Urban TalesTake a break from holiday parties, glittering Christmas lights and the cheery
sound of sleigh bells! Attend the 5th edition of Urban Tales, the naughty, anti‐holiday storytelling
extravaganza at Centaur Theatre. Funny, dark and risqué, the 2011 cuvee features five local Anglophone
writers and a classic by Yvan Bienvenue, the creator of Contes Urbains/Urban Tales.
Vertip by Joseph Shragge, as told by: Andreas Apergis
“My name is Vertip and I live in the basement of the Ukrainian community centre on St. Urbain street. Every year I curate and direct
the Christmas pageant. My inheritance from my parents was the puppets, costumes and props. I store them all in my room and
before I go to sleep, the last people I see are Kozak the Cossack, Liakh the Polack, Tyshan the Gypsy, Krapmus the Christmas
creature‐demon, Shwarte Piet the Moore and Zhyd, the Jew, hunched, bearded, clutching a bag of shekels…”
The Hose and Dry Goods Specialty Store by Simon Sachs, as told by: Danette Mackay
“People like me … don’t sleep… I mean we do fall asleep. And even occasionally stay that way for an hour or two. But a deep, calm,
thoughtless, memory‐less sleep, with your heart beating so slowly it seems almost to have forgotten itself ‐ the kind of plump, selfsatisfied
sleep that awaited my late husband Paul every night of his life, including his last one, the night before that cold, snowy
morning that Aaron, my lovely, little Jew and I smothered the life out of him in the basement of our house ‐ I really think you need to
be comfortably settled in yourself to sleep like that.”
Death & Co. (La mort et le mort) by Yvan Bienvenue (translation: Standjofski), As told by: Tristan D. Lalla & Guest
“I’m Death. Well, no, not Death exactly. More like a representative. Like an elf. An imp, a lutin. Like Santa Clause has. I’m like one of
Santa’s Little Helpers. But for Death. Yup.
I’m Death’s Little Helper”
two phone calls by Harry Standjofski, as told by: Alex Bisping
“It’s funny to think that my best Christmas ever would have been spent quite alone and in prison. Christmas 2010. Astonishing…”
Three Hobgoblins by Jim Burke, as told by: Harry Standjofski
“An angry imp came in here out of the forest. This was years ago. Boy, was he angry. Most of all, angry about being kept waiting at
the bar for twenty minutes and no sign of service… and he cooked up a spell right there. Dropped a megaton of malevolence on the
place. “For years – years ‐ to come, this shithole will remain just as it is. A nuclear winter it’ll be. Frozen. Everything. In this exact
moment. And that goes for every bastard in here.” … Late ‘70s, this was. Height of punk. And for thirty years or more, this bar has
had the same crappy decor, the same bleary clientele, the same frazzled old fart dropping the same crackly tunes on the juke box ...”
Virgin by Joanne Sarazen, as told by: Lindsay Wilson
“My name is Mary‐Margaret White and I have never looked like a virgin. In the face. Literally. My face, I guess, has never looked like
a virgin’s...face.”
Regular : $22.
Subscribers / Seniors / Under 30 / Theatre : $18.
Students : $16
Presented with Théâtre Urbi et Orbi
