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Produced by Monster Theatre
A fast-paced action adventure comedy!
75 minutes | Ages 11+
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What if Juliet doesn’t kill herself?
Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is an award-winning, fast-paced, action-adventure comedy that follows Juliet on the literary adventure of a lifetime!
Stuck in an endless loop of turning a dagger on herself, Juliet (played by Lili Beaudoin) tears herself from the fabric of her tragedy in search of a reason for her untimely demise. On the way, Juliet recruits a team of the Bard’s most famous female characters (all played by Jessie Award-winner Carly Pokoradi) to find out why they’ve been forced to die! Together, they embark on an uproarious adventure through the canon, pursued by Shakespeare himself (played by Ryan Gladstone). Can they alter their fate, or are they doomed to play out the same tragic tales for the rest of eternity?
Filmed in February 2024 at The Cultch’s Historic Theatre on Musqueam, Squamish and Tseil-Waututh territory/Vancouver.
It is an honour and a thrill that Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is part of The Cultch’s 50th Anniversary Season! This feels like a full circle moment. Back in 2019, The Cultch provided Monster Theatre with a residency to rehearse Juliet before it’s first ever tour and now, 4 years later, we are back. And, we have a brand new set and sound design.
We premiered this show in a crowded, sweaty bar called The King’s Head in Winnipeg and we’d like to think we’ve maintained the same cacophonous energy.
We’d like to highlight actor Carly Pokoradi, who has been with the show from the beginning and took on the gargantuan task of originating the roles you will see her play tonight…dozens of roles. Her humour and insights were instrumental in the creation of this work.
We encourage you to shake off the woes of your day and have a raucous good time with us.
Let’s go on a journey.
—Pippa and Ryan
This is such, such, such a funny show, and as a theatre nerd from way back, it’s satisfying to see Shakespeare get toyed with in this whip-smart production. We wanted to make sure the filmed version was centered around the live experience, as so much of the joy comes from watching and listening to the audience reacting to all the incredible work done by the cast. We still managed to sneak in some moments that will be unique for an online audience, but for the most part, our goal was making sure that watching at home was just as vibrant and fun as being there on opening night.
– Cameron Anderson, The Cultch Digital Content Director
“Juliet: A Revenge Comedy hits the sweet spot between witty fun and deeper insights on Shakespeare”—Angie Rico, Stir
“Within its feminist framing, this script is mostly into having a very, very good time with absurdity…But there’s a whole lot in this show that’s hilarious simply because it’s so audacious and unexpected.”—Colin Thomas, Fresh Sheet
“Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is a gloriously fast-paced romp”— Christine Pilgrim, Vancouver Presents
“you don’t need to be a Shakespeare scholar to enjoy the jokes and the mayhem…This is a laugh-out-loud comedy”—Elizabeth Paterson, reviewVancouver
Production Support by McGrane-Pearson Endowment Fund
As Vancouver’s most diverse and innovative arts and cultural hub, The Cultch has created meaningful, impactful connections across communities for nearly 50 years.
As a presenting theatre, we curate unique, intimate, and diverse performances from Vancouver, Canada, and across the globe — offering dynamic contemporary programming in theatre, dance, music, circus, and visual arts.
We host vibrant gatherings and lively conversations around the issues, topics, and ideas that are presented in our shows.
We remove barriers to access by providing ASL Interpretation performances and free tickets to those for whom cost is prohibitive.
We are connectors, facilitators, culture changers, and we are committed to providing the highest level of service and care we can offer.
We activate this work in our three theatres—the Historic, the Vancity Culture Lab, and the York—a gallery, and various multi-use spaces in the heart of East Vancouver, as well as our Cultch Online digital presentations that reach international audiences.
We welcome everyone who loves live performance into our spaces and invite them to make The Cultch their home.
The Cultch acknowledges that it is on unceded territories belonging to the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
Monster Theatre was founded in 2000. Our first play was Fairy Tale: A Choose Your Own Adventure Play, an improvised street theatre show that toured the Winnipeg, Saskatoon, Edmonton and Victoria Fringe Festivals. Our second play The Canada Show: The Complete History of Canada in One toured across the country numerous times winning countless awards. We have developed over 40 original productions for adult and young audiences always with our signature irreverent twist on history and mythology. Plays for young audiences include The Big Rock Show: The Complete History of the World, Mini Masterpieces, The Little Prince, Shakespeare’s Dream, We Now Know: The Complete History of Science and Crisis on Planet Z! Plays for adults include Juliet: A Revenge Comedy, War and Peace, Who Killed Gertrude Crump?, Til Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, No Tweed Too Tight, Assassinating Thomson, Hockey Night at the Puck and Pickle, The Seven Lives of Louis Riel, The Shakespeare Show and many, many more. Monster Theatre has become one of Canada’s premiere independent touring theatre companies.
Juliet: A Revenge Comedy is currently seeking opportunities to tour the in-person and/or digital performance. Please contact Ryan at Monster Theatre
We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts.
