East Van Panto: Beauty and the Beast writing duo Christine Quintana and Jiv Parasram embrace the weird
Pair draws on contrasting comedic styles and deep roots in the ‘hood for The Cultch and Theatre Replacement’s beloved holiday tradition
East Van Panto: Beauty and the Beast, with Steffanie Davis and the Panto Kids. Photo by Emily Cooper. Illustrations by Cindy Mochizuki
The Cultch presents East Van Panto: Beauty and the Beast at the York Theatre to January 7
YOU COULD CALL them an East Van theatre power couple. So it makes perfect sense that Christine Quintana and Jiv Parasram, life partners and celebrated playwrights, have penned this year’s East Van Panto—a fun, hyperlocal spin on Beauty and the Beast. And they’re happily bringing the weird.
“I definitely feel like we wanted to keep it super, super weird,” Quintana says. “I remember growing up going to the Leaky Heaven Circus shows at the Cultch, which were absolutely wildly off the wall. We wanted to bring some of that truly, truly unhinged flavour to the Panto.”
She’s speaking to Stir with her other half from their Drive-area home, where they’re holed up with colds.
Quintana is the well-known force behind the plays Espejos: Clean, Selfie, and—premiering last month—the critically lauded Cyrano update Someone Like You at the Arts Club. (Its star, Steffanie Davis, happens to be playing Belle in this Panto.) Parasram is an award-winning multidisciplinary artist known for pushing theatrical forms. The founding artistic producer of Pandemic Theatre and artistic director of Rumble Theatre is also the creative force behind the one-man hit Take d Milk, Nah?.
Putting their own warped take on Beauty and the Beast—the latest installment of the beloved holiday tradition from Theatre Replacement and The Cultch, the pair has been making the most of their contrasting comedic styles.
Remarkably, it’s the first theatre work they’ve written together. And the process was incredibly fast, says Quintana, who’s used to building plays gradually over months and years. The two playwrights trust each other’s instincts, but come at the material from vastly different styles—often at the breakfast table.
“We have very different senses of humour, so it’s a good balance,” Quintana explains. “Jiv’s sense of humour is random, wild, off the wall, trippy, and wacky—which is amazing, and not my strong suit.”
Parasram jumps in with, “Christine’s is a lot more grounded and based on character.”
Jiv Parasram. Photo by Graham Isador
Christine Quintana. Photo by Reznek Creative
He adds that Quintana brings the added bonus of knowing exactly which jokes will land from the stage. In 2018 she put in countless performances as Dorothy in East Van Panto: The Wizard of Oz (by playwright Marcus Youssef).
“Having done the long run, you know what sort of jokes really fly with a potential audience,” she says. “And you hear the kids shuffling around in their seats, because they're waiting for the next big, shiny thing to come on stage.”
Parasram suggests that experience has also made Quintana a great source for understanding the show’s uniquely intergenerational crowd.
“We're not talking like, you know, ages 18 to 60,” Parasram says. “We're talking ages three and up, which is different. And I think it requires a different sensibility.”
The pair also shares an intimate knowledge of East Van, Quintana having grown up there, and Parasram living in the community for the past decade. It’s a familiarity you’ll appreciate in the witty details of their Beauty and the Beast, many of which are under wraps. What we can tell you is that, in this version, a business-minded Belle gets separated from her free-spirited dad Maurice and becomes trapped in an enchanted specialty grocery store—with a surprise Beast who the pair promise will be familiar to anyone who lives in the ‘hood. Belle’s friends include Miso Potts, little Tofu, and their Bento Buds—a nod to the couple’s food obsessions on the Drive.
As a child, one of Quintana’s favourite moments in the Disney movie was the scene when the Beast reveals to Belle the floor-to-ceiling books of his castle’s grand library. Searching for a local site that would inspire the same kind of wonder, she dug back into her own East Van past. “I remember going to a specialty grocery store with my mom as a special treat, after volunteering at the SPCA on Sundays, which we did every week,” she says. “I was thinking of being small and looking over into the cooler at all the beautiful food and all the delicious snacks and different things, and having that same feeling of awe and anticipation.
“And then of course the idea of enchanted sushi and enchanted food items—now having travelled a bit, I have a real appreciation for getting to grow up with such beautiful international food,” she says. “Little Italy is great—we love pizza and pasta, plus sushi and tempura and noodles, and all of those delicious things are just as much a part of it for me.”
Both Quintana and Parasram stress that this year’s production brings the story to life not just through Panto composer Veda Hille’s usual master mix of pop tunes, but through next-level visuals, care of set designer Lauchlin Johnston, scenic illustrator Cindy Mochizuki, and costume designer Alaia Hamer. “I'm so blown away by her costumes,” Quintana says. “We gave her some impossible characters to make costumes for. And she has made things that are both hilarious and beautiful, which is such a tricky combination to do. You can expect lots of nods to Japanese culture, which has been really fun.”
That fun, and weirdness, may be just what the world needs at this moment.
“We live in surreal times now,” Parasram says. “As the real world gets weirder and weirder, and it gets harder to understand, I think our appetite for absurdity has increased. So we want to meet that appetite for sure.”
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