Firehall Arts Centre to become CORPORATE U
Headlines Theatre teams up with globalization activists Check Your Head

Headlines Theatre and cutting-edge anti-globalization educators Check Your Head present Corporate U, a corporate take-over of the Firehall Arts Centre. Created by 20 street-savvy activists, this theatre event will explore how corporations - richer and more powerful than most countries - influence our attitudes, relationships, economies and environment. The Firehall will be transformed into a corporate university campus, an immersion that will extend right out onto the street.

It has been almost a year since "the Battle in Seattle", which saw 50,000 citizens shut down the meetings of the World Trade Organization. It's an appropriate time to consider how corporate globalization erodes democracy, and what can be done about it, using the language of theatre. Headlines' forum theatre format means the audience is part of the action, joining the cast in experimenting with new ways to take power back from the faceless - but all too well-branded - transnationals.

Over its 20-year history Headlines Theatre has built a reputation for getting to the heart of issues. Last year's very successful Squeegee explored the lives of Vancouver's squeegee kids, starring a cast of street-involved youth. This year the cast are all activists - focussed on issues of feminism, social justice, environment - united in their concern about globalization. The production is directed by Headlines' Artistic and Managing Director David Diamond.

To create Corporate U Headlines has teamed up with Check Your Head, a youth-driven organization which counters corporate presence in high schools and universities by educating students on globalization. Check Your Head co-coordinator Kevin Millsip, a graduate of Langara's Studio 58 theatre program, is a Corporate U cast member. Millsip is joined by Charlene Wee, Emme Lee, and Valerie Laub. The cast is spending the week of November 6 through 11 with 15 additional activists, workshopping the issues and focussing them into compelling theatre. The corporate campus will be created by Designer and Technical Director Craig Hall, Stage Manager Kelly Creelman, Lighting Director Shane Droucker, and Costumer Christine Hackman.

The new anti-globalization resistance movement is well-versed in technological tools. Internet activism stopped the first round of the Multilateral Agreement on Investment. Demonstrators at key global gatherings, including the recent G20 summit in Montreal and the upcoming Biotech conference in Vancouver, stay one step ahead of ever-larger armies of law enforcement using cell phones and Palm Pilots. Media activists stream up-to-the-minute demonstration footage onto the internet, where its immediate global availability challenges the dominance of the mainstream press.

Headlines' is embracing the realtime revolution by taking Corporate U onto the internet for the world's first forum theatre webcast. Headlines' has done live telecasts with Rogers Cable 4 for over a decade: watchers can phone in and have a designated "TV intervenor" try out their ideas on stage. The addition of webcast technology will enable anyone with internet access anywhere in the world to participate in Corporate U's closing night. Appropriate technology for a production on globalization, the "totally wired" issue of our times.

photo: David Cooper
international connections:
foreground: Valerie Laub as Claire
background: Charlene Wee as sweatshop worker, Kevin Millsip as line manager

photo: David Cooper
Kevin Millsip as Andrew Hamilton

Cast Members

Valerie Laub is an actor, writer, playshop fa-silly-tator, and clown, returning to the stage after several years focusing on her art therapy practice. She was involved in many collaborative works as writer/actor, travelling throughout the Kootenays and Vancouver Island, and was a regular creator/performer at the Women in View Festival. Forum theatre unites her passions for theatre, the psychology of the human condition, and the grief and glory of the individual story.

Emme Lee is an actor and model. Her activist background includes organizing campus boycotts and supporting environmental campaigns. She is currently struggling with the dichotomy of being an anti-globalization activist and a model.

As co-cordinator of Check Your Head: the Youth Global Education Network, Kevin Millsip has given hundreds of workshops on globalization to high school and university students. He has worked as an educator with a number of organizations, including Axis Theatre Society, the Council of Canadians, and the Anglican Church. Kevin is a graduate of Langara College's Studio 58 theatre program.

Charlene Wee is a UBC Sociology graduate and social justice advocate who has spent the last seven years "tickling the cultural dilemma." Charlene volunteers at the UBC Women's Resource Centre and has worked with the popular theatre group the Rice Girls and with the UBC Women of Colour Network.