Message from the Artistic Director
Mark DuMez
I grew up in a small great lakes town with a population just about to crack 2000 souls when I left. I knew all my aunts and uncles – even the ones who moved “all the way” to the other side of town. Every second Sunday of the month, without fail, my father’s six siblings would gather in one of their houses for a meal and a visit – until the later years when the “cousin count” was so high that only the aunts and uncles were allowed. To this day, the living relatives still gather – to solve the problems of the world over a pot luck lunch, some coffee and Snickers bar salad. I am grateful for many blessings of my family and especially that even with their differences, they all love and respect one another when they gather together.
In this play, Joe DiPietro gives us the perfect, imperfect family. Through his hilarity, we can consider our own sense of place, our loyalties to location, commitment to culture and hopes for our legacy and lineage. In the mobility of North American culture, Tengo famiglia invites us to examine our roots, whether we love em’ or lump em’. The patriarchs and matriarchs of Nick’s world allow us to laugh at ourselves in another skin and call us to savour the tastes and conversations that shape who we are. Enjoy the feast!
Pamela recently completed her tenure as the Artistic Director of Lunchbox Theatre (Calgary, AB) and is the former Artistic Producer of Ship’s Company Theatre (Parrsboro, NS). In her 10 years between these two companies she directed and/or produced over 60 productions, the majority of them premieres of new works. Pamela is Artistic Adviser to Valley Summer Theatre (Wolfville, NS), Artistic Producer of DMV Theatre (Halifax, NS) and the PERFORM! Coordinator for Theatre Nova Scotia. Recent credits include: directing Mass Appeal for Valley Summer Theatre and The Net for Theatre New Brunswick, directing and dramaturging the world premieres of Never A Syllable for Onelight Theatre and Bingo Ladies for Lunchbox Theatre, and producing White Rabbit, Red Rabbit for DMV Theatre. She also returned recently to Lunchbox to curate and coordinate the 27th Suncor Energy Stage One Festival. In 2013, Pamela was awarded the inaugural Evans Award at the Calgary Critics’ Awards for her contribution to the vibrancy of the Calgary theatre community. She recently returned to Nova Scotia and is thrilled to be back living by the sea.
You’re about to meet two of the most exciting and influential intellects of the 20th century! Mark St. Germain encountered the possibility that C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud might have met in a book called The Question of God by Harvard Medical School psychiatrist Dr. Armand M. Nicholi Jr.. The 2002 book distills 37 years of spirited discussions with Nicholi’s students in the wildly popular seminar he had offered every year since 1967. (PBS adapted the book in a 2-part documentary mini-series in 2004).
