Vancity Culture Lab, at The Cultch, 1985 Venables Street, Vancouver,  Admission to the reading is FREE, but seating is limited; please phone 604. 251.1363 to reserve a seat.

English playwright Howard Barker celebrates his 21 years of work with the Wrestling School with 21 for 21 – a one-day international festival of his plays.  On October 21st, companies across the globe, ranging from amateur and student groups to major professional companies, will present readings or performances of Barker's plays.  The School for the Contemporary Arts at Simon Fraser University will contribute to the celebration with a reading of Gertrude (The Cry) – an adaptation of Hamlet in which Barker explores Gertrude's passionate eroticism, the pain of which binds her to Claudius with fearful consequences.  The reading, presented by SFU Contemporary Arts students (Marc Arboleda, Milton Lim, Victoria Lyon, Allison MacDonald, Anne-Sophie Wolnough, Conor Wylie) and faculty (Steven Hill, DD Kugler), will be held in the Vancity Culture Lab, at The Cultch, 1985 Venables Street, Vancouver, 8:00pm, Wednesday, October 21st.  Admission to the reading is FREE, but seating is limited; please phone 604. 251.1363 to reserve a seat.

This one-night staged-reading by SFU Contemporary Arts for the Barker Festival will be in conjunction with a theatre-history course looking at  Shakespeare (Hamlet, specifically) & Contemporary Adaptations.
The Theatre program at SFU Contemporary Arts, with streams in Performance or Production/Design, produces broadly educated theatre artists with a foundation in theory and skills that will enable them to make their own theatre.  Performance students take courses in acting, movement, voice, clowning, playmaking, directing, dramatic literature, and dramaturgy.  Production/Design students share core courses with performance students, and then concentrate on technical theatre – lighting design, stage design, and stage/production management.  Though many of our students work in established companies, the primary emphasis is on the development of independent artists who can generate original work and initiate their own projects.  SFU Contemporary Arts, an interdisciplinary department, provides an exceptional opportunity for theatre students to study art forms outside their major, and graduates are well prepared to collaborate with artists in music, dance, film, and visual art – a unique advantage as they enter their professional lives.