Kat Sandler’s explosive, new play Bang Bang comes to The Belfry Theatre after a critically acclaimed international debut at Toronto’s Factory Theatre last year.
The Belfry production, running Oct. 29 to Nov. 24, is directed by Kelly Thornton, who recently took the position of artistic director at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre (RMTC) in Winnipeg after 18 years leading Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre. Thornton’s long tenure at Nightwood has been lauded for her consistent, passionate advocacy of women in theatre.
Bang Bang is a fast-paced comedy propelled by timely themes of racial profiling, police violence, voice appropriation and white male privilege. Sandler’s smart, always-humane writing frames these issues with unexpected, fresh perspectives.
In Bang Bang, a white playwright (Tom Keenan) uses a police shooting of an unarmed, young black man by a black police officer as inspiration for a hit play. The play inspires a Hollywood movie script without the officer’s knowledge, and the playwright visits the officer and his mother to introduce the movie’s lead, a former child star.
Belfry artistic director Michael Shamata chose this co-production with the RMTC in part for its insights into the “sometimes incomprehensible world of the theatre.” The bristling comedy also offers Belfry audiences a litany of contemporary life’s moral complexities mixed with the soulful warmth of familial love.
Visit belfry.bc.ca/bang-bang or call 250-385-6815 for tickets and more information.
– Joseph Blake
editor@mondaymag.com
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