Ron Reed’s one-man show will be at Bez Arts Hub and Peninsula Productions in November.
Ron Reed’s one-man show The Top Ten Thousand of All Time is back on stage this November. It will be at the Bez Arts Hub in Langley November 7, 8 and 9, then at Peninsula Productions in White Rock on November 21, 22 and 23.
First written in 1992, the play has been performed on the Pacific Theatre mainstage and at Fire Exit Theatre in Calgary, as well as 25 or so other venues, from Galiano Island, Thetis Island and Bowen Island to Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, San Francisco, Houston, Texas and Eston, Saskatchewan.
He looks back on the way in which the play resonates with the Pacific Theatre story.
In the summer of 1991 we shut down Pacific Theatre and laid off our small staff, including myself, apart from the tour manager and cast required for one last school tour of our Dragons Project.
Without a theatre where I could ply my theatrical trade, I turned to writing, and in the summer of 1992 I wrote a one-act play that I first read at a summer coffee house at Regent College, sponsored by the Regent Bookstore.
It’s a curious piece with something of a Twilight Zone feel, about a late night disc jockey counting down his personal top ten thousand songs from a mysterious broadcast studio in the heart of Kerrisdale.
And in ways I didn’t realize at the time, it was very much about my own situation, with the theatre company I had founded apparently at an end.
I retired from my position at Pacific Theatre at the end of 2020, and while I’ve continued to make all kinds of art as a freelancer, PT still feels like my artistic home.
But of course the theatre is closing its doors, and while core staff will be retained and the company intends to find new opportunities to continue their work, that familiar home at 12th and Hemlock will soon close, and the future is uncertain, unknown.
These developments remind me in so many ways of that time from 1991 to 1994 when Pacific Theatre had closed up shop, without any clear way forward. It gives me hope, knowing that the last time PT thought the story was over, it went on to produce another three decades of work.
But it also stirs a sense of loss, so similar to those times in the early nineties. And it has also stirred a desire to revive the play that came out of that first seemingly tragic ending.”
This time around Reed has updated the script, bringing events up to the present, introducing some new music and touching on realities such as cell phones and the internet, and our experience of the pandemic, that were unknown when the original version of the play was first produced.
But it remains an entertaining, affecting and highly original piece of theatre about hope in the face of . . . well, you’ll have to see it to find out.
Here are some reactions to the show:
“A remarkable personal masterpiece, and the soundtrack to a life that lingers long after you leave the stage.” Daily Hive
“Quirky and deceptively simple, The Top Ten Thousand of All Time is as much about the work and calling of an artist as it is about the songs that make up the soundtrack to a person’s life.” vancouverscape.com