[ID: A photo of Steve O’Connell, a white man with a bald head and short beard, is leaning forward with watch splashing down over him. White and blue text boxes read RCA Theatre + Artistic Fraud Present Between Breaths.]

Table of Contents
Land Acknowledgement
Synopsis
Notes From the Interim Artistic Animateur
Playwright’s Note
Director’s Note
Development History
Cast and Creative Team
Thank Yous
Seat Campaign
Coming up Next
Volunteer At The Hall
Donors
CAPE Fund
Endowment Fund

RCA Theatre Company Presents Artistic Fraud’s Between Breaths

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Land Acknowledgement

RCA respectfully acknowledges that the land on which we currently create, perform, and gather is the ancestral homelands of the Beothuk, whose culture has now been erased forever. The island we call Newfoundland is the unceded, traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi’kmaq. Labrador is the traditional and ancestral homelands of the Innu of Nitassinan, the Inuit of Nunatsiavut, and the Inuit of NunatuKavut. We ask that before you watch the performance tonight, you take a moment to reflect on whose land you are standing on, whose land you were born on, and whose land you currently live on. We ask that you reflect on how that land was taken care of, and how it is taken care of now, and finally who currently walks freely on it. If this reflection makes you uncomfortable we ask that you sit in that feeling and question it. Let it help you work towards reconciliation, something we can only achieve together. Thank you.

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Synopsis

Inspired by the true story of Jon Lien – known as the Whale Man – Between Breaths is a profoundly emotional memory play that sails through Lien’s life and the dangerous, death-defying work of saving whales trapped in fishing nets off Newfoundland’s coast. Over his long career, Lien saved over 500 whales and earned the respect of the island’s fishermen, but his biggest fight came at the end of his life as dementia progressively conquered his body and mind.

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A Message from our Interim Artistic Animateur

Welcome to the second presentation in RCA Theatre Company’s 2023-2024 Season, Artistic Frauds’ Between Breaths, written by Robert Chafe. We are thrilled to be able to support this stunning and profound work through the Canadian Arts Presentation Fund. Between Breaths is an emotional memory play that touches on love and the relationships surrounding us. These incredible actors and musicians work together beautifully to tell this heart wrenching story. We hope this work inspires meaningful conversation and moves us to connect further with each other. Thank you to all our donors, sponsors and funders who make this possible.  Thanks, as ever, for coming with us, and for choosing live theatre for your night out. When you buy a ticket for a show at The Hall, you are supporting essential, live performance in your community, as well as important programs and resources for the artists who create them. We love to see you and hope you can join us again for more events in our upcoming season, more details coming soon!

Laura Williams, Interim Artistic Animateur

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Playwright’s Note

I’ve been asked what was different and challenging about writing this play. For sure I’ve written about real people in the past and the research process has taken me into people’s homes all across the province and beyond. I’ve sat and recorded people talking about loved ones, telling intimate stories about real lives that have come and gone, and I’ve been gobsmacked by the generosity and trust. The big difference with Between Breaths was the timing. I approached the Lien family with idea of writing this play back in 2012, a mere two years after Jon’s passing. Despite their still fresh grief, Judy, Elling and their family opened their doors and their hearts to me, as did Jon’s colleagues and friends. They all did so with the firm intent that Jon’s great legacy continue to be celebrated. Beyond all else, I hope this play serves that purpose.

– Robert

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Director’s Note

For many years, Robert and I had been wanting to create a production that might speak to the idea of death.   We had experienced the deaths of several people close to us, and wanted to explore why it was that the ‘celebrations of life’ that we were attending felt so very neutral and often impersonal. 
Environmentalist and scientist Jon Lien was concerned about the business of death too – namely in preventing it for the whales he saved. He also worked tirelessly to alleviate the burden on the environment and on the fish harvesters in whose nets the leviathans were caught. During our first night of the workshop production of Between Breaths in 2016, I watched the audience, as I often do.  Afterwards, Robert said that we had finally made the show that says what we had always wanted to say about death. But watching the audience, I knew the play wasn’t about death at all, but about life; delicious, frightening, fierce and beautiful life, just like Jon Lien had lived it. 
I hope you find joy in your introduction to, and our celebration of, the Whale Man. 

-Jillian

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Development History

Between Breaths made its first public appearance as a workshop presentation in July of 2016 at the DF Cook Recital at the MUN School of Music. The show officially premiered in July of 2018 at the LSPU Hall, and since that time it has toured across Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada, and to Halifax (Neptune Theatre), London ON (Grand Theatre), Ottawa (Canada’s National Arts Centre), and Toronto (Factory Theatre).

