SOAP THEATRE
  • Home & News
  • 2024-2025 Season
    • Plaza Suite
    • Steel Magnolias
  • Archives
    • 2020 - Present >
      • The Play That Goes Wrong >
        • Cornley
      • Halfway There
      • The Deception of Kathryn Vask
      • 7 Stories
      • Black Bonspiel
      • Knickers
      • When the Wind Blows
      • Flaming Idiots
      • Born Yesterday
    • 2015 - 2019 >
      • Bob's Your Elf
      • Lawrence & Holloman
      • Beyond Therapy
      • It's a Wonderful Life
      • Outside Mullingar
      • Old Love
      • The Game's Afoot
      • Since You Left Us
      • Don't Dress for Dinner
      • Boeing Boeing
      • Sleeping Indoors
      • Noises Off
      • Melville Boys
    • 2010 - 2014 >
      • Nunset Blvd
      • Lend Me a Tenor
      • Twisted Tales
      • Love, Loss and What I Wore
      • The Long Weekend
      • Wild Guys
      • Odd Couple
      • Rumors
    • Prior to 2010 >
      • Sand Mountain
      • Sound of Music
      • All in the Timing
      • California Suite
    • List of All Shows
  • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Interest Form
    • Sponsorship
    • Newsletter
    • Membership
Picture

7 Stories
   by Morris Panych
​   Directed by Frances Quick

All shows at Venables Theatre - Oliver
  Fri-Sat April 28-29 at 7:30
  Sun April 30 Matinee at 2:00
  Fri-Sat May 5-6 at 7:30
Awards
7 Stories  was our entry in the 2023 O-Zone Theatre Festival, earning the following recognition:
  • Diane Gludovatz - Best actor in female role.
  • Carrie Shogan - Best supporting actor in female role.
  • Craig Bjornson - Best supporting actor in male role.
  • Bernice Myllyniemi - Best Costume Design
  • Frances Quick - Best Newcomer award
  • Ashton Gludovatz - Best Newcomer award
  • SOAP - Best Backstage Cooperation (setup / take down /tech)
  • SOAP - runner-up for best ensemble

Congratulations to all involved.


Critical Acclaim
          Like the show itself, the characters have a strange charm to them. Usually, I don’t enjoy anything soaked in cynicism, but there’s something about 7 Stories that allowed me to look past the negative commentary on society and sit back and smirk. 7 Stories isn’t a drama nor is it really a full-blown comedy. It’s funny, but not in a laugh-out-loud way. Instead, the show has a quick and dry wit, and it often dips its toes into the theatre of the absurd without allowing itself to become fully immersed in insanity. Frankly, that is a type of comedy I can get behind…the characters’ quirky charm pulls the show together and saves the audience from a potentially bleak commentary of society. 
​

          I am reluctant to go into much discussion about each character’s individual story, as not to ruin the audience’s own surprise at discovering what the characters are all about; that is part of the fun of the show. But I will say the dialogue is punchy, the script is clever, and 7 Stories has a lot to say.
​

            ​ - Sam Tweedle (kawarthaNOW.com - see full review)

What's it About?

​7 Stories by Morris Panych, is a Canadian dark comedy that features a character generically named “Man”, who stands on the seventh story ledge of an apartment building, contemplating suicide. 

While attempting to muster the courage to jump, Man suffers constant interruption by residents of the apartment building, each of whom have a story to tell. There’s a lawyer who is having an tumultuous affair with one of the residents, a psychiatrist, a couple of party guests, a gay man about to marry a rich heiress, an artist, a deeply religious woman and others.

None of the residents, with one exception, seem to be very concerned about Man and his circumstances. It becomes obvious that Man isn’t the only one who has mental health issues; all of them have their own eccentricities and dramas. Can Man find anything in their seven stories to convince him to get off the ledge, or is the human race too far gone?

Although the individuals within the stories are tragic, there is humour in their actions as they are attempt to escape the limitations of daily life. Each time a window opens, excitement builds to see who is going to pop out next and what they were going to say. This timely play recognizes that mental health plays a role in everyone’s life, and can impact us all in different ways.

Picture
A Note from our Director, Frances Quick

In recent years, mental health has reached the forefront in the minds of our worldwide population.

​This timely play recognizes that mental health plays a role in everyones life, and can impact us all in different ways. COVID 19, the toxic drug crisis, housing crisis, PTSD, grief and healing of Indigenous peoples post-residential school era, has contributed to escalation of deteriorating mental health of Canadians. Our daily routines are a plethora of happiness, grief, sadness, humour and devastation.

​Freedom is a state of mind......


