We’re in it together: some thoughts on Shannan Calcutt’s Things I Shouldn’t Tell You at SkirtsAfire

Posted on March 15, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Shannan Calcutt. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the next-to-last moment this weekend at this year’s SkirtsAfire Festival I got a chance to see what happens when a premier clown steps bravely forth to share a big grown-up secret.

In Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, a new show from an artist whose  clown alter-egos include the adorable Izzy (Burnt Tongue, It’s Me, Only Better, Out Of My Skin), Shannan Calcutt arrives onstage to tell a story, her own. It’s a story of discovery, a warning, a personal insurrection at the well-fortified barricades of mystery and ignorance that surround menopause and perimenopause. C’mon, who even knew that word perimenopause a year ago? “I was blindsided, and I won’t let that happen to you,” says Calcutt.

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Clowns have always been about truth-telling, with their unflinching gaze at the world. But the way that this most engaging of performers, somehow (and ease-fully), on a mission creates an alliance with a theatre audience is its own special kind of secret, of course. It has something to do with the super-power of comedy (that would be laughter), and the resilience that comes from an appreciation of absurdity. The capacity to be amused is a flotation device in the slough of despond. But it’s more that that, in a show that’s all about knowing what you’re up against, holding hands, and facing your fears together. “We are in this fuckery together.”

And Act II, when the genial, quick-witted Calcutt dips into a pail of our questions and comments, and a kind of general conversation ensues, is a remarkable demo of bonding. What are you supposed to with pent-up rage, one audience member wonders. And there’s a veritable chorus of suggestions from her cohorts, male and female.

Shannan Calcutt, Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, SkirtsAfire Festival 2026. Photo supplied.

“Trigger word,” there’s a theatre cautionary term that’s a veritable red flag to a clown. Directed and dramaturged by two of Calcutt’s great fellow artists Jan Henderson and T.J. Dawe, the show opens with a trigger-pulling: a confrontation with “menopause” (tucked innocuously between ‘Mennonite’ and ‘menorah’ in the dictionary). And “hot flashes” and “perimenopause.” And Calcutt, who’s originally from small-town Saskatchewan before she became a Vegas Cirque du Soleil star for 15 years, suddenly, mysteriously finds that growing up freezing cold (thank you, Canadian prairies) has ceded, abruptly at age 42, to a strange inner inferno. “I’m on fire” and the raging conflagration can’t be suppressed by hard-core Vegas A/C. The only hint she gets comes from a fellow performer. The hilarity of this irony — “I got my medical advice from a clown!” — isn’t lost on her.

One of the artful, and essential, features of Things I Shouldn’t Tell You is how skilfully Calcutt’s mission to is woven into her own intergenerational, cross-border story (have a peek at the 12thnight preview interview here). Twenty years ago, with a history of hit clown shows in this country, she moved to Vegas to be a clown in the Cirque cabaret Zumanity. “I was topless on the Strip for 15 years,” she muses. “Five million people, no, more, have seen my tits….” And since her act involves filling Ziplock baggies with scotch and making her own breast implants, life and art mix it up when menopausal symptoms arrive at boob level.

Since 2005 when she moved south, Calcutt has been working as a clown and director in a variety of Vegas shows, raising a teenage daughter and son there, and in the past couple of years taking care of her mom in Saskatchewan after Rose’s diagnosis of Lewy body dementia. And it naturally occurs to Calcutt that many of her own bizarre set of symptoms, including insomnia, dry mouth, migraines, are the same as Rose’s, a fearful thought, in addition to crazy-making stress, anxiety, the leaching away of confidence and libido, pimples.

Shannan Calcutt. Photo supplied

This is a story with three generations of women up against it when it comes to blood and pain, and rolling with punches that land, sometimes with great force and unfairly. And there’s Calcutt in the middle, with a naturally funny mother (a Canuck Catskills comic?) who’s losing her mind, and a daughter who’s gaining hers. And though it’s not specifically addressed, much of it is happening in stress-inducing America where there’s occasionally a shooter at school or in a casino.

Anyhow, if Act I is a catalogue of symptoms, that seem startlingly unrelated until they add up, Act II is an invitation to respond, and to consider the possibility of celebrating a natural development in the lives of women. Calcutt, I’ve often thought, has an instinctive flair for celebration onstage: it’s a great gift, this kind of inclusivity, and perimenopause is some sort of ultimate test for throwing a party (with party favours like Vag of Honour air fresheners).   

The show is a remarkable creation, depending as it does on Calcutt’s startling candour about the most intimate personal details, both physical and psychological, about her life. And there’s exhilaration in bonding, in sharing her bravery and her apparently unsquelchable sense of amusement.  It’s a kind of acceptance, yes, but more than that, it’s a special kind of defiance, too.

Catch the show today if you can, at Walterdale. I felt lucky I had a chance. And there are plans to tour it, so stay tuned. Tickets: skirtsafire.com. 