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Cast and Creative Team

[ID: A white man with a bald head and short white beard. He is wearing glasses and a leather jacket with a grey sweater underneath while leaning on a wall.]

ROBERT CHAFE
Playwright 

Robert Chafe is a writer, educator, actor and arts administrator based in St. John’s, Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland). He has worked in theatre, dance, opera, radio, fiction and film. His stage plays have been seen in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia and in the United States, and include Oil and Water, Tempting Providence, Afterimage, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, Everybody Just Calm the Fuck Down, I Forgive You (with Scott Jones), and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams (adapted from the novel by Wayne Johnston.) He has been shortlisted three times for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama and he won the award for Afterimage in 2010. He has been a guest instructor at Memorial University, Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, and The National Theatre School of Canada. In 2018 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Memorial University. He is the playwright and Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud.

[ID: A white woman with long grey hair and light eyes. She is wearing bright red lipstick, a black jacket over a blue shirt, and a blue necklace. She is sitting in bright pink seats.]

JILLIAN KEILEY
Director

Jillian Keiley was the Associate Artistic Director at RCA in St. John’s, NL, and is the founding Artistic Director of Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland. She assumed her role as the Artistic Director of English Theatre at the NAC in Ottawa in 2012. Highlights from Artistic Fraud include In Your Dreams Freud, Oil and Water, and I Forgive You. NAC highlights include Andy Jones’ Tartuffe, A Christmas Carol, and Copenhagen. She also directed Anne Carson’s Bakkhai, The Neverending Story, and Alice Through the Looking Glass. Most recently she directed Pals with Richard Greenblatt and Diane Flacks for Winnipeg Jewish Theatre. Her productions of TellTale Harbour for the Charlottetown Festival and her all new production of Come From Away, were among the top selling productions in Canada in 2022 and 2023. She teaches and mentors regularly, including recurring contracts with the National Theatre School in Montreal. She holds Honorary Doctorates from MUN and Toronto’s York University. She is the Winner of the Canada Council John Hirsch Prize and the 2004 Siminovitch Prize for Directing.

[ID: A white woman with long brown hair and blue eyes. She’s wearing a black shirt in front of a green out of focus background.]

SHARON KING-CAMPBELL
Assistant Director

Sharon King-Campbell (she/her) is a director, playwright and performer based in St. John’s. In addition to her work on Between Breaths, she has been assistant director for Artistic Fraud’s Fear of Flight, co-director of City of Stories, and director of transVersing. She has also directed for companies across Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), including Best Kind Productions, New Curtain Theatre, Grand Bank Regional Theatre, and Stephenville Theatre Festival.  She was the recipient of the 2017 Rhonda Payne Theatre Award. Sharon holds a BFA Theatre (Acting) and a MA English (Creative Thesis) from Memorial University, where she is now pursuing her PhD. She is the Artistic Director of the Shakespeare by the Sea Festival.

[ID: A white man with short brown hair and beard and blue eyes. He is wearing a white shirt in front of a brown background.]

DARRYL HOPKINS
Wayne

Darryl Hopkins is an actor & musician, from Mount Pearl, NL. He was lucky enough to be able to spend many hours of his youth on the salt water with his family, and has had numerous (close) encounters with whales over the years. He holds a BFA from SWGC (MUN), where he received the Tommy Sexton Award in 2002. Hopkins spent the following decade touring and performing Robert Chafe’s “Tempting Providence” to over 100,000 people on 3 continents. Somewhere in between all that, he played in a few bands & wrote a handful of songs. He was awarded Best Actor in a Short Film from both the Monaco International Film Fest (2017) & the Social World Film Fest (2018) for his performance in Noel Harris’ short film, Touch. Currently, Hopkins is producing a new album of original songs under the moniker Avalon Stanley. One can find his music online at  www.avalonstanley.com

[ID: A white man with a bald head and short beard. He’s wearing a black shirt in front of a grey background. The photo is black and white.]

STEVE O’CONNELL
Jon Lien

Forty years ago this month, Steve stepped on stage for the first time as ‘Angie the Ox’, in I. J. Samson’s Spring Musical Guys & Dolls. Since then, he has been blessed to have appeared in hundreds of productions on both stage and screen. These projects have taken him around the province, as well as across a large part of Canada. Even greater than these opportunities to travel though are the relationships and experiences he has had with the hundreds, if not thousands, of other actors, directors, writers, producers, musicians, designers and technicians over the last four decades. Now, he is thrilled to return to the LSPU Hall as ‘Dr. Jon Lien’ in Between Breaths. Steve lives in St. John’s with his wife Michelle, and their house full of felines.

