Everyone We Know Will Be There

Produced by Tiny Bear Jaws. Workshop Production June 2016. Premiere in Edmonton in a suburban house and Co-Produced with Swallow-A-Bicycle in a suburban house in Calgary June 2017. VR adaptation in development with film maker Anna Cooley.

Written by Elena Belyea
Dramaturgy by Dean Patrick Fleming, Sarah Elkashef, and Emma Tibaldo
Directed by Andrew Ritchie
Production Management, Stage Management, Sound Design and Technical Direction by Tori Morrison 
Main Acting Company: Eva Foote, Ashleigh Hicks, Jacob Holloway, Roland Meseck, Gabriel Richardson
Photo credit: Mat Simpson
Poster design: Meags Fitzgerald

Keg stands, Sour Puss, Snapchat and Yukaflux. Brad’s parents are out of town for the weekend, which means only one thing — the most orgiastic, booze-filled rager this school has ever seen. Everyone we know will be there, plus a few nobodies. A deafening investigation of teenage sex, identity, consent, and the warm, wet lessons we can only learn in the dark.

Everyone We Know Will Be There is a live immersive experience. 5 different audience pods follow each character of the show through a 1 act house party set in a real suburban house.  

“You can only imagine how complicated this kind of spontaneous chaos, at the intersection of the individual and the group, is to synchronize. The natural rhythms of start and stop, and the scrambly, brusing escalation of tension fuelled by booze, happen at Brad’s place: stories within stories. Kudos to Belyea, Ritchie and stage/production manager Tori Morrison, all founders of Edmonton’s Found Festival, for figuring out the smaller personal arcs within a larger arc of a “play.”” – Liz Nicholls

I went to that bash at Brad’s: Everyone We Know Will Be There

“For the Children: Everyone We Know Will Be There is a truly immersive play that takes place in a suburban house. The youth-oriented piece was inspired by playwright Elena Belyea’s time at the National Theatre School. “I was feeling a bit challenged because I feel like a lot of theatre written for young people can be preachy or very lesson-based,” she says. “I started trying to write the play that I wished I could have given myself when I was young.”” – Josiah Hughes, Swerve 

https://calgaryherald.com/author/josiah-hughes-swerve