"Lights Out" Performance

Lights Out is featuring Jennifer Hoar and Richard Beauchamp.

Unease is featuring Alyssa Kostello

Date/Time: November 25 & 26 at 7:00pm (show will be approx. 2 hours).

Tickets: $15/$20 (Students/Regular), call 604-877-0678 or email vyt@shawbiz.ca to reserve tickets.  Tickets will also be available at the door.

See you there!

Alyssa Kostello

We knew it would take a bit of time and research to figure out how we could take action, as we also had to consider what skills and resources we had. But we knew there was one step we could take towards action in the meantime. That step was talking to people who are currently doing so.

Thus NOW What? Dialogue was born.

In a cozy setting, we would like to bring together a gathering of people from different walks of life to have an open dialogue hosted by a group or person currently working to solve sustainability issues. Through the dialogues, we hope to pique new ideas, thoughts, and actions.

Our first Dialogue on November 10, 2011 will be hosted by Shift Urban Cargo Delivery.

Shift is the first business of its kind in Canada, replacing delivery trucks and vans with a more appropriate and efficient technology for urban distribution: zero-emissions, heavy-duty cargo trikes. It was founded by students and recent graduates of Simon Fraser University, BCIT, and the University of British Columbia. These young entrepreneurs came together with a shared vision to create empowering green jobs, and to reduce the impact of goods movement in Vancouver. As a worker co-operative, the business is owned and democratically operated by its workers.

Shift’s mission is to provide a zero-emissions, cycle-based goods distribution service; offer sustainable goods-transportation solutions to business clients; facilitate the empowerment and skills-building of our worker-members through a worker co-operative model; and promote positive cycling culture in Vancouver.

Please email Alyssa (a.kostello@now-org.com) to RSVP.

CGIU 2011 was a 3-day conference that was hosted by the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), in conjunction with the Clinton Global Initiative, in La Jolla/San Diego. This is the 4^th annual CGIU conference, and brought together nearly 1200 attendees from around the world to San Diego for an intense 3 days of networking, learning, and collaborating.

CGIU strives to engage the next generation of leaders and change makers from college campuses from around the world, and bring them together to connect, learn, be inspired, and raise awareness for their efforts on an international stage. It builds upon the successful model of the Clinton Global Initiative, launched by former United States President Bill Clinton, by bringing together students, national youth organizations, experts, and celebrities to discuss solutions to issues that are part of the five focus areas of CGIU: Education, Environment and Climate Change, Peace and Human Rights, Poverty Alleviation, and Public Health. However, CGIU is not just another conference that discusses problems- it also acts upon them by taking real, concrete steps to create a better world through the Commitments to Action.

The NOW! Organization’s Commitment to Action focused on the areas of Education and Environment & Climate Change. We committed to raise awareness of problems and solutions to sustainability through the performing arts, and to do so through our flagship program, the Act NOW! International Performance Writing Festival.

Keep reading below for a brief trip report on what happened at CGIU 2011!

NOW! Organization members at CGIU 2011 (from left to right): Ivan Liu, Janny Ke, and Denise Chau.

Friday, April 1, 2011

By Friday, all 3 NOW! members attending had arrived at UCSD. After having some free time in the morning to explore the local area around the UCSD campus, we made our way to registration at the UCSD RIMAC Arena. Afterwards, the Student Networking Event and Dinner took place in the Price Centre Ballroom West, where Mandy Moore, an actress and Ambassador for Population Services International, gave opening words to the assembled delegates. The Opening Plenary, entitled “What’s the Big Deal? Powering Innovation on Campus and Beyond” closed off the night and kick-started the conference on a high note, with an opening address by former US President Bill Clinton, and a focus on powering innovation that was moderated by President Clinton, and had a panel of speakers that included one of the co-founders of Youtube, as well as one of the co-founders of sOccket.

