The Sunset Theatre’s Exploration Series is a crucible for emerging and established theatre artists to create new work.

The Sunset Theatre’s support of new Canadian plays has been at the core of the company’s mandate from its inception, and would not be possible without the support of the BC Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.

Launched in 2006, the Exploration Series supports the creation and development of new plays in varying phases of the creative cycle from inception to workshop production.

The format for each project is as unique as each artist.

Whether engaging a dramaturg, workshopping a script, forming initial ideas and concepts, or wanting to hear your play read in front of an audience for the first time, the Exploration Series offers Canadian Theatre Artists a safe and supportive environment to create their best work.

WHAT ARTISTS HAVE SAID ABOUT THE EXPLORATION SERIES:

From the moment we pulled up to the theatre, and saw ‘Welcome James & Jamesy’ on the theatre’s marquee, we knew we had arrived at a space that would nourish our creativity. The anxiety we had been feeling associated with having an opening date for a yet-to-be-written show began to dissipate. We arrived with a theme and loose show structure, and left with a first draft of a script in hand, and a public showing under our belt!
- Alastair Knowles, Right This Way! June 2022 • James & Jamesy Performance Society

My lodgings were warm, well stocked and thoughtfully detailed with homey touches and welcoming messages. The serene setting allowed hours of uninterrupted writing/editing time that primed rehearsals in the morning and honed discoveries at night.
– Lana Skauge, Queen Bee, 2019

"The opportunity to be free from the stress and demands of the regular day to day, in a theatre rich with history and great care, in a location brimming with natural beauty, was like nothing I’ve ever experienced before in my 30+ years of creating.
– Paul Tedeschini, The Grace of Strange Weather, 2019

EXPLORATION SERIES 2022-2023

HALF/ASIAN WITH AMY THE CODA
*In Between Two Worlds*

HALF/ASIAN with Amy the CODA aim to create a theatre production that includes original music, creative expression of sign language and storytelling that sheds light on their lived experiences weaved together with the experiences of their mothers.
Amy’s mother Audrey was born deaf. At age 7 her family finally discovered her deafness through a doctor's visit. Audrey was then fitted with hearing aids and sent away from her family to live at the Deaf residential school where the main goal was to assimilate the deaf children into the hearing world by teaching them how to read lips, and essentially accommodate for the hearing world around them. The Jericho Hill School for the Deaf was where Audrey was raised. It shut down in 1992 after an 80 page public report was published on the sexual, physical and emotional abuse inflicted on the students at JHS.
Ian’s mother Suzanna immigrated to Canada when she was 7 years old. She was named by her grade one teacher, a woman who thought the pronunciation of her Cantonese name was too hard. Has been mistaken as a mail-order bride. Has been asked time and time again for over 60 years “How do you like our country?” - as if she hasn’t spent her entire life as a Canadian citizen except for the first 7 years of her life that she spent in Hong Kong. Even while presenting her work at university conferences - holding the title of PHD - she receives comments like “Your English is so good” instead of comments on her lifelong work as an Early Childhood Development researcher.
Both Ian and Amy have stories to share that mirror the experiences of their mothers, and it is their hope to create a theatre production that touches on family, identity, racism, ableism, rural Canadian living and acceptance of who we are and what our families have endured.

Norma Bowen
*Landline*

The sibs have never been able to figure out why Jenn has insisted on holding onto the landline. That ugly old phone/answering machine has been with her through college, career and a long, messy marriage. She’s paid whatever it’s taken to transport the old phone number with her for 23 years. Now on her own, in the middle of a pandemic, she arrives home to a flashing light on the machine. That little light hasn’t flashed in more than 2 decades. Listening to that message could be a turning point in Jenn’s life. She’s not alone in the 1 woman play, however. With her cell phone on speaker, Jenn seeks support from her best friend, Tish, and the sibs; Paul, the playboy, and Nat (or as Paul and Jenn joke; Nat-see. She may be a bit controlling). Newly 50, recently separated, minorly menopausal, Jenn faces the choice to confront her shameful past by meeting the skeleton in her closet, or simply, unplugging the landline. This play explores adoption, and the trauma experienced by the abandonment wound.

Amiel Gladstone
*Growing Family*

A play about a family forced to keep big secrets to survive and the effects of that on the children. Set in the 1990s, pre legalization, a family has a grow op that is the main source of income. This seems stressful but manageable. Things get destroyed when a marijuana shipment becomes evidence in a murder investigation. The parents are forced to wonder, was it all worth it?

Amanda Lynne Preston
*Easy Did It*

A one woman show that navigates an individualistic perspective on compassion. Enlightened by sober bikers, unconditional love and the inescapable feature of miscellaneous pain. Pain that resembles old granola bar crumbs sitting next to one’s most prized possessions at the bottom of the bag one totes around, called being alive.

Ryan Schmitt
POSTDILUVIAN

Incapable of death, unable to relate to others, disinterested in understanding himself, at the end of the world in an endless desert he has little to do but tell the only other living thing about his life. He tells tales of the bottom of the sea, the first robbery, future and past times, and the way the world became a desert. They search through his memories for any semblance of meaning, hope, or maybe even understanding with one another. At the end of his story, he hopes that the listener will finally free him from his endless life.