[ID: A white woman with curly shoulder length grey hair and blue eyes. She is wearing a blue sweater over a dark shirt with her hand in front of her mouth.]

BERNI STAPLETON
Judy Lien

Bernardine Stapleton is a playwright, author, skit-artist, and actor. She was born in Labrador and grew up in Newfoundland. She has spent her career making beautiful theatre in unexpected places. She was a Siminovitch Playwright Prize finalist in 2023. She is the Artistic Director of Girl Power Inc. an indie feminist theatre company devoted to the queer-hands and creators of the outer reaches. Her plays include Offensive to Some, developed as part of the NAC’s English Theatre Program the Playwright’s Circle in 1996. It is produced regularly to this day. The Antidote for Life: Memory, Madness and Beagles, is an autobiographical exploration of madness in the arts. New works in progress include the feminist queer imagining Ophelia Swims. Berni was writer-in-residence at Memorial University in 2019 and taught an Introduction to Playwrighting course there. Her books include Love, Life (Breakwater Books) the yet unpublished Brazil Square about the once iconic boarding house district of St. John’s, and the writing guide How to Write a Play and Have Fun Without Hardly Even Trying or How to Finish Your Best Worst First Draft or Prepare to Throw the Pasta. She lives in St. John’s with rescue beagles Georgie Girl and Tiggy Duff.

 

[ID: A black woman with thick black dreads with one blue one. She is wearing glasses, silver earrings, a septum piercing, and a green collared shirt.]

VALMY ASSAM
Vocals

Valmy is a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who’s been following the ocean and finding home on the East Coast. She uses her folk-influenced music to tell stories about loving and stumbling your way through the dark, exploring themes of wonder, loss, and healing. Based in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Valmy draws inspiration from nature’s elements and the complexity of relationship in her writing, featuring melodic swells and atmospheric harmonies. Valmy released her debut full-length album The In Between in the Fall of 2023, and continues to create and perform from a place of honesty to let the light in.

 

[ID: A white man with shoulder length curly brown hair and short dark beard. He is wearing a jean vest over a dark shirt and brown glasses. He is looking to the left with a field and trees in the background.]

ANDREW LAITE
Vocals/Guitar

Raised in St. John’s, NL. Rube & Rake – ‘Back and Forth’ (2017); ‘Leaving with Nothing’ (2020); Craig Young – ‘Don’t Think Twice’ (2018), Sherry Ryan ‘Wreckhouse’ (2018). Multiple MusicNL award winner; 2022 ECMA Songwriter of the Year (Rube & Rake).

[ID: A white man with shoulder length brown hair and short beard. He is wearing a red and black checkered shirt and holding a banjo while singing into a large microphone.]

JOSH SANDU
Mandolin/Bodhran/Harmonica/Vocals

Raised: Prince George, British Columbia
Theatre: Between Breaths
Musical History: Singer/Songwriter for ECMA award winning folk act, Rube & Rake.

[ID: Three white people sit looking at the camera. L-R A man with short dark hair and light beard wearing a blue shirt, jeans, and dark glasses. A man with dark hair and dark full beard wearing dark blue shirt and jeans. A woman with shoulder length blonde hair wearing a black top, light and a light grey skirt.]

THE ONCE
Composers

Two-Time Juno-nominated, folk trio from NL. Multiple ECMA, CFMA, MusicNL winners and NLAC Artist of the Year. Toured with Passenger(UK), Stuart McLean (CAN), Amelia Curran (CAN) and John Flannigan (AUS). 6 Album releases plus collaborations with Alan Doyle, back up singers for Passenger on Whispers 1 (2015) and 2 (2015), Young as the Morning, Old as the Sea (2016) and Runaway (2018) Song placements in Some Saturdays (2018), It’s Ok, That’s Love (South Korea), Christmas with The Fureys (NL), Still Standing with Jonny Harris and St. John’s Comedy Festival.

[ID: A white woman with blue eyes and mid length brown/blonde hair. She is wearing a dark top in front of a blurred green background.]