Saturday, April 2, 2011

We gathered for a quick breakfast before heading off to the first event of the day, the Morning Plenary, “The Urban Planet: Solutions for a Crowded World”. Afterwards, we then attended a skills session on utilizing Social Media to engage and innovate, where we had the opportunity to hear about the success and ideas of Alexis Ohanian, one of the founders of Reddit. The lunch session was next, where boxed lunches (in sustainable packaging!) was served alongside the CGIU Exchange Fair, where we explored the many booths that introduced to us the many initiatives and ideas that fellow students and corporate institutions were putting into action. Afterwards, we headed to the Afternoon Plenary session, “Financial Aid: Innovation for Affordability”, an engaging and relevant panel discussion moderated by Chelsea Clinton. We continued our packed day with a Working Session on “Scarcity and Crisis: Food, Water, and Energy as a Right and a Conflict Driver”, which featured Mandy Moore as its opening speaker. Following that, we then headed to the Closing Plenary, “A Conversation with President Clinton”, which also featured the actor Sean Penn, who shared with us his experience living and working in Haiti after the devastating earthquake and its efforts to rebuild. After a high-spirited and lively discussion, all the CGIU attendees went to the Closing Party for some dinner and to network in a more casual setting.

Sunday, April 3, 2011

The day started out bright and early, as we boarded buses to head to the Service Project at the San Diego Food Bank. We were treated to an early-morning bout of excitement when not only President Clinton addressed us, but also Drew Barrymore, a Hollywood actress, and Irwin Jacobs, founder of Qualcomm. At the project, we assisted in doing a variety of tasks that included sorting and distributing food, as well as assisting local families in obtaining much-needed supplies. After a quick lunch, the conference was officially over as all our new friends started heading their separate ways back to their homes across the world.

—————–

Attending CGIU 2011 was a great opportunity to not only network and connect with hundreds of leaders and change-makers from around the world, but also a fantastic learning experience. We incorporated many of the inspiration and ideas that we had from CGIU into our Commitment to Action, the Act NOW! Festival. We have not only made it more innovative, but expanded our reach and scope, especially with this being our first year opening up the Festival to international submissions. In addition, we also moved further to fulfilling our Commitment to Action by holding our first community performance of the Act NOW! winning plays at the CBC Studio 700 on May 17, 2011. It was our first time doing the performances outside of a school theatre setting, and it proved a very rewarding and successful experience, as over 100 people came to see the performances, resulting in a full house!

Click on the link below for the video of the performance!

“Fallen Heads” Premiere Performance

Playwright: Deborah Vogt
Directed By: Chalene Scott
Cast: Sigourney McAuley, Glenn Crossley, Hannah VanVarseveld, Ryan Scramstad
Filmed By: Sustainability TV

To those who were unable to join us, here is a brief summary of what happened!

When guests arrived at the studio, they had the opportunity to become part of our “Pixel Display”, which is a collection of many individual artistic expressions. Everyone received a small piece of cardboard, and could draw or write whatever they wished on it. The end result looked fabulous.

The Pixel Display in all its glory

The evening was kick-started by our MC, Tetsuro Shigematsu, who, besides having the ability to crack random jokes at just the right moment, also gave a pre-show performance of his own. The performance, “Rising Son”, was a hilarious re-telling of his childhood experience with karate, and definitely started off the night on the right note.

Tetsuro Shigematsu's "Rising Son" Performance

Afterwards was the performance of the Act NOW! Junior Category winning play of 2009-2010, “Fallen Heads”, which beautifully weaves the story of the doom of Easter Island society with modern-day over-consumption of resources.

Playwright: Deborah Vogt
Cast: Sigourney McAuley, Glenn Crossley, Hannah VanVarseveld, Ryan Scramstad
Directed by: Chalene Scott

"Fallen Heads" Performance

We then went immediately into the second performance of the night, the Act NOW! Senior Category winning of 2009-2010, “Lights Out”. In this play., the main character, Maria, learns and accepts that darkness is not always a bad thing, or something to be terrified of.

Playwright: Samantha Landa
Cast: Jennifer Hoar, Chris Coutts
Directed by: Alyssa Kostello

"Lights Out" Performance

After a short intermission, the third show of the night, the Fringe Tour Preview by In the Flesh Theatre, entitled “BOX: Or the Incredible Impact of the Totally Made Up” was performed. An over-stressed office worker re-discovers  the power of the imagination and goes through several fantastical scenarios (and meets equally interesting characters along the way), before realizing that she is much more than just what her job dictates.

