Theatre Under the Stars brings Sister Act to Stanley Park this summer
The musical adaptation of the beloved 1992 film opens July 3 at Malkin Bowl, with Kat Reynolds in her first professional lead role as a Philadelphia lounge singer turned undercover nun.
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Sister Act, the musical adaptation of the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg comedy, is coming to Theatre Under the Stars this summer — and the Malkin Bowl production is betting that audiences who love the film are primed for a theatrical version.
Director and choreographer Peter Jorgensen is helming the production, which opens July 3 and runs through August 21. The story remains the same: an audacious Philadelphia lounge singer named Deloris witnesses a murder, goes into witness protection disguised as a nun, and inevitably transforms the convent's choir into a gospel, disco, and soul sensation.
Everything that worked in the movie is "strengthened in this adaptation," Jorgensen said. "The characters are stronger, the themes are stronger." The musical, adapted by Alan Menken and Glenn Slater, adds significantly more songs than the film and embraces the Philly soul era of the late 1970s. Act two opens with "Sunday Night Fever" — the nuns' homage to disco.
Kat Reynolds, an East Van-based theatre artist who has worked in the city for over a decade, is making her Theatre Under the Stars debut and stepping into her first professional lead. She's drawn to the role's perspective: "Seeing a hero's journey from the point of view of a Black woman is very rare, especially in this city." Reynolds has cried multiple times in rehearsal watching her fellow performers work through the material — a sign, she said, of the show's emotional resonance.
Because TUTS productions happen outdoors in Stanley Park, the production team must account for weather and daylight. All of act one takes place on the Malkin Bowl stage in broad daylight, with the sun setting around intermission and act two unfolding in darkness. Jorgensen has calculated the sun's direction and timing to account for how light will hit the stage at certain moments — a logistical puzzle unique to outdoor theatre. Birds and other city critters may show up uninvited; that's simply part of the risk.
Tickets start at $35 at tuts.ca.
