Every summer, Place des Arts has produced a free play, performed at Coquitlam’s Town Centre Park Plaza (or online, which was the case last year with COVID-19). This play is put on by our Summer Teen Theatre Troupe which is a by-audition, performance-based company where the cast works with a professional theatre director, stage manager and designers to produce a play.

This year, we have decided to rename this program from Summer Teen Theatre Troupe to Summer Theatre Troupe. Why?

Our Programming and Events Coordinator, Michael Fera had this to say:

This year marks the 8^th Summer of the Summer Teen Theatre Troupe. A program near and dear to us at Place des Arts. Over the year’s we have presented family-friendly adaptations of literary classics from JM Barrie to William Shakespeare outside in the local parks and at the TD Community Stage of Coquitlam. This year we have made an ever so slight change to the name. It is now simply the Summer Theatre Troupe. Why the change? The program has always been inclusive but now more than ever we want to reflect that in our name. Yes, the program will strive to engage young teen actors but this year we have two Emerging Theatre Artists joining the core creative team. These Emerging Artists will be mentored by master theatre artists that have made a tremendous contribution to both the local, national and international theatre scene. We are tremendously excited for this season’s production and can’t wait to announce the show and our talented line-up of artists.

This summer we are putting on The Grimm Fairy Tales: An Inclusive Reimagining which is a new approach to this program. Emerging IBPOC/LGBTQIA2S+ theatre professionals will take the reins of the Troupe, and with the mentorship of a seasoned creative team, they will share their contemporary life experiences through reinterpretations of three folk stories originally documented in the 18th century by the Brothers Grimm.