Acting Up Stage Company

About the Show

A co-production with Factory Theatre

• Jessie Award (2012): Outstanding Original Script
• Jessie Award (2012): Outstanding Original Composition

Having sold-out its extended run at Vancouver’s PuSh Festival in Jan 2012, this original musical by Veda Hille & Bill Richardson sets actual Craigslist postings to music in a 90 minute song-cycle. Both hilarious and surprisingly poignant, Do You Want What I Have Got? explores contemporary humanity through the lens of Craigslist—an online classified site with over 50 million ads posted each month.

Join us after the performance on February 13th for a very special Craigslist Cabaret created in partnership with Jennifer Walls and her SINGular Sensation band. Click here for the full lineup.   

Company

• by Veda Hille and  Bill Richardson
• directed by Amiel Gladstone
  musical direction by Veda Hille choreographed by Monica Dottor
  
• featuring Dmitry Chepovetsky, Bree Greig, Daren A. Herbert, Veda Hille, Selina Martin, Barry Mirochnick
• set and costume design Robin Fisher lighting design Kimberly Purtell
  stage manager Dustyn Wales

Dmitry Chepovetsky, Performer

Select theatre credits include: Midsummer Night’s Dream (Canadian Stage); Craigslist Cantata: Do You Want What I Have Got? (Arts Club); This (Vancouver Playhouse/ Jessie Nomination); Forests, The Catering Queen, Remnants (Tarragon/Fringe); Room to Panic (Loco7/LaMama ETC, NY); Creon (Theatreworks); Top Gun: The Musical! (NYMF/Factory/Dora Nomination); Danish Play (Nightwood); Zadie’s Shoes (ATP); Unidentified Human Remains (Van Fringe); Jacques Brel is Alive and Well … (PTC); Orphan Muses (Touchstone) and Picasso at the Lapin Agile (MTC/NAC). Select Film/TV: Alphas, The Listener, Caprica, Psyche, Murdoch Mysteries (Gemini Nomination), The Baby Formula, and ReGenesis (Gemini Nominations).  His original work with Liesl Lafferty include: Blind Submission, FETCH! and Bloodline (Jessie Nomination – New Play). 

Monica Dottor, Choreographer

Monica Dottor is an actor & choreographer, & co-Artistic Director of Company Blonde Dance Projects (www.companyblonde.com). Most recently, choreographed and acted in The Penelopiad (Nightwood Theatre -Dora Award – Ensemble Performance & Dora Nomination – Choreography), & PETRICHOR (Kitchenband/Summerworks), Theatre (acting): The Trolley Car (Summerworks),The Middle Place (Canadian Stage/Belfry/GCTC) Featuring Loretta (Factory), The Red Queen Effect (NextStage), SCRATCH (Factory-Dora Nomination – Performance), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (CanadianStage), The Overcoat (CanadianStage/San Francisco Critics’ Circle Award, Dora Nomination Ensemble Performance), Chekhov’s Heartache & Chekhov’s Shorts (Smith-Gilmour),Film/TV:The lead in The Shape of Rex (FactoriaFilms), Picture Day (CliquePictures), Rookie Blue (Global/ABC), The Listener (Shaftsbury) Choreography:  MALARIA LULLABY (SummerWorks),  CRASH (Theatre Passe Muraille), The Middle Place (CanadianStage/Passe Muraille/Belfry/GCTC),2010 Dora Mavor Moore Awards,The Red Queen Effect (Next Stage),The Russian Play (Factory-Dora Nomination Choreography), THE GOD THAT COMES: HAWKSLEY WORKMAN, & Suzie McNeil’s CD release show.

Robin Fisher, Set & Costume Design

For Factory:  costumes for The Rez Sisters and My Granny the Goldfish. For Acting Up stage: set design for A Man of No Importance. Select Designs include set and costumes for: The Black Bonspiel of Wullie MacCrimmon (Globe Theatre); A Year with Frog and Toad and Cinderella (Young People’s Theatre), Hand of Bridge/Telephone (Canadian Opera Company), The Little Prince (The Grand Theatre), The Tempest (The Canadian Stage Company), The Ends of the Earth (The Belfry Theatre), I,Claudia (Theatre & Co./Segal Centre), The Syringa Tree and Circle, Mirror Transformation (Great Canadian Theatre Company).  Costumes: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat (Western Canada Theatre). Et Cetera: Robin is the recipient of a Dora Mavor Moore award for best costumes for 36 Views (Actors Repertory Company). Upcoming:  Robin will be designing the set and costumes for Fiddler on the Roof (Western Canada Theatre).

