FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MAY 11, 2011
Vancouver, BC – Two vibrant, young Vancouver companies are proud to announce their first collaboration, staging the Vancouver Premiere of acclaimed Canadian playwright Eugene Stickland’s award-winning play A Guide to Mourning. Upintheair Theatre and Genus Theatre have both successfully grown during the difficult years of the Vancouver Theatre scene by producing works which connect to and engage with diverse audiences. A Guide to Mourning has been performed to acclaim throughout much of Canada and we are pleased to bring this distinguished script to Vancouver.
A father's death reunites Deirdre (Brenda Matthews) with her three adult children. The eldest, Rex (Daniel Martin), is homeless. Lewis (Frano Marsic) is the fussy middle child with an unhealthy attachment to expensive running shoes and their sister, Sandra (Kelly Sheridan), shuns emotion for designer dresses. Together they attempt to plan their father's final passage with what one would hope to be a sense of tender urgency and intimacy. But in a play that is at once unsettling and hysterical, both bleak and hopeful, the family is so consumed with serving their own needs first that the actual funeral seems doomed from the start.
