Award-Winning Firehall Arts Centre to Launch 2017 With Female Voices

The Firehall Arts Centre announced today the addition of the works of two female playwrights to the 2016/2017 season. And Bella Sang With Us, written by Vancouver's own Sally Stubbs, and The Nether, by award-winning American playwright Jennifer Haley.

A "Pick of the Fringe" at the 2016 Vancouver Fringe Festival, And Bella Sang With Us is a stylish 'cop' play with a dark and wicked sense of humour with a shot of song that celebrates two of Canada's unsung pioneers: Constables Lurancy Harris and Minnie Miller, Vancouver's first female police officers.

It's 1912 - Constables Harris and Miller arrive in the area now known as Vancouver's Downtown Eastside to deal with the 'female morality issue'. They run smack into societal and family pressures, political corruption, 'The Lord of the Bawdy Houses', and the volatile Bella.

Written by Vancouver-based playwright and educator, Sally Stubbs, and directed by the inimitable Sarah Rodgers with Ian Harmon, the production features a multi-award-winning team of established and rising Vancouver theatre professionals: Leanna Brodie, Sarah Louise Turner, Simon Webb, Beatrice Zeilinger, Agnes Tong, and Patrick Courtin.

The Nether made its Vancouver premiere at this year's Fringe Festival and was a favourite amongst many theatre critics. A detective story that explores the nature of virtual realms, fantasy and morality, Jennifer Haley's script is complex and darkly intriguing.

The play is set in the near future. The Internet has evolved into the Nether, a vast network of virtual reality realms. Users may log in, choose an identity, and indulge any desire. When Detective Morris investigates a realm called The Hideaway, where pedophiles may live out their fantasies involving children, she brings its creator in for interrogation. They discover they have made emotional attachments in this realm that blind them to the greater questions of ethical behaviour, both in the imagination and the outside world.

The Nether, produced by Redcurrant Collective, is directed by Chris Lam and features David Bloom, Lissa Neptuno, Linden Banks, Julia Siedlanowska, and Douglas Ennenberg.

For more information on the Firehall Arts Centre, please visit the following platforms:

Website: www.firehallartscentre.ca

Facebook: www.facebook.com/firehallartscentre

Twitter: www.twitter.com/FirehallArtsCte

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