Pippa Mackie is an award-winning actor, playwright, and producer. Her work has been performed on stages and at festivals across North America. Most notable credits include The Progressive Polygamists co-written/performed with Emmelia Gordon, which toured across Canada for many years including the Just For Laughs Festival and the Firehall Arts Centre and won Vancouver and Edmonton’s Pick of The Fringe.
Her one-act play Starman, which was originally commissioned and produced as part of Upintheair Theatre’s The Array, was adapted into an audio drama as part of Sound the Alarm Theatre’s podcast series in 2021 and received 3 Berlin Film Haus nominations including Best Scriptwriting and Best Podcast. She is also the co-writer of a mockumentary comedy podcast titled Philippa Po: Changing Minds with Ryan Gladstone produced by Sound the Alarm Theatre.
Her most recent play Hurricane Mona was co-produced by Touchstone Theatre and Ruby Slippers Theatre and received its World Premiere production in November 2023. Hurricane Mona was created as part of the Arts Club Theatre’s Emerging Playwrights Unit, was awarded Touchstone Theatre’s David King Prize for Comedy in 2022 and Pippa was a participant of the 2023 Banff Playwrights Unit.
Pippa is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada and is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.
Ryan currently lives and works in Vancouver as an actor, producer, director, playwright and improvisor. Ryan holds an MFA in Directing and a BFA in Acting, he also spent ten years studying Improvisation Loose Moose Theatre under Keith Johnstone. Ryan is the founder and Artistic Director of Monster Theatre where he has co-created over 40 original plays. Selected writing/directing credits include: Til Death: The Six Wives of Henry VIII, Who Killed Gertrude Crump?, The Shakespeare Show, and The Canada Show (Monster Theatre). Selected directing credits include: Hell of a Girl (revolver Festival), Hunter Gatherers (Staircase Theatre), Ubu Roi (UBC). Ryan has six one-person plays including War and Peace, No Tweed Too Tight, Every Story Ever Told, The Seven Lives of Louis Riel, Napoleon’s Secret Diary and Confessions of a Class Clown.
Based out of Vancouver, Lili is an actor, Improvisor and voice artist. Some of her notable theatre credits include Marie in The Nutcracker at Caravan Farm Theatre, Mimi/scenographer in Blind Date, Brigid Blake in The Humans at Theatre Calgary, Gracie in Gracie at ATP & Belfry and Miranda in The Tempest at Bard on the Beach. Elsewhere Lili’s voice can be heard in several animated shows such as Beat Bugs, Littlest Pet Shop, Rainbow Ruby, Max Steel and My Little Pony. If you’d like to see her do some improv you can catch Lili most weekends at Tightrope Impro Theatre strutting her stuff on stage and pretending she knows what she’s talking about. Lili is a graduate of Studio 58 and the honoured recipient of the Anthony Holland Scholarship for Outstanding Ability and Dedication as well as a Betty Mitchell award for Outstanding Performance by a lead Actress in a Drama.
Carly (she/her) is a multidisciplinary artist, collaborative creator, clown, director, playwright, and scrap collector who trusts her goosebumps. Her work is rooted in curiosity, co-construction of story, and play. She is an auntie, a Jessie Richardson Award winner, an Artistic Associate with Monster Theatre, a graduate of Studio 58, one-half of the comedy duo The Dangerous Janes, and a wannabe crone. Recent credits include Snow White (Carousel Theatre for Young People) and The Löwensköld Ring (Little Mountain Lion Productions). Joyful life highlights include directing the world premiere of Light Rapid Transit (rEvolver Festival), participating in LEAD Ensemble (Neworld Theatre), co-writing/co-directing Crisis on Planet Z! (Vancouver International Children’s Festival), being named artist-in-residence for Hammock Residency (@hammockresidency), and becoming a Registered Sign Language Interpreter. Additionally, Carly has worked with Theatre Replacement, Caravan Farm Theatre, The Chop, Zee Zee Theatre, The Wet Ink Collective, and Blind Tiger Comedy. In her spare time, she sews poorly, sleeps deeply, and laughs loudly.
Say hi at @carlypo
Taylor is thrilled to be joining Monster Theatre for their production of Juliet. Taylor is a proud graduate of the Technical Theatre program at Capilano University. They have previously worked on Snow White (Carousel Theatre for Young People), God Said This (Pacific Theatre), Oz (Carousel Theatre), Instantaneous Blue (Mitch and Murray), Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls (Carousel Theatre), Lights (Touchstone Theatre), and We the Same (Ruby Slippers Theatre).