Amiel Gladstone, Director

Amiel Gladstone is a West Coast based writer and director. As a director, his productions have been both site specific in unusual venues, and in traditional theatres. He has written and directed for a variety of companies, including the Belfry, Caravan Farm Theatre, the Guild and Ramshackle in Whitehorse, SummerWorks, Theatre Replacement,  and Theatre SKAM.  Most recently, the world premiere of Do you want what I have got? for Arts Club / PuSh Festival,  world premiere of 100% Vancouver for PuSh Festival / Theatre Replacement, Canadian premiere of This at the Vancouver Playhouse, Tape for Alley Theatre, Lucia di Lammermoor for Vancouver Opera, world premiere of Extraction with Theatre Conspiracy, and soon Tosca at Pacific Opera Victoria.

Bree Greig, Performer

Bree is 100% thrilled to be not only visiting Toronto for the first time, but to be making her Toronto theatrical debut!  Having grown up in eastern Pennsylvania, but currently residing in Vancouver she is excited to explore eastern Canada!  Recent credits include: A Craigslist Cantata (Arts Club Theatre), The Wizard of Oz and The Sound of Music (both Footlight Theatre Company), The Fantasticks (Vancouver Playhouse), and Bat Boy The Musical (Patrick Street Productions).  Bree is a graduate of Berklee College of Music and in addition to singing and acting teaches yoga in Vancouver.  

Daren A. Herbert, Performer

Born in Bermuda, Daren has worked, studied, and taught on stages, sets and studios in the US, Canada, South Korea, the UK, and Japan. He won a Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award and an NAACP Theatre Award nomination for his work in The Wild Party, and he’s a two time Dora Mavor Moore Award nominee for performances in The Toxic Avenger and Parade. Vancouver stage appearances include Glengarry Glen Ross, Lobby Hero, Intimate Apparel, The Music Man, the Jessie Award winning production of The Light in the Piazza and Clybourne Park. On-screen appearances include Dreamgirls, 2012, Human Target, Breakout Kings, Fringe,This Means War and a recurring role on the CW’s Cult. 

Veda Hille, Composer, Musical Director, Performer

Veda Hille has been writing songs, making records, and playing shows all over since 1992.  She has released 14 albums, the latest being Peter Panties.  Collaborations with other artists have resulted in video and music performances, electro acoustic experiments, rock songs for children, eccentric musicals, and an opera about pine trees.  Veda is happy to be spending time in Toronto again, even in the winter.

Selina Martin, Performer

Selina Martin is a Toronto-based theatre artist and musician. As an actor she performed in the premiere of Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata, for the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver. She has worked multiple times with Crow’s Theatre (Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Dali, Godzilla), One Yellow Rabbit Theatre (Five Hole: Tales of Hockey Erotica), Shadowland Theatre, and Bald Ego Theatre, with whom she co-created 12 original plays in 5 years. Selina is also the author of three critically acclaimed CD’s. Her most recent, Disaster Fantasies, has received glowing praise from across the country, and has been variously described by music writers as “smart”, “vivid”, “brave”, “masterful”, “reckless”, “must-hear”, and “without question the most underrated Canadian album of the year”. www.selinamartin.com

Barry Mirochnick, Musician

Barry Mirochnick is a Vancouver-based drummer/multi-instrumentalist originally from Winnipeg. He performed in Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata, at Vancouver’s PuSh Festival in 2009 and at Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre in 2012. As a drummer, Barry has recently toured, recorded, and/or performed live with Neko Case, Veda Hille, Great Aunt Ida, Jakob Dylan, Whitehorse, Keri Mctighe, and Paul Pigat.  

Kimberly Purtell, Lighting Design

Kimberly is a Toronto based lighting designer for theatre, opera and dance. Kimberly’s designs have been critically acclaimed both on the national and international stage having been seen across Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Prague, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia and Mongolia. She has received 16 Dora Award nominations in the category for outstanding lighting design, winning three times and has received one nomination in the category of oustanding set design. She is also a recipient of the Pauline McGibbon Award and a Harold Award. Previously for Acting Up Stage, Kimberly has designed Parade and Caroline, or Change. Across Canada she has designed for companies including Mirvish Productions, Stratford Shakepeare Festival, Canadian Stage Company, CitadelTheatre, Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver Playhouse, Theatre Calgary, Soulpepper, National Arts Centre, Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Dancemakers, Harbourfront World Stage, Harbourfront Dance Works, Tarragon Theatre, Factory Theatre, Theatre Passe Muraille, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Luminato Festival, Necessary Angel, Tapestry New Opera, Opera Hamilton, da da kamera, Nightwood Theatre, Theatre Smith-Gilmour, Queen of Puddings, The Banff Centre, Red Sky Performance, Studio 180, Urban Vessel, and many others. Her work has also been seen at both the Beijing and Vancouver Cultural Olympiads.