Cast: Tracy Varju, Jennifer Hoar, Chris Fader, Chalene Scott, Ryan Bolton, Alyssa Kostello
Stage Manager: Gen Bouchard

Performance of "BOX: Or the Incredible Impact of the Totally Made Up"

The last performance of the evening was given by Dr. Ray Hsu, who ended off the night with a high note by selecting volunteers from the audience and having them all take part in a recorded message to Prime Minister Harper! The video footage of this absolutely jaw-dropping and hilarious interactive performance is below- my words alone can’t justify the epic-ness of what happened;

Dr. Ray Hsu phones PM Harper!

The evening ended off with a short awards ceremony to recognize the winning playwrights of the 2009-2010 Act NOW! Competition, many words of thanks to all our supporters and guests, along with a lot of great food for the post-performance reception. This is the first event of its kind for NOW!, and it was awesome seeing how successful it turned out!

Many thanks also to the following people and organizations who made the event possible, and put in countless hours and effort to create the event as it was:

Event Organizers: Denise Chau, Alyssa Kostello, Janny Ke, Rebecca Gu & Ivan Liu
Technical Crew: Gen Bouchard & Tommy Osmond
MC: Tetsuro Shigematsu
Venue: CBC Studios
Filming: Sustainability TV
Food: Cupcakes on Broadway, Safeway on Davie & Safeway on Broadway/MacDonald

THANK YOU!

Entry:

Unease (audio file)

Unease

Tabloids surround me in shades of black and outbursts of red
Screaming at me to pick them up and read the horrors of the world
‘Killings continue in Libya’
and
‘Police corruption’
and
‘Shocking photos’
and
‘Civil war’
All telling a story
(One more and I’m going to snap)
Of something rotten, deadly, hard to swallow like medicine or bitter herbs
Making me terribly aware of how lucky I am
(To live in ‘America’, the land of opportunities, paved with gold and good intentions)
I close my eyes, take a deep breath, let it out
(Stare at the distorted faces of people I don’t know, people I’ll never know because they’re that terrible D word, the one that takes them away from where I am and puts them Somewhere Else)
I open them only to see a tired world, a dishonest world, a scary world
(Innocence and ignorance go hand in hand, flying away from me as ‘nuclear..Japan…anti….energy’ flits through one ear to lodge in my heart)
In which the special word doesn’t work as often as it should
(Pretty please with cherries on top)
Promises are broken
(-But you said he’d live- in hysterical tones while
-Nothing is for certain, please calm down, Miss-
A grim person in a white coat stares through you)
And, perhaps worst of all, lies are told
All of these thoughts that pound through my head like a battering ram in a desperate action film
Images imprinted on my heart
Of tiny boys with stick bones and rib cages
That could compete with a Greyhounds’ for attention
Eyes colored with desperation, faces numbed by disaster; the disaster being their life, spiralling into something that makes even the strong of heart feel twisted and sick
Statistics with the odds piled up high against improvement
Pins boldly stating ‘poverty is a weapon of mass destruction’
Polls to see what country is best off
(It’s like a race and here in the States, we’re winners;
so what happens to the losers?)
The little things that pile up and flash by like a silent movie when it’s late
and I’m trying to fall asleep but all I can think of are problems upon problems
(People say I’ve got a great imagination and I thank them,
braces glinting at them as I smile
but inwardly I’m screaming
‘Imagine this;
we switch places with everyone in the slums’
which is too much for anyone who has seen the better side of life to even want to think of)
I fool myself into thinking that they’re getting taken care of, that people care and put time, money, energy into helping others
(The Golden Rule, as my teachers taught me in preschool)
When experience tells me that we’re too self-absorbed and fast-paced to sit down and consider anybody else
(Charity’s a lot less grand when I know of fraud
All I can think is ‘what sick people would take money from the dying?’)
Driving home, music playing dimly in the background, eyes bleary and turning the road into a dark expanse lit by other cars, like yours
Stopped briefly by the sight of a young woman who is probably just like you except-
She’s carrying nothing but a cardboard sign and a tiny can
(Pause to take the sight in, consider, drive by)
Later, I wonder what put her there, why she needs to appeal to the kinder nature of strangers, how she would feel if she knew I saw her and WENT ON ANYWAYS
(I imagine she’s used to it
I imagine she’s tired of it)
Guilt sits on people’s shoulders, an anchor that causes them to droop and stumble, looking for all of the world to be sick at heart
Many adults have drooping shoulders, premature graying, lack of composure at the end of the day when they’ve had their fill of difficult questions
(Social security, finance, bills, taxes, Coke or Pepsi, now or later, employment, education, what is your opinion)
As if they need the night to let these thoughts leak out
(I picture wisps of words scrambling out of their eyes and ears, desperate to get out of where they were crammed into)
The following morning will restart all the anxiety, open the door to a whole new world of important papers, bloody numbers, sad truths, quiet lies, vicious facts and their conscience will be shutting down in order to survive
So tell me
(Whisper into my ear when no one else is paying attention)
What is the secret to blocking out the world
When you’ve already been exposed to things you never dreamed of
Do the tabloids get less shocking?
Does the guilt become normal?
Please tell me
What to do now that I’m aware

