Production at City Stage New West has closed after 18 wonderful years dedicated to serving the community of New Westminster, British Columbia. 

Members and donors were thanked for their ongoing support during the particularly challenging pandemic year of 2020, at our last performance, a virtual Holiday Toddy & Tea, with our artists and board members performing  Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, adapted to Zoom by Producing Artistic Director Renee Bucciarelli.

Top row left to right: actor Michael Steven Schultz ("Scrooge"), Producing Artistic Director Renee Bucciarelli ("Marley"), actor Michael McIntyre ("Ghost of Christmas Present"), Board Director/actor Kris Kuruneri ("Ghost of Christmas Past"). Middle: actor cfrancis blackchild (Ensemble), Board Director/actor Henry Beasley (Ensemble), Board Director/actor Howard Dai ("Fred"), Board Director/actor Callyn Dorval (Ensemble). Bottom: actor Rob Stover & family ("the Cratchits"), Board Director Dan Jankowski (Ensemble), Board Director Nelson Ellis (Ensemble), actor/musician Cindy Kao (Ensemble/violin).

Photo below: Actors/musicians Cindy Kao, Michael McIntyre, Howard Dai, Callyn Dorval in our audience-participation A Christmas Carol at the Anvil Centre, 2019.

City Stage New West gratefully acknowledges the support of the City of New Westminster since 2009.

Celebrate BC history this Canada Day and beyond, with a free online broadcast of 
STUMP CITY STORIES!
Edited archival footage of the 2009 light-hearted musical based on New Westminster's history, along with a talk-back panel of local historians, is available here .

And on facebook  https://www.facebook.com/citystagenewwest/ (Unedited archival musical here.) 

2009 poster design by Lucian Leibman

This Ovation Award-nominated musical by George Ryan was commissioned in 2009 as our contribution to New West's 150^th celebration. It was featured news on CBC radio, Omni TV, in Sing Tao Daily and locally. In 2010, it was brought free of charge to over 1500 New Westminster students. A professional cast album was made in 2015 as a cultural legacy gift to the City.  A remarkable cast (the late Broadway actor Sean Allan, Damon Calderwood, Dora Brooks, and Jeremy Lowe) depict lives and events in New West since 1858, including in New West's Yi Fao district, once British Columbia's largest Chinatown.  

Per union regulations, no sets or costumes were allowed for this filmed Workshop performance in 2009, but the great music, stories, and heart-felt performances prompted enthusiastic responses nonetheless, such as director Scott Swann's of Applause Musicals/Ovation Awards: "Busloads of British Columbians should see this musical!"

Due to Covid 19, special permission was granted by Canadian Actors Equity and the Union of British Columbian Performers to make archival footage available free to the public. We hope the joy of the musical and its tales of resilience will lift hearts once again during these challenging times, as we all--to quote the musical--"imagine the future [we] dream of...now".

Stump City Stories tells only a part of New West's and British Columbia's history. Guest speakers and local historians Wayne Wou, Arwinder Kaur of New Westminster's Sukh Sagar Gurdwara, Oana Capota of New Westminster Museum & Archives, and Gavin Hainsworth, co-author with Katherine Freund-Hainsworth of A New Westminster Album join artistic director Renee Bucciarelli for a chat about New Westminster's diverse communities, and to answer audience questions.
 

2015 professional cast recording CD cover by Kaitlyn Hunter

Link to song lyrics by George Ryan.
Link to Omni TV interview with actor Jeremy Lowe.
Link to 2013 Kickstarter video with show clips.

Explore our History Resource List of diverse New West stories, videos, texts.

Find us on Twitter @CityStageNW 
  
City Stage New West wishes to thank Canadian Actors Equity Association and UBCP/ACTRA for their special permission and cooperation, and the City of New Westminster for making this project possible through the Social and Cultural Vibrancy grant.


                                                     

                  
Find us on facebook: www.facebook.com/citystagenewwest/ 
Read about the impetus for the series in The Record.
About THE MADWOMAN OF CHAILLOT:
Oil is discovered under the streets of Paris. When fat cats plot to cash in at the publics expense, a kooky Countess and her rag-tag coterie vow to stop their destructive exploits. But can they save the world from corporate greed and corruption? Can they bring back its Beauty?
Originally a response to Fascism in World War II-era France, Jean Giradoux's whimsical comic-fable of 1943 speaks presciently to a modern world gone out of its mind.
The New York Drama Critics' Circle hailed the 1948–50 Broadway production as "one of the most interesting and rewarding plays to have been written within the last twenty years", "pure gold", with "an enveloping and irresistible humor". Giradoux's play and Valency's adaptation later inspired the 1969 musical DEAR WORLD, starring Angela Lansbury, who won a Tony for her portrayal of the Countess Aurelia, the Madwoman of Chaillot.

Directed by Renee Bucciarelli, featuring special guest artists (tba) with City Stage New West ensemble actors.
 “Nothing is ever so wrong in this world that a sensible woman can’t set right in the course of an afternoon."

CANCELLED:
WAR OF THE WORLDS 
War of the Worlds, adapted by Howard E. Koch from H.G. Wells' original novel
Was to be performed Friday, October 16, 2020, 7-9 pm. Free, at the Anvil Centre

About WAR OF THE WORLDS
 In 1938, Orson Welles’ theatre company adapted H.G. Wells’ sci-fi thriller about a Martian invasion of Earth, radio-broadcasting the play from CBS in New York as dramatized news bulletins, on the night before Halloween. Despite disclaimers, a public panic ensued—prompting a cycle of actual ‘fake news’ that threatened Welles’ company and career. Join professional actors re-creating what may have been the biggest Halloween hoax of all time, followed by a talk-back that looks at how this famous fake news event continues to haunt us.