KELLIE WALSH
Music Director

Kellie Walsh is the founder and Artistic Director of the award-winning Lady Cove Women’s Choir and the Artistic Director of the internationally celebrated Shallaway Youth Choir. She has most recently co-founded the Inuit Youth Choir Ullûgiagatsuk from Nunatsiavut, Labrador, and is the immediate Past President of Canada’s national choral organization, Choral Canada. From deep and proud roots in Newfoundland and Labrador, she’s gained renown internationally for embracing the medium of choral singing as an opportunity to explore empathy building, sociocultural identity, and civic engagement. Walsh has worked across Canada, the United States, South America, Europe and Asia advocating choral music as a medium to unite people and cultures, transcend geography and societal, political and economic circumstances. Walsh believes the arts can play a transformative role in shaping communities’ futures.

[ID: A white woman with brown eyes and shoulder length curly dark hair. She is wearing a black shirt in front of grass.]

CRYSTAL LAFFOLEY
Stage Manager

Crystal Laffoley is a graduate of the National Theatre School of Canada’s Production Design & Technical Arts program.  She has been working with Artistic Fraud since 2017 on projects including I Forgive You, Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down, The Other Side of This, Between Breaths, and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.  Other favourite credits include Don’t Give Up on Me Dad and Supper Club (RCA Theatre), Come from Away in Concert (Marquis/Junkyard Dogs), Second Shot (Best Kind Productions), Almost Baymous (Halfhandsome) and multiple seasons with Perchance Theatre and the Charlottetown Festival.  Beyond her work as stage manager, consultant, and arts administrator, Crystal has been a Production Coach at NTS for the last ten years.

[ID: A white man with short brown hair and full beard. He is wearing a dark shirt in front of a dark background.]

BRIAN KENNY
Sound Design and Technical Direction

Brian is a designer for theatre and performance from Mt. Pearl and is a graduate from The National Theatre School of Canada, and Sheridan College. Recent selected credits include: Supper Club, The Dialysis Project [RCA Theatre Company], Everybody Just C@lm The F#ck Down, Between Breaths [Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland], Fall On Your Knees [NAC, Vita Brevis], Jersey Boys [Citadel], Kelly vs Kelly [Musical Stage Co], Come From Away in concert [Marquis, Mirvish], The Rocky Horror Show, Billy Elliott, [The Stratford Festival], Upcoming: La Cages Aux Folles [Stratford], Anne of Green Gables [Charlottetown].  Brian is a member of the board of directors for RCA as well as the The Associated Designers of Canada.

[ID: A white woman with chin length curly red hair and blue eyes. She is turned to the side looking over her shoulder and wearing a black leather jacket.]

LEIGH ANN VARDY
Lighting Design

With Artistic Fraud: Oil and Water, Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down, Under Wraps, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Selected Theatre Credits: Guilt, A Love Story (Tarragon), Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (Neptune, Mirvish), Come From Away (Rubinoff Prod. & Nfld Govt. A&CCs), Richard II, Hamlet 911, The Neverending Story (Stratford), Fall On Your Knees (Can Stage), February (Opera on the Avalon), The Secret Life of a Mother (Crows, Theatre Centre).  Upcoming projects include The Full Monty (Neptune), The Lehman Trilogy (Belfry Theatre). Leigh Ann lives in Halifax, NS and comes home to NFLD as often as she possibly can. Between Breaths is one of the most precious projects of her life and she’s proud to be part of the story telling.

[ID: A white woman with chin length straight white hair and light eyes. She is faced forward looking to the left. She is wearing a blue shirt in front of a white background.]

SHAWN KERWIN
Costume and Scenic Design

Shawn Kerwin is an award-winning set and costume designer whose work has been seen across Canada, the United States and England. Recent work includes set design for Grand Ghosts (Grand Theatre), set & costume design; Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Class (Belfry Theatre) The Bakkhai (Stratford Festival), Sea Sick (Theatre Centre, international tour). She has designed multiple productions for Mirvish Productions, Artistic Fraud, Soulpepper, Charlottetown Festival, Signal Theatre, Blyth Festival, and others.
She was co-creator, with Jillian Keiley, of the multi- choir, 150-person outdoor performance, float, in St. John’s in 2017.
Currently she is working on set and costume design for The Goat for the Stratford Festival and The Lehman Trilogy for the Belfry Theatre. 
Shawn is a full-time faculty member in the Department of Theatre at York University.

[ID: A white woman with chin length straight white hair and light eyes. She is faced forward looking to the left. She is wearing a blue shirt in front of a white background.]