About the writer

I’m from the humble town of Somerville, MA and I aspire to be an author. I realize this is not the easiest thing to obtain without a job to get you going and so I’m also interested in the art of law. I like to sing in my chorus (Boston Children’s Chorus) and play soccer. During my unique year at Sudbury Valley School I studied up on psychology. I’m fourteen and hoping to be published

About this entry

I’ve performed it only to close family friends, however I did submit it to an online magazine called Montreal Serai and it was accepted. This piece was initially written around the time period of the Egypt uprising and Japan’s earthquake/tsunami/nuclear power plant disaster this past spring. It was also, in a way, a sister poem of one I wrote in October and they both have to do with social change, opinion and how I personally view things; although this piece was more based around social aspects and the other inspired by a film Food Inc. I would like to acknowledge Laura Mitchel for helping me vocally perform this poem and edit it so that it packed more of a punch.

YOUTH PLAYS ON SUSTAINBILITY AND INNOVATION PREMIERE AT VANCOUVER’S CBC STUDIO 700

Two festival-winning plays- Lights Out and Fallen Heads- along with the Fringe Tour preview of In the Flesh Theatre in co-production with Human Theatre’s piece, BOX: Or the Incredible Impact of the Totally Made Up, will be performed at the second-annual Act NOW! National Playwriting Festival’s inaugural premiere event.

The senior category winner of the winning plays is Lights Out. Are you afraid of the dark? When Maria is caught in a blackout, she bumps into Jon–literally–and learns to cope with her fear of the dark and reliance on leaving too many lights turned on. Jon teaches Maria about the beauty and sustainability of being surrounded by calm, natural blackness. In the end, will Maria still need a night light?

The junior category of the winning plays is called Fallen Heads. Fallen Heads is a story about the past meeting the present to teach us lessons about the future.

BOX is a story about a woman named Lee, who works hard at a job she doesn’t really want to do. It isn’t until she is put up for a promotion that she discovers what she is truly capable of- what her imagination is capable of. This story is told through compelling physical work and vivid imagery. Surprising transformations reveal a world beyond the everyday, a world of possibilities.

The NOW! Organization is a dedicated team of volunteers across Canada passionate about sustainability and sparking social change through the arts. The Act NOW! International Performance Writing festival is a writing competition on sustainability run by youth, for youth, that engages young people across the nation to learn, evaluate, innovate and act with a splash of creativity!

Graduates of the Acting for Stage and Screen Program from Capilano University in North Vancouver, have created BOX, an original piece using Composition work, Viewpoints and collaborative writing sessions. They’ve been in the development process since last July and have been working with Technical Theatre and Film program graduates from Capilano. Inspired by the idea of people reconnecting with their imaginations, they aim to tell a story that motivates audiences to follow their hearts, no matter who they are.

