{"id":12550,"date":"2016-10-05T09:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-10-05T16:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12550"},"modified":"2016-10-03T13:21:01","modified_gmt":"2016-10-03T20:21:01","slug":"kirsten-van-ritzen-returns-for-another-round-of-sin-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/10\/05\/kirsten-van-ritzen-returns-for-another-round-of-sin-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirsten Van Ritzen returns for another round of Sin City<\/em>"},"content":{"rendered":"

Actress\/comedian Kirsten Van Ritzen has starred in a plethora of plays, acted in television commercials, and toured with a live theatre troupe.<\/p>\n

But Victorians most likely know her as the creator of and actress in her own live theatre improv show, Sin City<\/i>.<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen and her partner moved to Victoria in late 2010; just a few months later, they created Sin City<\/i>, and they have been performing here ever since. Every year, a new installment is introduced, with a new setting and new characters.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The Sin City improv serial aims to entertain regulars as well as those who just stop in for one show (photo by David Bruce).<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s always been a passion,\u201d says Van Ritzen. \u201cMy partner and I, we created this format. We did it in Edmonton for several years; then, when we moved to Toronto, we did it there. Then we found our way to Victoria, and we started the company here with these local improvisers, who were amazing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen says that the plot of Sin City <\/i>isn\u2019t incredibly complicated and stresses that even though it\u2019s a serial, people can come for just one night and enjoy it.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll laugh a lot, you\u2019ll be entertained, and it will be super easy to figure out what\u2019s going on,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen says that theatre in Canada doesn\u2019t pay well for those working behind the scenes, but if it\u2019s your love, you do it anyway. Financial security can be an issue, but she says that\u2019s the price you sometimes have to pay in order to live your dreams and practice your passion.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s ups and downs when you\u2019re a Canadian actor,\u201d says Van Ritzen. \u201cPeople think you\u2019re either famous or you\u2019re not; there is actually a lot of in between, where you\u2019re a working actor and you have a lot of good years that are lucrative and you have a lot of years where you\u2019ve got day jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Van Ritzen has been a dedicated actress since she graduated from university. She fondly remembers spending part of her first year touring Saskatchewan in a van during a frosty, snow-gripped winter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI majored in theatre, and in my first year out of the gates I got professional work,\u201d she says. \u201cI toured Saskatchewan in the winter, which is about as brutal as you can imagine. We were travelling in a van to northern Saskatchewan; at 7 in the morning you load your set into some high-school gymnasium and do a show at 9 in the morning, and get on the road and go to the next town. It\u2019s kind of a rite of passage for a lot of professional Canadian actors\u2014your first year, you do touring for young audiences.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aside from improv, Van Ritzen\u2019s other great passion is stand-up comedy. She teaches a class on stand-up, and some of her graduates have gone on to perform around the world. Instead of feeling nervous or catching stage fright when performing, Van Ritzen thrives in her element and finds performing in front of a live audience to be enthralling, regardless of whether it\u2019s improv or stand-up.<\/p>\n

\u201cI love improv because you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to happen, and you\u2019re completely trusting in the other people you\u2019re on stage with,\u201d she says. \u201cThat\u2019s the addiction for us, the adrenaline of not knowing what\u2019s going to happen. We look in each other\u2019s eyes and then something amazing happens that neither of us expected, and, to me, that\u2019s the rush of it. Stand-up is a different kind of rush, because it\u2019s the relationship just between you and the audience, and you\u2019re in charge of what\u2019s going to happen. You get your laughs or you don\u2019t get your laughs, but you\u2019re completely on your own for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sin City
\n<\/i>Tuesday, October 25
\nto Tuesday, December 13
\n(Season launch 8 pm Tuesday, October 18)
\nVarious prices, Victoria Event Centre
\nsincityimprovserial.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Actress\/comedian Kirsten Van Ritzen has starred in a plethora of plays, acted in television commercials, and toured with a live theatre troupe. But Victorians most likely know her as the creator of and actress in her own live theatre improv show, Sin City. Van Ritzen and her partner moved to Victoria in late 2010; just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12551,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-october-5-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12550"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12553,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12550\/revisions\/12553"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}