TRIXXXIEFEST!!!!

Roles 4 Women Theatre Company, The Black Bag Media Collective and Trixxxie are proud to announce the lineup for:
 
The First Annual
TRIXXXIEFEST WEEKEND
JUNE 12 - 15, 2014

THURSDAY JUNE 12
Stand Up Comedy at Scanlan’s Lounge
Cocktail Hour 9 PM
hosted by Comedienne Extraordinaire
Amanda Batten
Featuring the comedy stylings of: Colleen Power, Liz Solo, Amanda Batten, Sweater Kittens
With Musical Guests: Sam Burke, Danielle Trouble, Erin Simms, Jenny Naish

FRIDAY JUNE 13
Rock Show at Distortion – 10:30 PM
STARRING:
The Sauce
The River
Category VI
Trixxxie

SATURDAY JUNE 14
Rock Show at The Ship - 10:30 PM
STARRING:
Uneeda
Trixxxie
DT andThe Dinosaurs 
Allie Duff and The Happy Campers

SUNDAY JUNE 15
Pop-Up Supper and Screening - 8 PM
hosted by Trixxxie
Stay tuned for announcement

All bar shows are $10 at the door

R4W at 1 Billion Rising

Liz and Jenny learning dance moves.

For the past two years Roles 4 Women Theatre Company have been a part of the wonderful annual event - 1 Billion Rising in St. John's - a global rally to end violence against women. It is always a great time with local music, excellent food, information booths and crafts for sale and the company of people from every walk of life who all want to see an end to violence against women.

Along with all the other good stuff, at every 1 Billion Rising event there is also much dancing! Here are a few shots of performances and dance moves from Liz and Jenny at 1 Billion Rising.

Congratulations to the organizers of the St. John's event. We are looking forward to next year.

Jenny performs at 1 Billion Rising

Jenny Dancing with the crowd at the 2014 1 Billion Rising

Everybody Dances! Liz and Gerry Rogers sharing a scoff to Sabrina Wyatt.

TrixxxieFest

Roles for Women are proud to announce the 1st Annual TRIXXXIEFEST!

In collaboration with the Black Bag Media Collective we will be presenting TrixxxieFest in St John's from June 12 - 15, 2014. Shows will take place in these fine establishments - The Ship, Distortion, Scanlan's Lounge, The BBMC Studio and other secret locations.

TrixxxieFest is a multi-media, play hard weekend highlighting good music and laughter - here are some of the artists who will be performing - Uneeda, Category VI, DT and the Dinosaurs, The Sauce, Suzanne Power, Trixxxie, Sam Burke, Liz Solo, Colleen Power, Danielle Trouble, Jenny Naish, and more TBA soon. There will be Dancers, Video Screenings, and a Stand-Up Comedy Night hosted by comedienne extraordinaire - Amanda Batten.

Stay tuned for schedules and announcements.

Two of the acts featured in the upcoming TrixxxieFest have just released new videos. Uneeda released an awesome video for their song Momentum - check it out here:


Not only that - Category VI also just released an amazing new video for their song Reborn, here it be:

Roles 4 Women are so excited to be presenting such an incredible line-up of artists and stoked to be debuting Trixxxie - a group that Tallulah, Marilyn and Scarlet have been working on all winter. Thanks to the BBMC for the donated workspace and technical support.

Happy World Theatre Day From Roles 4 Women

Happy World Theatre Day to all of our colleagues at home and around the globe. Love Liz and Jenny, R4WTC.

Here is the International Theatre Institute's 2014 World Thetare Day Message - this year by South African playwright, designer, director, and installation maker, Brett Baily:

"Wherever there is human society, the irrepressible Spirit of Performance manifests.

Under trees in tiny villages, and on high tech stages in global metropolis; in school halls and in fields and in temples; in slums, in urban plazas, community centres and inner-city basements, people are drawn together to commune in the ephemeral theatrical worlds that we create to express our human complexity, our diversity, our vulnerability, in living flesh, and breath, and voice.

We gather to weep and to remember; to laugh and to contemplate; to learn and to affirm and to imagine. To wonder at technical dexterity, and to incarnate gods. To catch our collective breath at our capacity for beauty and compassion and monstrosity. We come to be energized, and to be empowered. To celebrate the wealth of our various cultures, and to dissolve the boundaries that divide us.

Wherever there is human society, the irrepressible Spirit of Performance manifests. Born of community, it wears the masks and the costumes of our varied traditions. It harnesses our languages and rhythms and gestures, and clears a space in our midst.

