NEWS: Rio Tinto Alcan Award Recipient Announced

Western Canada’s Theatre Conspiracy is the winner of the fourteenth annual Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award, a $60,000 production fund that is one of the largest awards of its kind in Canada. The company’s new work, Extraction, will have its premiere at The Cultch in Spring 2013.

The New Work: Extraction is a documentary theatre show that delves deep into the heart of intertwined cultural phenomena: China’s rise as an economic power and oil extraction in Alberta. Mining the biographies of non-actor performers, this bilingual (English and Mandarin) play digs beneath the surface of highly charged political debates to illuminate lives transformed by legendary traffic jams, boomtown fever, translation trouble, and diplomatic intrigue in Beijing and in Ft. McMurray’s tar sands, which has been called one of the largest industrial projects in human history.

Writing/Research/Casting by Tim Carlson; Direction by Amiel Gladstone; Dramaturgy by Jeremy Waller; Video and Technical Design by Flick Harrison; Original Music by Ron Samworth; Stage Management by Benjamin Cheung; Consultant and Performer, Jimmy Mitchell.

The Company: Theatre Conspiracy’s mandate is to tap the crosscurrents of international culture, society and politics to create, interpret, translate and curate theatre shows that speak beyond borders. Conspiracy explores internationalism theatrically by: creating original work that explores international themes; reaching beyond the English-speaking world with projects involving contemporary world drama in translation; interpreting work by international playwrights; and curating and producing events featuring local, national and international artists.

The Award: The Rio Tinto Alcan Performing Arts Award is a $60,000 production fund open to performing arts companies residing in British Columbia. The award is funded by Rio Tinto Alcan and administered by The Cultch. The competition rotates annually among the disciplines of Dance, Theatre and Music/Opera. An independent panel of artistic professionals adjudicates the award.

Previous winners include The Holy Body Tattoo (Circa), Electric Company Theatre (Dona Flor and her Two Husbands), Modern Baroque Opera (120 Songs for the Marquis de Sade), battery opera (Cyclops), Boca del Lupo (The Suicide), Hard Rubber Orchestra (Enter-Exit), Kidd Pivot (Lost Action),  Neworld Theatre (Adrift on the Nile), Vancouver New Music (Marginalia: Re-visioning Roy Kiyooka), Wen Wei Dance (Cock-Pit), Theatre Replacement (The Greatest Cities in the World), Turning Point Ensemble (Firebird 2011), Les Productions Figlios (Elles).