A Bunch of Actors presents The Importance of Being Earnest, May 13 and 14 at the Anne Macdonald Studio at Presentation House Theatre, 333 Chesterfield Ave., North Vancouver; and May 15 in the garden at 1950 West 18th Ave., Vancouver. Tickets: $20 at brownpapertickets.com.
To prove it is she, and not Cecily Cardew, who is rightfully engaged to marry Ernest Worthing, Gwendolen Fairfax pulls out a small journal and flips to a recent entry.
“I never travel without my diary,” she says. “One should always have something sensational to read in the train.”
It’s the witty dialogue and farcical nature of Oscar Wilde’s 1895 play The Importance of Being Earnest that drew Katherine Alpen to the work when she first read it in high school. Subtitled “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People” the play satirizes Victorian society as it follows two well-to-do bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, who both assume fictitious personas in order to court the respective objects of their affection.
Alpen delved further into Wilde’s life and career as a student in the musical theatre program at Capilano University.
“The more I’ve learned, the more I’ve come to appreciate him as a writer and also as an artist,” she says.
It’s at CapU where she met friends Julian Legere and Sabrielle McCurdy-Foreman. The three of them, all recently graduated, had starred in a production of Pride and Prejudice and discovered their mutual appreciation for British drama from the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
“I think it was there that we kind of bonded and discovered that we all really love classical theatre,” Alpen says.
When the friends found themselves with fairly open schedules this spring, they decided to take the opportunity to form their own theatre company, simply called A Bunch of Actors. It wasn’t hard to choose their inaugural production.
“I’ve always wanted to do The Importance of Being Earnest and I’ve also always wanted to try directing just because I was curious about it,” Alpen says.
Alpen is making her directorial debut and co-producing the show, which runs May 13 to 15. The cast is made up largely of recent CapU grads from the musical theatre and acting for stage and screen programs.
While there are plenty of opportunities for young performers to take on roles in summer theatre productions and with the larger Vancouver theatre companies, those roles aren’t always major, Alpen says.
“There’s a lot of opportunities for ensemble parts first off, but less so for leads,” she explains, “so doing a small show where everyone has a fairly big part, that’s a pretty neat experience to have because it might be a couple of years before you get that kind of a part in a company.”
In the Lower Mainland, she says it’s common for young artists and recent theatre grads to produce their own work in order to fill the gaps between gigs and to sink their teeth into meatier roles.
“There’s not a lot of waiting around for something to happen. There’s a lot of people making things happen, which is great.”
Looking ahead, Alpen is already considering what other classic works A Bunch of Actors might tackle.
“I think there’s definitely a chance that we will do another show, possibly something Shakespearean or something like that down the road,” she says.
