GLORIA’S GUY
by Joan Burrows
(July 8 to 30, 2022)
Director: Meg Gibson
Producers: John Acuna & Diane Kuipers
July 19, 2022
The run of GLORIA’S GUY will continue:
Thursday July 21, 2022 8:00pm
Friday July 22, 2022 8:00pm
Saturday July 23, 2022 8:00pm
Sunday July 24, 2022 2:00pm
Wednesday July 27, 2022 8:00pm [NEW]
Thursday July 28, 2022 8:00pm
Friday July 29, 2022 8:00pm
Saturday July 30, 2022 2:00pm [NEW]
Saturday July 30, 2022 8:00pm
1. Note the two new dates.
2. ALL 9 performances will be limited to 50% capacity to allow physical distancing.
For tickets, click below:
All production photos by Dave Fitzpatrick
CAST
(for more about our cast, click on block image below)
JeN Hashimoto, Natalie Stephenson, Maria Michelli
Drea Burck, Daryl Ledwon, Paula Wilkie
About the play. . . .
It’s been over twenty years since Guy ditched his high-school sweetheart Gloria at the prom, and they haven’t spoken since. Now he’s a failed LA lawyer, divorced, and working at his brother’s golf resort in Ontario. A wedding conveniently brings old friends Gloria, Eva, Leslie, Peggy, and Peggy’s mom, Jessie, to the resort for a weekend, so Guy nervously promises he’ll stay away. But Jessie–also the crew’s former teacher–decides to play matchmaker, determined to reconnect the long-split pair.
Between the reunion of old friends, each with their own surprises, Gloria and Guy are pushed together, learning the power of forgiveness, the warmth of opening up to someone, and the possibilities of a re-written future.
“a wonderful comedy that opens our hearts to the laughter and sweetness of life and gives us a glimpse into hurdles that must be overcome to get there.”
“a tapestry of experiences depicting life’s journey from adolescence to midlife with stories that reflect reality so vividly the audience may glimpse themselves as one of the characters.”
~ Anne Ritchie, Alliston Herald
About Joan Burrows, the playwright. . . .
Joan Burrows is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada and has won several ACT-CO and Theatre Ontario awards for her work as a stage manager, director, and playwright. She has been a long-time member of the Curtain Club in Richmond Hill and of the Alumnae Theatre, in Toronto, specifically working with their New Play Development Program.
Village Players staged Joan’s Willow Quartet in 2014; it was remembered so fondly that we did it again as a zoom play-reading in December 2021. Her other plays include Staff Room (for which she won several awards), The Photograph (ACT-CO Award for Best New Canadian Play), Fourteen Hours and a new play, Persons of Interest. Joan’s musical adaptation of Willow Quartet with Ron Cameron-Lewis and Jason Saunders was nominated for the Tom Hendry Award in 2018.
About Meg Gibson, the director…
Meg got an early start in community theatre doing backstage “tech stuff” in Scarborough when she was 13. She says of those days: “I’m a theatre brat, so I came around to rehearsals because it was cheaper than a babysitter. I would do my homework but I was also paying attention.” She started acting soon after and hasn’t stopped since. Village Players’ audiences will remember her from appearances on-stage as Germaine Lauzon in Les Belles Soeurs (2016) and Kim in The Willow Quartet (2014).
Meg’s resume shows how her early interests continued to expand; it includes a BFA degree in drama from University of Calgary, and experience in choreography, fight coordination, sound design, stage management, and teaching drama and dance.
Meg has not only acted elsewhere, she has also directed: comedy (Caught in the Net), suspense (Death Trap), and musicals (You’ll Get Used to It: War Show, and Oklahoma!) She has been nominated for an ACT-CO award as best director and also shared the award for best set design.
Meg’s first time directing for us was the comedy Stag and Doe, our second last show in 2020 before the pandemic struck. She had already been selected to direct the final show of the following season: Gloria’s Guy! That was canceled, of course, but in its place Meg acted in and directed some of our zoom play-readings, and offered several Monologue workshops to both veteran and hopeful actors.
Now, a season later, Gloria’s Guy is finally happening, and Village Players, Meg, and you, we hope, are glad it is.
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Village Players 