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The secret lives of women, out loud: Shannon Calcutt brings her new show Things I Shouldn’t Tell You to SkirtsAfire

Posted on March 9, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Shannan Calcutt, Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, SkirtsAfire Festival 2026. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The last time we saw Shannan Calcutt on a stage in Edmonton, she was wearing a red nose, a wedding dress, and an irresistible air of hopefulness.

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That’s how the engaging Izzy shows up for a blind date, heart on sleeve, in the first of Calcutt’s hit clown trilogy (Burnt Tongue, It’s Me, Only Better! and Out Of My Skin) that’s tickled audiences across the country.

When we see Calcutt this week, she won’t be wearing a red nose or a costume. She’ll be starring in a new solo show, her first since Out Of My Skin in 2000,  as … Shannon Calcutt. In Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, premiering at SkirtsAfire Thursday, she’s sharing herself. “It’s about me, it’s about my life.. It’s kind of a love letter to women, being a mother, and a daughter, and perimenopause,” declares the cheery voice on the phone from Las Vegas. “It’s the first time IN MY LIFE I’m not playing a quirky over-the-top character…. I put on some mascara and lipstick and that’s it!”

“I had never heard of perimenopause,” Calcutt says. “I didn’t even know the word…. Nobody warned me.” And when symptoms like brain fog, shaky memory dry mouth, insomnia, loss of libido started, she was freaked out.  “What is happening to me? Why didn’t anyone tell me about this? Not my mom, my aunts, not even Sex in the City…. I thought two things, I was either losing my mind, or it was early-onset dementia.”

The new show is all about that, framed in personal terms, interacting with the audience, fuelled by clown energy, the spirit of inclusiveness, and the call for a community, bonded by laughter. “We’re all in this together.”

She talks about things that are, unaccountably, mysterious, secret. taboo, even. “I talk about how I’m raising teenagers (she has two) and caring for my mom who has Lewy body dementia … and then every day a new perimenopause symptom and trying to negotiate everything.”

Calcutt’s first show, a couple of decades ago, had an eight-page script; Things I Shouldn’t Tell You has 52. “It’s about memory loss, and I’m trying to memorize it. So the joke’s on me!” (more laughter, and the  moment to warn you that Calcutt has one of those contagious laughs that would make people at the next table in cafes lean in, enviously).

Where has Calcutt been? She came to Las Vegas in 2005, to be in the Cirque du Soleil’s X-rated cabaret Zumanity (Izzy’s hilarious routine with home-made Ziplock baggie breast implants was a showstopper). “I planned to stay a year … and here I am!”

Zumanity didn’t survive the pandemic. So after 15 years, Calcutt started working at Spiegelworld in Vegas, “as a clown, then a director, then resident director.” And more recently, she finished a 10-month contract with Cirque du Soleil’s Mad Apple, as Anita Dick — “so, high-brow comedy,” she laughs —  “a cocktail waitress who crashed the show.  It was a lot of fun!” (a favoured Calcutt phrase).

More lately still (her Cirque contract ended last May), Calcutt directed “an immersive experience” as she puts it, in Vegas’s giant, and hottest, new venue The Sphere. On a massive screen, the movie The Wizard of Oz is showing. “In the tornado, if you’re wearing a hat it’ll blow off…. It’s really a fun experience.” After the movie, in the atrium, Calcutt has devised an immersive encounter with the Wizard whose face is on screen. “And the audience gets to interact.” As she describes, the Wizard considers requests, in an apotheosis of improv technology. “I’d like to win a million dollars,” say, and the Wizard might say “with the exchange rate in Oz it comes out to $42.17.” Or “I want the Winnipeg Jets to win the Stanley Cup” and the Wizard might say “I’m a Wizard, not a miracle-worker.”

“They get to be in the moment with him. So it’s a lot of fun!”

In addition the Saskatchewan-born Calcutt, a noted clown teacher and mentor on both sides of the border, leads workshops for Cirque, and teaches at the clown school. And she’s spent a lot of time and anxiety negotiating care facilities for her mom, four in the course of a year; this very week her mom moves from Saskatoon to the little town of Wynyard, Sask.

So, “my day job is show director for The Wizard of Oz Experience.” Her night job is … playwright. And for two years, working on Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, she’s been on Zoom with her own playwriting mentors, clown guru Jan Henderson and storyteller star T.J. Dawe: “together, and laughing.”

“The show starts with a warning,” says Calcutt. “Kind of like a public service announcement: this is what’s coming” (laughter). She recounts a scene of being in the laundry room, holding up two pairs of panties — her daughter’s with period stains, her mother’s with urine stains, a veritable life arc in underwear. “Women spend their lives in diapers, Pampers to pull-ups to pads,” and back again, as she says. “It’s truth-telling,” and there’s a kind of continuity with her professional clown skills, she thinks. “I’m calling on my clown courage to talk about these things — there’s nothing I won’t say or talk about — and have a laugh.”