Alexandra Caprara (she/her) is a queer interdisciplinary artist from Tkaranto, Ontario whose practice is grounded in performance making and design, with a focus on devised processes, movement, interactivity, and design lead creation. She has worked internationally as a director, performer, and designer for lighting and video projection, and has presented her work across Canada alongside companies such as WorkMan Arts, Factory Theatre, Theatre Replacement, and Good Woman Dance, and is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Simon Fraser University. You can find out more about her work at alexandracaprara.com
Jude (he/they) is a Queer Vancouver based lighting designer and technical wizard. Painting with light, Jude tends to combine the surreal and the realistic to create engaging environments for each new show. There’s always at least one hidden aspect used in a show to uplift the story, even if you don’t notice it at the forefront of your mind while watching. After the last couple years with theatre being locked down, it’s been tricky to create art. As a result it’s extremely exciting to be a part of the creation process of a show again and to be working with a wonderful team. Recent credits for Jude include: The Sound of the Beast; The Spinsters; Catfish; Men Express Their Feelings; Dissection of a Mixed Heritage Woman; and The Wolves.
Jonathon Paterson has been working in the theatre industry for the past 30 years. He studied both performance and production at Macewan University in Edmonton, where he co-founded the independent touring theatre company, RibbitRePublic. This company now has a twenty year touring record around North America, and has performed at various festivals including the Orlando Fringe Festival, Fresno Rogue Festival, Canoe Theatre Festival, The Centaur Wildside Festival, Vancouver Comedy Festival and Just For Laughs Comedy Festival.
As a producer, Jon founded the French Quarter Hub at the Edmonton Fringe Festival in 2012. He has co-managed 3 venues (over 15 performing acts) in the hub every year, with attendance peaking at over 20, 000 patrons. French Quarter Hub was the first of it’s kind in Canada, modelling after the hub-based Fringes in Adelaide and Edinburgh. Jonathon also has over 2 dozen producing credits and over 20 years with RibbitRePublic, overseeing everything from marketing, promotions, web design, poster design, lighting design, stage managing, accounting, social media etc. In response to Covid-19, Jonathon created, FringeLiveStream, an online platform for live performances.
As a performer, Jonathon has been seen at every major Fringe Festival in North America, with over one hundred festivals and 25 years under his belt. He has also worked with Vertigo Mystery Theatre, National Stilt walkers of Canada, Monster Theatre, Theatre Prospero, Zero Gravity Circus, Workshop West Theatre, Mayfield Dinner Theatre and most recently, Off-Broadway’s Soho Playhouse.
Grammy nominated producer, arranger and multi-instrumentalist Drew Jurecka loves music in all of its forms, and is hard to pin down in one genre or context. Trained classically as a violinist, Drew graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Music and was immediately asked by guitar legend Jeff Healey to play in his band. Since that time he has dug into every aspect of music that he can. He has produced records for Jazz, Roots, Classical and Pop artists and has contributed to over 300 records in nearly every genre as an arranger, and studio musician (Dua Lipa, Dermott Kennedy, Metric, Alvvays, Mastodon, Ron Sexsmith, Jill Barber, Donovan Woods, Laila Biali). An in-demand soundtrack musician, his playing can be heard on numerous scores for film, television and video games including ‘Anne with an E’, ‘Horizon: Forbidden West’, ‘Cupheads 2’.
As an onstage performer, Drew plays a wide variety of music with his own jazz ensembles, as a classical chamber musician, and with groups in a variety of other genres. His Tango Band ‘Payadora’ (in which he plays the Bandoneon) has toured North America, Europe and South America, and gets regular radio play across the world. Their most recent album ‘Silent Tears, the Last Yiddish Tango’ reached #1 on the world music charts in Europe and has been included in ‘Best of 2023’ lists by the CBC and NPR. Drew is currently nominated for ‘Producer of the Year’ at the 2024 Canadian Folk Music Awards for this record.
Drew has been working on scores for Monster Theatre for many years. He did sound design for Henry the 8th, The Little Prince, Louis Riel, Grant Canyon, & The Shakespeare Show, and he’s so happy to have been asked to work on Juliet.
Nita Bowerman is a multidisciplinary performance-based artist, mixing the mediums of dance, acting, media art and costume design. Her self-created real time performances are often hybrid works mixing live action with digital content. Her creation and collaboration credits include performing in live and live digital spaces, generating visual content for short art videos and live plays, and making wearable art works and costumes. She has worked with various local theatre companies in a variety of capacities and has performed and screened diy digital video works locally and internationally. Art is the medium through which Nita processes existing. She is an experimenter of form and designer of content, creating works for stage and screen. Nita is a graduate of SFU.
You can find her on Instagram @NitaB_C
Cameron Anderson is a professional videographer with a special focus on live performance.
As a filmmaker, he has collaborated on several short documentaries, co-directed the short film Dust, and directed the short film Do Not Go. He is the current Digital Content Director at The Cultch. In 2022 Cameron and The Cultch were awarded a Jessie Richardson award for their work with digital theatre. He has collaborated with several dozen local arts organizations, including Music on Main, Theatre Replacement, and Green Thumb Theatre. He has also built promotional videos for the Vancouver Green Party, and current BC Green Party leader Sonia Furstenau.
He is a graduate of the University of Victoria, and holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts, with distinction. His film training includes a diploma in documentary filmmaking from In Focus Film School, and a year long videography practicum with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
