Untold Wants Theatre brings Gruesome Playground Injuries to The Cultch Vancity Culture Lab February 5th – 15th.
Written in 2009 by American writer Rajiv Joseph, Pulitzer Prize playwriting finalist for “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo”, and Obie-winning playwright for “Describe The Night”, Gruesome Playground Injuries comes to Vancouver after a premiere, starring Selma Blair, at the Alley Theatre in Houston Texas, and a 2011 off-broadway run at Second Stage Theatre.
In Gruesome Playground Injuries, childhood friends,Doug and Kayleen find each other again, and again, over the course of thirty years. Each time they’re drawn back into each other’s lives, they come with a new self-inflicted wound, and are met with the decision to stay together or go their separate ways again. They are overwhelmed by the gravity of their relationship, and the societal pressures that threaten their capacity to stay together.
With the St. Valentine’s Day season upon us, Gruesome Playground Injuries, examinesthe fluidity of what defines a relationship, this play shows that love can exist outside the traditional rules of engagement: whatever two people define it to be. The work embodies love from a new and relevant perspective. The audiences will experience both the reasons for the characters’ pull toward each other, and the simultaneous walls they put up to protect themselves.
Gruesome Playground Injuries is Untold Wants Theatre’s fourth production, third in Vancouver. Company founders Jessica Aquila Cymerman (Los Angeles) and Éanna O’Dowd (Galway, Ireland) met while studying at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland in Glasgow. They established Untold Wants Theatre to bring classic and contemporary voices to a wide range of audiences.
“Traversing culture is important to us, so bringing a company to Canada, that started in Ireland, with theatremakers who were trained all over the world, offers a unique perspective to the Vancouver scene. The human experience is the human experience, and communicating that is our objective.” says Jessica Aquila Cymerman, co-founder of Untold Wants Theatre.
Untold Wants Theatre brings Gruesome Playground Injuries to The Cultch Vancity Culture Lab, 1895 Venebles Street, February 5 – 9 & 12 – 15, 2020. Visit thecultch.com for tickets and showtimes.