences moved and encouraged to take action with compassion. The second production was our first-ever DBLPSK mainstage: 'Jade Circle' by Jasmine Chen presented by the Gateway Theatre in association with Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre. As the piece included both Mandarin and English it offered an exciting opportunity for the Mandarin-speaking community while its use of dynamic surtitles songs and movement made it an engaging performance for non-speakers who could relate to the experience of relearning their mother tongue. In addition to our mainstage productions we also held development workshops for two new works by Artistic Director Pedro Chamale: a technical workshop for 'PeaceCountry' prior to its premiere and a writing workshop for 'Flaca Gorda y Chapara' which is inspired by real events of Pedro’s aunt who fled Guatemala after learning that she was on a hit-list for being a political science professor at the University of Guatemala in the 1980s.