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GIANTS III: Ryan Beil's SELF QUEST

Vancouver comedy fans know GIANTS III centerpiece, Ryan Beil, from his weekly performances with improv heartthrobs The Sunday Service . But Beil is also a dramatic actor (pronounced act-ooore) of the highest caliber.

Vancouver comedy fans know GIANTS III centerpiece, Ryan Beil, from his weekly performances with improv heartthrobs The Sunday Service. But Beil is also a dramatic actor (pronounced act-ooore) of the highest caliber.

It all started many years ago in a room in Lord Byng High School, most likely full of black ‘imagination cubes’ and covered in wall-to-wall speckled carpet. Drama class. That special place where young minds search for the purest expression of the human condition…or at least a ‘skipable 3rd period’. Occasionally, in that strange adolescent melting pot of nerds, creatively repressed bullies and marginally talented ‘hot girls’, a student with real dramatic potential will come along. Ryan Beil was that student.

If you once were or currently are a 16-year-old male, you know that life at that age consists largely of misguided attempts to grow a ‘tough mustaches’, random and inexplicable erections and Friday nights spent in public parks drinking from water bottles filled with several drops from each and every bottle of alcohol in your parents’ house. 16-years-old. That was Ryan Beil’s age when he wrote the GIANTS III centerpiece, a play entitled Self Quest (yes, that’s the real title).

Self Quest emerged from Beil’s self-described desire to “express himself and get attention from girls.” The play stars a young man who voyages into the deserts of self-discovery as well as the actual desert. Spoiler alert: he learns something about himself AND about getting attention from girls. This adolescent time capsule was lost to humanity as Beil went on to become a classically trained actor of the highest order.

He earned a BFA in acting from the University of British Columbia and when on to star in productions like A Comedy of Errors (Bard on the Beach), Billy Bishop Goes to War (Arts Club) and American Buffalo (Main Street Theatre Co). Beil recently won a Jessie Richardson Theatre Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Lead Role, Large Theatre (or a JRTAOPALRLT as it’s called in ‘the biz’). By all accounts, he’s a pretty big deal.

Ryan Beil’s recent ascension to the top of the theatre world makes this one-night-only remount of Self Quest all the more exciting. It’s a wonderful opportunity to watch one of Vancouver’s most engaging performers rediscover a hormone-drenched work from his ‘early period’. On January 14th, Ryan Beil will dust off Self Quest one more time before putting it to rest forever. With an all-adult cast and starring Beil himself, Self Quest is a joyous exploration of one actor’s self-described “massive and confusing ego”.

Tickets for GIANTS III feat. Self Quest by Ryan Beil are available now! The show also features performances from Charlie Demers, Adam Pateman, Fancy Pants, Ryan Steele and Amy Goodmurphy. January 14th at The Cultch. Be there.

Location: The Vancity Culture Lab 1895 Venables Street

Tickets: $10 Available at the door or in advance at www.giantscomedy.com

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Find out more! www.giantscomedy.com