Our website is filling with with more and more features this summer; here are short videos from two of last season's sold-out shows - No Exit and The Flannigan Affair, both staged at the Centre for Digital Media's Hangar.

Appearing in No Exit: Lucia Frangione as Estelle, Laara Sadiq as Inez, Andy Thompson as Cradeau, and Jonathon Young as the Valet.

Appearing in The Flannigan Affair: Megan Gardiner, Julia Mackey, Nathan Medd, Michael Scholar, Jr, Todd Thomson, and Jonathon Young.

Next season we'll be recording and adapting some of our complete works for high quality web broadcast, reaching beyond geography and ticket prices, and extending the life of our plays through online distribution.  One first step: the other day we bought our first HD camera.

In May, Lexa Naicu at Skewed Magazine profiled the company and our latest tour with a sweet photo spread.  Check out pages 34-39. 

Globe and Mail theatre critic J. Kelly Nestruck visited Studies in Motion in Montreal during Festival Transameriques in May, and filed this thoughtful report on the event.   Our Quebec debut was fantastic, and after the opening night, the festival hosted us for a big dinner feast. 

All told, we performed Studies fifty times in four cities over three months across western Canada - by far our largest tour yet and an extraordinary accomplishment for such a small organization.  Our touring company of twenty British Columbians have made us so proud, with their talent, spirit, patience, and meticulous attention to detail.  It couldn't have been done without the involvement of our presenting partners: the Playhouse Theatre Company, the Yukon Arts Centre, Alberta Theatre Projects, and FTA; or without our funding partners: the Canada Council for the Arts, the BC Arts Council, the City of Vancouver, UBC, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), the Melusine Foundation, and all our individual donors, who dug deep even as the economy turned to mush in November. Dozens of you out there have also done big and small favours in the past while to help get Studies in Motion on its feet, and in case we haven't said it lately, thank you.

Artistic Director Jonathon Young returned from the Studies in Motion tour to join Tear the Curtain! co-writer Kevin Kerr at the Banff Centre Playwrights Colony in early June.  There they pushed through questions of how much of their screenplay will be filmed as opposed to staged, and how the two forms will interact. Back in Vancouver, Jonathon spent several days on set in his recurring role as a Vampire Nikola Tesla (!) in the hit sci-fi TV series, Sanctuary. Kevin returned to Edmonton, where he is in the second year of his post as Lee Playwright in Residence at the University of Alberta.  There he is working on the second of his two projects for next year's Cultural Olympiad: Kevin serves as playwright for Spine, an avatar-and-human story set to open the new Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre at Woodward's, alongside Robert Lepage's The Blue Dragon.

After our stint at Festival Transameriques with Studies in Motion, Artistic Producer Kim Collier headed to Toronto and Canstage's Festival of Ideas and Creation, where she taught a sold-out, weeklong masterclass in stage directing and creation-based theatre practice.  Kim's interest in "big theatre" then led her on to Stratford to catch some work by director Des McAnuff, and back to Toronto for Luminato, a festival that has very quickly grown to be among the country's largest annual arts events.  Now back in Vancouver, Kim is working around the clock preparing for the August video shoot of scenes for Tear the Curtain!

Company Manager Jennifer Swan staged managed Julia Mackey's Jake's Gift at Ottawa's Magnetic North Theatre Festival in June, and moderated a panel on touring production management during the festival's industry conference.  Last week Jen shifted over to Victoria for next season, where she has already begun as the assistant general manager at the Belfry Theatre.  She will continue to manage our company's books, with a weekly assist from Canada Post.  Managing Producer Nathan Medd 'staycationed' this summer, as in stayed at the office: between our tours and the planning for our new production facility (details below), Electric Company's operations doubled last year!  In June Nathan attended the Vancouver Arts Summit (scroll down the link for coverage) along with Electric Company board member Eileen Gillette.  They participated in vigorous discussions on cultural infrastructure in Vancouver, and how social media is changing the game for promoting and cultivating our artwork. 

Doesn't look like that champagne cork is coming back down.. 

Electric Company joined our friends at Boca del Lupo, Rumble Productions, and Neworld Theatre for an impromptu barbecue on Canada Day, the day we happened to get the keys to our new home at 1422 William Street near Commercial Drive.  The doors to this 5000 sq ft warehouse are far from open however: we have several months of renovations ahead of us before we can officially move into the space, which we hope to do early this fall.