When City Stage New West found its plan for the year ahead scuppered by the COVID-19 pandemic, the theatre company had a couple of choices: (a) cancel that plan, or (b) reimagine a new one.
It went with (b) – and now New Westminster audiences will get to enjoy some local theatre, just in time for Canada Day.
The New Westminster theatre company was looking forward to another year of its Sips ’n’ Scripts play reading series, for which it has been partnering with the Anvil Centre. Last year, it ran a series of audience-participation play readings on a #metoo theme, plus a holiday read-and-sing-along edition of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol.
It had plans for a new Sips ’n’ Scripts series in 2020, sponsored largely by a grant from the City of New Westminster.
But, with COVID-19 bringing traditional live theatre to a standstill, the company decided to repurpose that funding. Instead, it’s hosting a livestreamed performance of archival footage of Stump City Stories on Saturday, June 27.
The musical, by composer George Ryan, was commissioned for the city’s 150th anniversary in 2009. The Ovation Award-nominated musical tells stories from New Westminster’s and British Columbia’s history in what’s described as “humorous, poignant, toe-tapping style.”
It includes homage to the Qayqayt First Nation and the Fraser River, celebrates B.C.’s original Chinatown (Yi Fao) and New Westminster’s diverse immigrant populations and, of course, marks the arrival of the British and famous dramas including the Great Freeze of 1862, the capital city controversy of 1868, the Great Fire of 1898, the Great Bank Robbery of 1911, the World Wars and more.
In 2010, the musical was brought free of charge to the stage to more than 1,500 New Westminster students. In 2015, a professional cast album was made featuring the late Broadway actor Sean Allan, along with Damon Calderwood, Dora Brooks and Jeremy Lowe.
The livestreamed performance will be of an archival workshop performance filmed in 2009 (per union regulations, no sets or costumes were allowed).
City Stage New West hopes the joy of the musical and its many tales of resilience will lift hearts once again at a challenging time.
“Theatre like this reminds us all that if we just look out for one another, we can pull through this together as we have in the past, emerging even stronger than before,” said Renée Bucciarelli, the company’s producing artistic director. “The finale literally invites us to ‘imagine the future (we) dream of … now.’”
For the June 27 livestream, a live panel will join the broadcast to touch on other stories from New Westminster’s diverse past. Confirmed panelists so far include Arwinder Kaur, the daughter of Mani Singh, the granthi of New West's Gurdwara Sahib Sukh Sagar - one of the oldest Sikh temples in Canada. She has contributed artifacts and family history to the recent New Westminster Museum exhibit An Ocean of Peace: 100 Years of Sikhs in New Westminster. She'll be joined by historian, journalist and teacher Gavin Hainsworth, the co-author (with Katherine Freund Hainsworth) of A New Westminster Album (2005), one of the primary research resources for Stump City Stories. Other panelists are pending.
Participating registered audience members can send in their questions.
The musical will be livestreamed on June 27, starting at 7:30 p.m., at www.facebook.com/citystagenewwest.
There will also be a live Zoom launch, with the panel Q&A. To participate, sign up ahead – the webinar registration link is available, along with more details, at www.citystagenewwest.org.