SARAH GARTON STANLEY
Additional Dramaturgy

Theatre Director, Dramaturg, and Ph.D. Candidate in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University, Sarah Garton Stanley, from Montreal, now lives on the unceded and ancestral lands of the Mi’kmaq in Southwest Nova Scotia. She was recently appointed Artistic Producer for the National Creation Fund at Canada’s National Arts Centre. Sarah is a founding Artistic Director of SpiderWebShow, co-founder of FOLDA, and a former Artistic Director of Buddies In Bad Times Theatre. In 2020 she became a co-steward of the legendary Birchdale in Nova Scotia. Sarah has been collaborating with Artistic Fraud for a whole lot of years, and considers herself extremely lucky to be able to say this.

[ID: A white person wearing a navy blue, floral-patterned dress and is framed in front of a brown fence covered in lush greenery. Her shoulder-length, auburn curls are tied back from her pale face, revealing gold-rimmed glasses and a smile.]

SARA DOREY
Scenic Painter

Sara Dorey (they/she) is a theatre and filmmaker based in St. John’s, NL. She has strong roots in the performing arts and studied Visual Arts at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College. Sara has had opportunities to work in various areas of theatre, film and television production, finding a deep passion for scenic art & design. She adores her work, her favourite aspect being that each day differs wildly from the next. Notable scenic credits: Jersey Boys, Kinky Boots, La Cage aux Folles (TaDa! Events); Supper Club 2021 and 2023 tour (RCA Theatre Company); The Wild Rovers tour, No Change in the Weather tour (Terra Bruce Productions), Son Of A Critch Seasons 1, 2 & 3 (Take The Shot Productions); The Silent Planet film (The Silent Planet Productions NL); I Forgive You (Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland); Astrid & Lilly Save The World Season 1 (Blue Ice Pictures); The Mirror (PerSIStence Theatre); The Adventures Of Gary & Lou Season 1 (Blue Pinion Films).

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Resource Centre for The Arts Staff

Laura Williams Interim Artistic Animateur
Nicole Smith Interim Artistic Associate

Suzanne Mullett General Manager                                
August Carrigan Communications and Marketing Manager
Kevin Woolridge Operations Manager
Ian Campbell Volunteer Coordinator

Ren Follett Box Office Manager
Jen Fleming Box Office Supervisor
Brandon Cave Box Office Attendant/ Bartender
Allie Duff Box Office Attendant/ Bartender
Cheney Emberg Box Office Attendant/ Bartender
Paul Warford Box Office Attendant/ Bartender

Reg Hoskins Technical Director
Sarah White Technical Director Associate
Phil Winters Theatre Technician

RCA Board of Directors

Crystal Laffoley – Chair Producer/Stage Manager
Loan Hong – Treasurer Accountant – KPMG
Jennifer Walsh – Secretary, HR Chair Manager, Food Innovation, BC Ministry of Agriculture and Food
Laura Brocklehurst Lawyer-Cox & Palmer
Courtney Brown – Actor
Willow Kean Actor/Playwright
Brian Kenny Theatrical Designer
Alison Stoodley Marketing Consultant
Krista Vokey Coordinator
Sherry White Producer/Director/Writer-TV/Film

Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland was formed in St. John’s in 1995. Over the past twenty nine years the company has come to be hailed as one of English Canada’s most daring and innovative companies. The works of Artistic Fraud and its creators, director Jillian Keiley and Robert Chafe, have played across the country to high acclaim and have garnered Jill the 2004 Siminovitch Prize for directing and Robert the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Artistic Fraud has created 17 original theatrical works, 8 of which have toured nationally including Oil & Water, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Under Wraps, Between Breaths, After Image, Emile’s Dream and I Forgive You.

ARTISTIC FRAUD STAFF
Artistic Director – Robert Chafe
Artistic Director Emeritus – Jillian Keiley
Managing Producer – James Richardson
Marketing & Communications Officer – Emma Cole

ARTISTIC FRAUD BOARD OF DIRECTORS
John Drover, Erin French, Kate Greenwood, David Hood, Heather Moore & David Somers

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[ID: An image of blue ocean water with white text that reads Artistic Fraud of Newfoundland Call for Applications Dr. Lanier Phillips Memorial Scholarship $1000 awarded annually to a BIPOC post-secondary student entering the performing arts, in or from Newfoundland and Labrador Deadline June 1, 2024 visit www.artisticfraud.com for details.]

[ID: Gradient color background with pink to blue to green with the word HA! repeated. A cartoon seagull with a green beanie and bowtie and white text that reads Newfoundland & Labrador Sketch Fest April 3-7 At the  hub 21 Merrymeeting rd St. John’s Newfoundland @NLsketchfest NL Sketch Fest]

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