t ' r t » N } C4 - Friday, May 4, 1984 - North Shore News WE entertainment Stars to roast Bill EVEN ON a rainy Tuesday morning, Granville Island is jumping. The market is full of goody- seekers. Delicious clouds of steam from the French bakery scent the air. It’s only eleven, but the three- drink lunches have already begun at the various restaurants. By KELLEY JO BURKE people enjoy things more when they have to work for them just a bit. And they do seem to enjoy the Arts Club Theatre. The So maybe Fate should have Arts Club, with Granville provided more parking, but Island as its main stage, has managed to establish itself successtully during a reces- sion, no small feat. Artistic director Bill Millerd says he didn’t have all that much to do with it. His peers say different. They think so highly of the work he has done for nearly 13 years for the Arts Club that they will be spending $125 a plate on Sunday, May 6, to hear him insulted to his face. The Arts Club, which com- bines the senior theatre on Seymour Street with two Granville Island off-shoots, is celebrating its 20th an- niversary with a multi-star, best of the musicals perfor- mance, dinner, dance, and to add extra zest to the evening, a roast of Bill Millerd. Millerd became director of Arts Club in 1972. It was under his direction that it ex- panded to the Granville Island location. With the larger facilities, plus those of Seymour St., and later the Arts Club Revue Theatre, Millerd was able to mount larger scale, more commercial projects. After 20 years of ‘‘walking the tightrope’’ between safe and challenging theatre, Arts Fate surely intended Gran- ville Island to have a theatre. 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AND 7 P.M.-9 P.M, DAILY Club ts one of the few Cana- dian theatres that maintains itself almost enturrely on box office revenue. And Millerd is in the enviable position of being able to list off the pro- jects he always wanted to do, and to discover that he’s already done them. “1 think our survival is a testament to the dedication of an awful lot of people who worked many years for little money,’’ Millerd says, listing off technical, artustic, and ad- ministrative staff that have been at the theatre through thick and thin, ‘I just hap- pened to be here.”’ His co-workers say, however, that Millerd is a big factor in the theatre’s success with an accurate eye for talent, and what the public will pay to see. ‘| like Vancouver because the people here treat theatre as a part of hfe ... and they’ll really come to anything as long as it’s good,’’ he says. He has little patience with the ‘‘doom and gloomers”’ who see Canadian theatre as stagnant and unchallenging. “We've done Bent and Chairs,’ he stresses, ‘‘as well as 1 Do, I Do. Sure some peo- ple say, oh, they’re doing Dial M for Murder again, but that’s one in two hundred plays.”’ He adds that the more pessimistic serve their pur- pose as well, that of the theatre community’s cons- cience, but that he sees the future more positively, **basically to do as many dif- ferent things as we want... Money will always be a restriction, and there are only so many chances you can take, but we do take those risks.’” He waves to the stacks and heaps of notebooks littering his office, ‘‘I] get one new play and one project sugges- tion a day, on the average. Yesterday | had one for an al! female Macbeth. | can’t even absorb most of it... which is just as well sometimes, some of it is, well say awful. (Millerd’s mother lives on the North Shore, so he requests that all expletives be deleted) but new work is coming out of the Vancouver communi- ty, everyday.”’ BILL MILLERD, North Shore boy made good, bugs Ann Mortifee, North Shore girl made up. Both will be participating tn the Arts Club Gala and Roast, Sunday, May 6 canon S, at VTC/CBO on site sales $9 95. Bumper Boats & Go Karts exctuded FREE ADMISSION EXHIBITION PARK y at 3, & Major Malls,