Introducing “Pull the Pin” – New projects for 2013!

Ever since our 2009 production of Palace of the End, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades has shown a strong interest in expanding our programming beyond our theatre productions. Simply put: we wished to broaden and extend the overall “experience” for everyone involved in our work: both our audiences and our artists. As our works themselves have bec0me more politicized, socially relevant, and immediately at the crux of what it is to be human, so too has the desire to delve deeper into the nature of our works and the ideas that they raise. And so we’re introducing a new branch of programming for Horseshoes & Hand Grenades Theatre: our outreach and community engagement program called Pull the Pin.

During Palace of the End, the award-winning play by Judith Thompson that told three stories of the Iraq-U.S. War, we presented a short series of events that we called our “Conversation Series”. These events focused on the themes of military interventionism and war crimes.

During our more recent production of Re:Union, partly based on the death-by-sacrifice of U.S. Quaker Norman Morrison, we produced a stand-alone series of outreach and community engagement events called “The Activist City”, with the support of the City of Vancouver’s 125th Anniversary Celebration and the Vancouver Foundation. This diverse and well-attended series of over a dozen events focused on the themes of contemporary and historical modes of political and social activism.

We hope to make Pull the Pin an annual series, but we’ll take it one year at a time. But we’re excited to announce a new Pull the Pin event!

First up is Pull the Pin: Except in the Unlikely Event of War. Tentatively scheduled for April 4, 2013, this event is a partnership with SFU’s Vancity Office of Community Engagement and Pi Theatre. The event will feature a reading of Sean Devine’s new play, as well as a panel discussion to be curated by SFU’s Am Johal, on the likely themes of the increasing geo-political importance of Canada’s Arctic, as well as the ever-deepening role of Chinese expansionism in Canada’s affairs.