Bill Richardson, Playwright

Bill Richardson is working out what little remains of his mid-life crisis in what little remains of the Arlington Hotel in what little remains of Holmfield, Manitoba, population 22, more if you count the dogs.

Dustyn Wales, Stage Manager

For Acting Up Stage: The Light in the Piazza. Selected Credits: Lost in Yonkers (HGJTC), The Hobbit (MTYP), i Think i Can (YPT/NAC), The Great Mountain (YPT/RedSky), Billy Bishop Goes to War, Faith Healer, Glengarry Glen Ross, Travesties, The Guardsman, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Soulpepper), Iolanthe (TOT), Byologyc (Mission Business), Fairytale Ending: The Musical (Best of Fringe/Next stage), Robin Hood, Great American Trailer Park Musical, King Lear (Hart House Theatre). Upcoming: Blue Planet (YPT)

Reviews

A hilarious, quirky, touching and tuneful show… This could be Canadian musical theatre’s next killer app.

- J. Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail

Offbeat and entertaining, with a refreshingly high sophistication in the writing… What you get are a series of actual Craigslist postings which Hille has set to some delightfully tuneful music. 

- Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star

Monica Dottor’s choreography is lively and imaginative with inspired directorial touches by Amiel Gladstone… The ensemble is across-the-board terrific.

- Glenn Sumi, NOW Magazine

A whimsical, wistful portrait of desire in the internet age.

- Martin Morrow, The Grid

One of the most imaginative Canadian musicals to come along in decades!

- Christopher Hoile, Stage Door

Side-splittingly funny… The cast as a whole are outstanding. 

- Drew Rowsome, FAB Magazine

Another great production from Acting Up Stage Company. 

- Sam Mooney, Mooney on Theatre

Fast paced, beautifully staged… this musical has something for everyone.

- Lauren Gillett, Theatromania

A blissful musical destination to observe all things beguiling and bizarre… Delightfully silly and enourmously entertaining. 

- Steven Berketo, Torontostage.com

Let your imagination run rampant!

- Lynn Slotkin, The Slotkin Letter

This show is intoxicating, wildly creative, wonderfully witty and just downright fun. 

- Nicole Fairbairn, The Scene in Toronto

 An eccentric hit that knows how to give a good time while having one itself. 

- Keith Garebian, Stage and Page

Photos

Photography by Joanna Akyol

Tickets

Venue

Factory Studio Theatre

Located at 125 Bathurst St Factory Theatre is actually two buildings, both of which have heritage designation. The original “house” portion was built in 1869 by Irish immigrant John Mulvey. The house was built in the Queen Anne Gothic style and has original and distinct bargeboard under the asymmetrical rooftops (look for the shamrock design in one of them). The extension of the building facing Adelaide Street that houses the theatres was built in 1910 by St. Mary’s Catholic Parish a year after they purchased the building from the Mulvey family. Many of the original features, such as the proscenium arch, balcony in the Mainspace and the bowling alley floor in the Studio Theatre, still exist today.

Interact

Interact With Us

This season we’re focusing on continuing the conversation outside the performance with some exciting activities and opportunities for our audiences. These include:

Articles

Kelly Cameron interviews the cast of A Craigslist Cantata and director Amiel Gladstone. For a hearty laugh, check out Dmitry Chepovetsky’s Craigslist ad for the show at the end of the article. 

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Gordon Bowness and Bill Richardson discuss the existential undercurrents and racy overtones of A Craigslist Cantata

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Brad Wheeler chats human connection with Veda Hille in The Globe and Mail.

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Richard Ouzounian sits down with A Craigslist Cantata co-creator Bill Richardson to talk cat hats and nighttime guardians in The Toronto Star.

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Justin Haley gives you the scoop on what to expect at A Craigslist Cantata

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Art and Culture Maven previews the upcoming Do You Want What I Have Got? A Craigslist Cantata

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