Cast & Characters

MAN:
Diane Gludovatz
RODNEY: Dale McNeil
CHARLOTTE: Angee Blonk
JOAN: Margi Chantler
MICHAEL: Ritchie Kendrick
LEONARD: Donna Macbeth
MARSHALL: Curtis Boomhower
PERCY: Craig Bjornson
JENNIFER: Linda Davreux
AL: Joe Rupcich
RACHEL: Bertie Barens
LILLIAN: Carrie Shogan
NURSE: Christine Rothwell
NEIGHBOUR 1: Bertie Barens
NEIGHBOUR 2: ​Dale McNeil
NEIGHBOUR 3: Angie Stuart
​NEIGHBOUR 4: Nancy Gunnlaugson
Behind the Scenes

​Producer: Jennifer Busman
Director: Frances Quick
Assistant Director: Diane Gludovatz
Stage Manager: Angie Stuart
Set Design: Craig Bjornson 
Set Construction: Craig Bjornson & Ryan Doren     
Props: Nancy Gunnlaugson
Lighting Design: Diane & Ashton Gludovatz
Lighting Operator: Ashton Gludovatz
Sound Design: Nathan Linders
Sound Operator: Ari Kendrick
Costumes: Bernice Myllyneimi
Costume Assistant: Linda Davreux
Makeup: Linda Davreux
Hair: Alaina Davreux

Picture
The Playwright
​(Adapted from Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia)

​Playwright, actor, and director Morris Panych is a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre. He has directed over ninety productions across Canada, and written thirty plays that have been produced around the world in a dozen languages.

Panych was born in 1952 in Calgary and grew up in Edmonton. He received a diploma in radio and television arts from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, and then studied creative writing at the University of British Columbia, and theatre at East 15 acting school in London, England. He works primarily in Vancouver, and more recently, Montreal.

Panych claims to have no theories about theatre, only a certain need for liberation: "I sense that to illustrate through theatre a multiplicity of truths, is to allow the audience to begin to reclaim truths of its own. To look at a play and say, 'this a pretense invented out of nothing. These characters are trapped inside problems that don’t even exist,' and yet to remain committed to that reality for a time just for the hell of it, to begin to understand what the power of theatre is. Not to mention life. The power to question. . . . What’s important to me now, as always, is to keep things moving. And that’s it. My entire theory of theatre. To keep changing. Rediscovering. Questioning not only the accepted ideas of theatre, but the reversal of those ideas as well." 

His plays are characterized by existential themes and "theatre of the absurd" style and sensibility. They typically set their interrogations of the meaning of life in culturally and nationally neutral locales, and they pose broad philosophical questions on human interaction and isolation, on the nature of good and evil, and on the relationship between fantasy and reality. Many are black comedies that oscillate between hope and despair.


​SOAP Theatre gratefully acknowledges support from our current corporate sponsors.
​Please visit the following websites and support these local businesses that support community theatre.
​Alberto's Decorating
​​Summit Radio Osoyoos & Penticton
Dubh Glas Distillery
​
InnerVisions Salon

Nunes-Pottinger Funeral Service
Oliver-Osoyoos Wine Country
Oliver Veterinary Hospital
​Sagebrush Nursery
​Shamrock Roofing and Exteriors
​
​​Summit Radio Osoyoos & Penticton
​
Underfoot Flooring
Are you interested in sponsorship? Visit our Sponsorship Page.

Keep informed. Subscribe to our Newsletter
Contact Us by Email
​PO Box 1315, Oliver, BC    V0H 1T0
Admin Login
  • Home & News
  • 2024-2025 Season
    • Plaza Suite
    • Steel Magnolias
  • Archives
    • 2020 - Present >
      • The Play That Goes Wrong >
        • Cornley
      • Halfway There
      • The Deception of Kathryn Vask
      • 7 Stories
      • Black Bonspiel
      • Knickers
      • When the Wind Blows
      • Flaming Idiots
      • Born Yesterday
    • 2015 - 2019 >
      • Bob's Your Elf
      • Lawrence & Holloman
      • Beyond Therapy
      • It's a Wonderful Life
      • Outside Mullingar
      • Old Love
      • The Game's Afoot
      • Since You Left Us
      • Don't Dress for Dinner
      • Boeing Boeing
      • Sleeping Indoors
      • Noises Off
      • Melville Boys
    • 2010 - 2014 >
      • Nunset Blvd
      • Lend Me a Tenor
      • Twisted Tales
      • Love, Loss and What I Wore
      • The Long Weekend
      • Wild Guys
      • Odd Couple
      • Rumors
    • Prior to 2010 >
      • Sand Mountain
      • Sound of Music
      • All in the Timing
      • California Suite
    • List of All Shows
  • About Us
    • Contact Us
  • Get Involved
    • Interest Form
    • Sponsorship
    • Newsletter
    • Membership