The show date is May 17^th, 2011 at 7:30 in the CBC Studio 700.

For information on The NOW! Organization visit http://now-org.com/.

For information on BOX visit www.wix.com/inthefleshtheatre/fringetour.

Learn more about the International Performance Writing Festival for youth on sustainability.

Hang out and enjoy a night of fun plays by youth on sustainability and imagination! Act NOW! National Playwriting Festival’s winning plays for 2010 will be performed along with the Fringe Tour preview of BOX: Or the Incredible Impact of the Totally Made Up. Following will be an award ceremony for the winning playwrights.

Entry is by donation at the door, please RSVP (click RSVP to open a new window for registration) so we can have a better idea of who to expect! Recommended minimum donation is $10; however, any amount that you can give is greatly appreciated.

Where: CBC Studio 700 (700 Hamilton Street, Vancouver, BC; across the road from the Vancouver Public Library- Central branch)

When: Tuesday, May 17, 2011, 7:30 – 9:30pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.

The idea of this story came to me when I was traveling in one of the most beautiful places in the world knowing that one day it will be under water. What’s your story about a sustainability issue in your community, whether in terms of environment, health, economy, government, transportation, etc.? Do you have ideas for a solution? Would love to hear your story and your ideas at the Act NOW! International Performance Festival!

The tide wakes her from her nap. Not sure since when, the water has swept across the balcony, ankle-high. In the setting sun, a few roofs peek through the water. Far in the distance to her right are the soaring domes of the Basilica di San Marco, slowly swallowed by the glimmering tides.

Swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the water.

She pushes hard against the arm chair to lift herself up. One hand on a cane, the other against the wall, she shuffles back into the living room, the knock of the cane muffled by the soggy carpet.

It’s a quarter past nine, still. The clock battery has given its last sigh long ago as time froze, an iceberg waiting to be dissolved by the dark green water. The ornate furniture, the beautiful artwork and the feeble flame of a half-burnt candle are as though a photograph, only the growing sepia betraying the swish swash of time. Whoever lived here must have left in a hurry, not taking much with them. She wonders whether they had felt as she did a few days ago.

“That’s all,” She had stared at the half-empty suitcase that summarized her seven decades of life.

She decides to have butter chicken for dinner. Putting on her glasses, she finds the pill bottle with a picture resembling the dish. She takes out a tablet and chews it, savouring the rich taste of artificial curry. Once invented for people who are way too busy to cook or eat, these nutritious chemicals are now the only food available.

She wonders what George would say if he sees her now, munching butter chicken with her bare feet dangling just off the water, filling the protagonist role of a deserted photograph. Maybe George would laugh – he loves her and finds whatever she does amusing, her outlandish ways and irrational rationalizations and all.

Maybe he would cry like a little kid and tell her he misses her.

George was right that she was the only soul insane enough to spend a lifetime’s savings to fly to Venice. The young pilot who flew her here – she cannot recall his name – most likely thought so too. The incredulity in his eyes leaked through his gentlemanly politeness, silently thundering “do you know how many other ways we could have used the fuel to win the war?” She continued reading Shakespeare. He had grown up with the patriotic rhetoric of the resource wars, she thought. Like vultures scavenging the last flesh of a giant corpse, the armies wave the glorious banners of freedom and democracy and kill over the last hint of fresh water, the last chatter of leaves in the wind, the last blush of a real apple, and soon, the last glimmer of oil.

She starts to trudge up to the penthouse bedroom before the tide gets knee-high. The narrow staircase aches and squeals with every step. The first time she was in Venice, she raced up one of these ancient staircases. She was twenty-two – or twenty-three? – back then. Her turquoise summer dress was soaked from dancing and splashing with Marco at the St. Marco’s Square. It was acqua alta, and the water had pooled all over the square. The reflections of the lights that lined the square were drenched into millions of shooting stars.
She leans against the bedroom window and gazes out. The riddles of narrow streets woven with light and shadow, the people who came from all over the world, the St. Marco square replete with lights and memories and laughter and heartbreaks… shrouded way beneath the rippling dark green, forgotten. All she can hear, is swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the sea.