The Cultch brings back the hit musical revue do you want what i have got? a craigslist cantata
The show based on weird and whacked-out ads livestreams from November 19 to 22
Chirag Naik and Amanda Sum in do you want what i have got? a craigslist cantata. Photo by Emily Cooper
The Cultch is bringing back one of Vancouver’s biggest musical-revue hits—one with an all-too-timely look at connecting on the internet. Do you want what I have got? a craigslist cantata streams streams from November 19 to 22; tickets and info are here.
Written by author and broadcaster Bill Richardson, indie singer-songwriter Veda Hille, and theatre artist Amiel Gladstone, do you want what I have got? a craigslist cantata is based on real on Craigslist posts—an online classified site with over 50 million ads going up each month. And after a held-over debut at the Arts Club where it premiered in 2012 during the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, it went on to tour everywhere from Whitehorse to the Musical Stage Company in Toronto, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, and beyond.
As hilarious and quirky as it is moving, the show introduces audiences to a cast of weird and wonderful characters trying to buy and sell online. Advertising everything from hats for cats to mounted lobsters, the listings provide side-splitting fare for the show’s original songs, which include “300 Stuffed Penguins,” “Chilli Eating Buddy,” “Decapitated Dolls,” and more. Juxtaposed into a massive array of spoken words and song lyrics here, the postings somehow perfectly capture all our human wants, needs, and longings.
This remount features a new cast of favourite Vancouver actors—Meaghan Chenosky, Chirag Naik, Amanda Sum, and Andrew Wheeler—as well as the return of Josh Epstein returns.
Gladstone (who also teamed up with Hille on the hit musical Onegin) is back in the director’s chair, with the added challenge of translating the musical for a livestreamed performance for pandemic times—an era when, more than ever, people are trying to connect online.
Cultch pandemic artist-in-residence Hille, recently seen in her own solo livestream show Little Volcano, takes her place at the piano, joined by Barry Mirochnick on drums.
This post was sponsored by The Cultch