And we, the artists that work with this ancient spirit, feel compelled to channel it through our hearts, our ideas and our bodies to reveal our realities in all their mundanity and glittering mystery.

But, in this era in which so many millions are struggling to survive, are suffering under oppressive regimes and predatory capitalism, are fleeing conflict and hardship; in which our privacy is invaded by secret services and our words are censored by intrusive governments; in which forests are being annihilated, species exterminated, and oceans poisoned: what do we feel compelled to reveal?

In this world of unequal power, in which various hegemonic orders try to convince us that one nation, one race, one gender, one sexual preference, one religion, one ideology, one cultural framework is superior to all others, is it really defensible to insist that the arts should be unshackled from social agendas?

Are we, the artists of arenas and stages, conforming to the sanitized demands of the market, or seizing the power that we have: to clear a space in the hearts and minds of society, to gather people around us, to inspire, enchant and inform, and to create a world of hope and open-hearted collaboration?"

Image of Janis Spence and Mercedes Barry (from R4W's Memory Sphere Exhibit, Odyssey Simulator) by Kent Barrett

Three Marlenes

In Development
Three Marlenes

by Jane Dingle, Mary Lewis and Liz Solo

“I am not a myth.” 
- Marlene Dietrich

Three Marlenes is a new three-woman theatre piece that explores the concept of identity as it is shaped through the lens of media.

Marlene Dietrich is viewed as an icon of feminine power, a gorgeous and intelligent liberated woman in charge of her own destiny. How much of Marlene's image was a reflection of her identity and how much was a construction of the Hollywood star makers? The identity that Marlene projected did not represent the condition of the average woman of her time and, some would argue, belied the woman behind the image. Yet her iconic persona has given generations of people an intriguing heroine, a strong female role model, an image to aspire to. How is this valuable, ultimately, to our society, our cultural identity?

In the digital age identity has taken on a whole new dimension. Millions of individuals have a media presence - fashioning their public identities, either by accident or design, whenever they post to their profiles or upload images and video to their Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, Link'din etc. The pursuit of fifteen minutes of fame is a widespread passion. These identities we project via social media reflect how we want to be perceived – but are these mediated identities true reflections of ourselves? How do we process these identities, what does it mean, is this valuable?

Three ordinary women release their “inner Marlenes” in this new play. Three Marlenes incorporates live interaction with media sequences as it examines feminine power, gender roles, stardom and scandal through the social media personas of three very different women. Three Marlenes explores how these women relate to, perceive and customize icons of feminine power. 

InWorld Images

InWorld - by Liz Solo, Directed by Charles Tomlinson - was produced last Fall by Roles 4 Women Theatre Company at the LSPU Hall Second Space. InWorld is the story of a gamer searching for her virtual lover, lost in a real life war zone.

Here are a few images from the closing night performance.

Lucy enters te Vortex Pinnacle:
                       
Lucy attains Level 85!

Wow!

Lucy watches Hal outside via security surveillance monitor. (Hal is played by Charles Tomlinson)

Lucy searches the web for Marwa.

Lucy enters her virtual garden.

After the closing performance Liz Solo gave an artist's talk demonstrating the technologies she worked with during the creation of InWorld as well as the inspiration behind the work. Avatars joined the conversation from the Internet both via a live stream and from the virtual world of Second Life.

InWorld was made possible thanks to support from the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council, The Canada Council for the Arts, Media Arts Section and the Black Bag Media Collective.

Naish Takes the WTD Trophy

Jenny Naish of Roles 4 Women Theatre Company takes home the trophy at the World Theatre Day celebrations at the LSPU Hall.

Happy World Theatre Day! As part of the day's festivities Jenny Naish participated in the theatre trivia showdown hosted by Resource Centre for the Arts at the LSPU Hall. Theatre Companies around the province sent in trivia questions and four teams of two competed in the event, Jenny was paired with Brian Marler and the two won in a very close race.

Created by UNESCO in 1961, World Theatre Day is celebrated around the world on March 27th. It is also the day that Roles 4 Women Theatre Company was formed in 2005. So happy birthday to us! Each year a prominent figure is asked to deliver a message for World Theatre Day. This year's message is from actor John Malkovich:

I'm honored to have been asked by the International Theatre Institute ITI at UNESCO to give this greeting commemorating the 50th anniversary of World Theatre Day. I will address my brief remarks to my fellow theatre workers, peers and comrades.

May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace. May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do. May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life's work. And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, "how do we live?" Godspeed.
- John Malkovich