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'In A Blue Moon' explores family dynamics

Cross-Canada tour kicks off in North Vancouver
in a blue moon

In a Blue Moon, Friday, Jan. 8 at The BlueShore at Cap. Tickets: $41/$37/$20, at capilanou.ca/blueshorefinancialcentre

Canadian theatre luminary Lucia Frangione has a knack for relatability with her plays, mining her own life for character and storyline inspiration.

In Espresso, arguably Frangione’s most successful show, she plays three Italian-Canadian women grappling with the imminent death of the family patriarch.

Espresso was inspired by true events from Frangione’s own Italian upbringing, and saw her injecting her family’s idiosyncrasies into the show – like when they brought biscotti to the intensive care unit where her dad was hooked up to an intravenous drip.

Frangione kept a mental note of how her family handled a series of health misfortunes, but waited 12 years to pen the play Espresso. Her patience paid off as Espresso was well received, with Frangione earning the Canadian Actors’ Equity Association emerging artist award and seven Jessie Award nominations on the strength of that production.

“I think plays are about survival. We watch plays to know how to survive these tragedies to be able to have the strength to laugh at them and to be able to come through them,” says Frangione of why writing relatable material resonates with audiences, when reached at her East Vancouver home a few days before Christmas.

In her comedy and first big hit, Holy Mo, Frangione even managed to humanize Moses, by making him a stuttering ex-con who stammers through the 10 Commandments.

Frangione, a Calgary native, penned Holy Mo in 1997 with two of her fellow classmates from the Rosebud School of the Arts.

“It was just us three girls who were graduates of Rosebud, and we wrote this silly little show and took it across Canada with a 300-pound circus wagon in the back of our pickup,” says Frangione, laughing. “We lost so much money, we almost quit. I said, ‘No, girls, we’ve put so much effort in so far, keep going.’”

Their perseverance was rewarded on the West Coast where Holy Mo won a Pick of the Fringe accolade at the Vancouver Fringe Festival and got picked up by Vancouver’s Pacific Theatre which has since produced the play four times.

Most of Frangione’s writing explores themes of spirituality. She has questioned the effects Christianity has on family and sexuality through humour.

Her new play, In a Blue Moon, however, guides Frangione into a new writing frontier as she now begins her exploration about “what is family?”

“I have written a lot of religion in the past, and I feel I’ve said what I need to say about that, and I’m now moving into conversations about family and community,” says Frangione.

In a Blue Moon is described as a visually beautiful tale about creating a new life in a new landscape.

When Ava (Anita Wittenberg) and her daughter, Frankie (Emma Tow), move to an inherited cottage near Kamloops, they discover that Ava’s late husband’s brother (Brett Christopher) is already living there. Initially, it’s a tense environment for the trio, but along the way unexpected relationships blossom as Frankie finds a role model in her uncle and Ava grows attached to the companionship of this other man.

“Through memories and photographs, a tender love story unfolds between the three as they begin to thread together a new understanding of family,” says a press release from the Arts Club Theatre Company, which is producing the touring show along with Western Canada Theatre (Kamloops) and Thousand Islands Playhouse (Gananoque, Ont.) from Jan. 8 to 30.

In a Blue Moon is the first new script developed by the Arts Club to premiere as a cross-Canada partnership between three producing companies, and, as Frangione explains, underwent many interesting iterations over a seven-year period.

“I just kept writing as I kept waiting for a producer,” says Frangione, laughing. “And I’m glad I had that time because this one took me a while to unravel how to tell this story. It’s been a million different things. It’s been a physical piece with a lot of yoga in it – didn’t work. It was ridiculous, I’m glad I got talked out of it. It was a musical, I have a full score.”

Frangione also went through three different writing partners, but in the end decided to pen the whole play herself. She abandoned the musical idea because she said it wasn’t as powerful as the photography story.

The framework for In a Blue Moon is loosely inspired by a few people from Frangione’s upbringing on the Prairies, but the characters came into her periphery by chance while Frangione was staying at her best friend’s house in Kamloops. Frangione had met Anita Wittenberg in their early days of theatre in Vancouver. While they were catching up, Wittenberg’s daughter, Emma, was practising her violin while they were sitting in the living room having tea. And then she practised jazz. And ballet. And guitar. And singing.

“And I thought, ‘Oh my god, there’s my character Frankie.’”

Frangione immediately rewrote the play to include 14-year-old Frankie, inspired by Emma. Originally, In a Blue Moon was a two-hander and didn’t have a child character. But including Frankie changed the course of the play and created “the most interesting character” in the show, in Frangione’s opinion.

Creating a new sense of family for Frankie is one of the underlying themes of the play. For Frangione, it’s art imitating life in a way.

For a while Frangione was a single mom with a young daughter trying to figure out how to live in Vancouver with the housing market.

“How we were going to exist, just like Ava and Frankie?” says Frangione, recalling that time in her life.

It’s very moving, says Frangione, to see real-life mother-daughter duo Anita and Emma on stage because they look like each other and they have a natural beautiful rapport.

“You just can tell that you are looking at the real thing,” describes Frangione.

As for In a Blue Moon’s leading man, Christopher won over Frangione with his charming ways as an actor.

“He really sank into this role. He’s a dad so he brings that wonderful dad energy to the role. And he’s a handsome guy, and he’s got good chemistry with Anita,” says Frangione.

Up next for the award-winning playwright, Frangione, who has more than 25 pieces under her belt, is penning a new play for Pacific Theatre, a chaser to Holy Mo, called Holy Mo Christmas Show.

“It’s just going to be ridiculous fun is all I can say.”

Frangione also remarried recently, so perhaps the new family dynamic will be fodder for another heartwarming show.