An Invitation from Ron Reed

Artistic Director

"All sorrows can be borne if you tell a story about them." - Isak Dinesen

Pacific Theatre's 23rd season isn't all about sorrows - not nearly! - but it is all about stories, and the way we use them to help make sense of the chaos and comedy of our lives.

We're all in the business of making story, not just writers and actors and directors but every one of us, every day of our lives. Just as a playwright gathers the bits and pieces of human experience, finds the events and themes and inter-connections, the causes and effects and what they all signify, what they reveal about character or the world or something even bigger or deeper than that, so too we all sift through the seemingly random happenings of our lives to find the thread, the through-line, the story and what it signifies.

This year on our stage we find characters looking for those threads, and trying to weave them into some sort of tapestry. People like us who find themselves caught up in larger stories, striving to make sense of their own narratives as they play out in the swirl of grand events. And sometimes, perhaps, they help us make just a bit more sense of our own.

Childhood friends, separated by the Holocaust, relate the experiences that have driven them so far apart. A ragtag troupe of performers grab a wildly incongruous armload of tales and throw them together to tell yet another story, one that makes bizarrely theatrical sense of their own journeys. A young actress explores the life story of her grand-mother, who lived by embodying stories. A married couple discovers that actual experience doesn't necessarily unfold like the narrative they've written for their lives. And we discover that the epic journey of a Polish Canadian in the 20th Century bears striking similarities to another more ancient story.

I hope you'll join us this season as we watch some of those deeply mythic, universal stories played out in the particularities of unique, individual lives. And don't be surprised if you see something of your own story up there on our stage - to laugh about, or cry over, or maybe even to celebrate.

Ron Reed,

Artistic Director