They’ve played time-traveling anarchists and apocalypse survivors on TV, and now an enterprising group of Vancouver-based screen actors is heading to Maine – well, Almost, Maine, John Cariani’s 2004 play exploring love and loss.
The inaugural theatre production from Vancouver’s ARTery Collective features familiar faces from locally produced genre television – including Continuum, Supernatural, Arrow, The X-Files, and Van Helsing – and runs April 15-22 at the Vancity Culture Lab.
The title of the play refers to a fictional rural town in Maine called Almost, which has that absurd name “because the town never got around to getting a name,” says Luvia Petersen, co-artistic director of ARTery Collective. Petersen was nominated for a Canadian Screen Award for her role as future terrorist Jasmine Garza in locally shot time-travel procedural, Continuum, which ended its four-season run in 2015.
Almost, Maine is comprised of eight vignettes, each one taking place at 9pm on a midwinter night in the titular town. From the press release: “While the northern lights hover in the sky above, Almost’s residents find themselves falling in and out of love in the strangest ways. Knees are bruised. Hearts are broken. Love is lost, found, and confounded. And life for the people of Almost, Maine will never be the same.”
Almost, Maine recently surpassed A Midsummer Night’s Dream as the most produced play in American high schools because “you can have a cast of 19 actors if you so choose,” says Petersen. ARTery Collective is doing the play with nine.
The production and collective grew out of Petersen’s longing to return to the stage after dedicating herself to the film and television industry for five years. “I loved my experience when I worked in theatre last time, and I wanted to take that on again, and feel that rush, and try something different and really, in a corny way, ignite my love for telling stories,” says Petersen.
Petersen scoured plays online and at the library until she came across Cariani’s 2004 work. “The very first scene I read, I looked up from it and said to my wife, ‘Oh, my god, I’ve found the play I want to do,’” recalls Petersen. “It spoke to me in the first scene. I hadn’t even read the whole play yet, and already I knew that I was in love.”
Part of what drew Petersen to Almost, Maine was its accessibility. “It’s seemingly simple, but it’s poetic in its simplicity, and to tackle the theme of love – it’s not like it’s the first time it’s been done, but Cariani does it in such a beautiful, honest, grounded way with these rural people that really resonated with me.”
Almost, Maine reunites Petersen with Omari Newton, who portrayed Lucas Ingram on Continuum and brings a wealth of theatre-making experience to his role as ARTery Collective’s co-artistic director. He was nominated for a Quebec theatre award for his work in a Montreal production of Joe Penhall’s Blue/Orange, and his 2014 play Sal Capone: The Lamentable Tragedy is part of the National Arts Centre’s 2017-2018 season.
The cast includes Petersen, Alison Araya, Alison Wandzura, Broadus Mattison, Craig March, Edwin Perez, Nancy Kerr, Nelson Leis, Sean Tyson, and Tony Giroux; Petersen, Leis, and Wandzura are all directing, as are Newton and Vanessa Walsh.
Almost, Maine is the collective’s first project, but likely not its last – and its next creative offering might not even be a play at all. “Originally we were going to be ARTery Theatre Collective, but then we thought, ‘Let’s not put the word theatre in there, let’s not limit ourselves,’” says Petersen. “So I think what you’ll see from ARTery Collective in the future is whatever we feel like taking on. That could be web series. That could include short films. We’re not going to limit ourselves. We’re a group of professionals bonded together by the desire to tell stories.”
Almost, Maine runs April 15-22 at Vancity Culture Lab. For tickets, visit https://thecultch.com/events/almost-maine/.