Act I is the personal report. “I’ve always been a very confident person; now I have insecurities, suddenly I’m anxious like I was when I was a teen. I have acne; I talk about this as our second puberty….” Act II of the new show is “an opportunity to ask me anything or tell me anything,” says Calcutt. And, again, the fearless clown expertise in improv and interaction is the fuel. “This should not be shameful experience,” she says of perimenopause. “It should be as loud as life, and that for me is the clown energy, the desire to trumpet the truth.”

“It’s a wild ride, and I think it’s universal…. It’s having a laugh at all the craziness. We should  be approaching it with humour and connection, have a laugh together, and celebrate our ridiculousness.” As opposed to “hiding in the party and having a cry by ourselves, with a bag of chips. Which I’ve also done.”

Vag of Honor, party favour at Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, SkirtsAfire 2026. Photo supplied

Calcutt thinks of the show as a launch for a new thing, perimenopause coming-of-age parties, with their own Sweaty Betty mocktails (“here’s my gift registry, let’s have a second puberty sleepover!”). And it comes with party favours, a chance to have your own Vag of Honour air freshener to hang in your car or closet.

“I always tell my students ‘ if it’s personal it’s universal’.” Calcutt laughs, “and now I’m having to practise what I preach.”

PREVIEW

Things I Shouldn’t Tell You

SkirtsAfire Festival 2026

Created by and starring: Shannan Calcutt

Where: Walterdale Theatre

Running: Thursday through Sunday

Tickets: skirtsafire.com

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A weekend at the theatre, with heroines aplenty

Posted on March 7, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Bella King, Sam Free, Jayce McKenzie and Eli Yaschuk in I Meant What I Said, Teatro Live!, photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Can it be coincidence on this, the weekend of International Women’s Day, that it’s your last chance to see …

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… I Meant What I Said, Stewart Lemoine’s first new full-length comedy in seven years, premiering at Teatro Live!. On the eve of her big 3-oh birthday, Dina (Bella King), proofreader and aspiring novelist, takes charge of her own life, and the futures of the people around her. Some characters get the hook; some get revised and edited. It’s on the Varscona stage through Sunday (tickets: teatrolive.com). Check out 12thnight’s preview interview with the playwright here.

Anne of Green Gables, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Supplied photo.

… Anne with an e, the red-haired orphan with the vivid imagination, takes charge of the lives of the people around her, in NUOVA Vocal Arts’ production of Anne of Green Gables, the Canuck musical based on the evergreen 1908 Lucy Maud Montgomery novel. There’s such a wealth of emerging and professional talent available (NUOVA blends them) that director Kim Mattice-Wanat has double- and triple-cast the show. Musical director: Simon Abbott. Through Sunday you can spend time in Avonlea, and hear the country’s most memorable musical ode to ice cream (the Act I closer) in the musical that’s onstage at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton. It’s a hot ticket, but have a go at eventbrite.ca.

Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen by Jameela McNeil, SkirtsAfire Festival 2026. Photo supplied

… Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen, a featured production at this year’s SkirtsAfire Festival. Jameela McNeil’s play takes us into an immigrant Jamaican family in Edmonton and a fraught mother-daughter relationship as they negotiate cross-cultural and inter-generational currents. It runs through Sunday at the ArtsHub Ortona. Matricia Bauer’s I Am Eagle is a strikingly theatrical Indigenous  journey back to an identity and culture lost in the ’60s Scoop — in the form of an animal fantasy. Its final performance at SkirtsAfire is today  at Walterdale. Theatre. And The Shoe Project, the Edmonton edition of a national initiative in which immigrant women tell their stories, runs through Sunday at Gateway Theatre. Tickets: skirtsafire.com. Check out 12thnight’s festival preview with artistic producer Amanda Goldberg here.

… shows, both live and digital, at this year’s SOUND OFF Festival, including The MaryRobin Show and Born Between Waves, Juan Man Show, and Oh Mother, Oh Brother, and more. The 10th anniversary edition of the festivities, at the Fringe Arts Barns, ends Sunday. Check out the full schedule, show descriptions, and get tickets, at soundofffestival.com. And the 12thnight festival preview is here.

And hey, it’s your only weekend to see …

Bouée (a buoy or a lifeline in English), a six-actor touring production from Satellite Theatre in Moncton, N.B, portages L’UniThéâtre, Edmonton’s francophone theatre, for the first time across the river to Theatre Network’s Roxy. Céleste Godin’s highly theatrical play has a kind of fantastical, absurdist sci-fi quality to it, with a little cosmological existentialism thrown in: a group of scientists undertake an update on the received notions of humanity’s place in an infinite universe. It runs Friday and Saturday only at the Roxy (en français with English surtitles). Tickets: lunitheatre.ca.

AND ELSEWHERE …

It’s the weekend when the Citadel …

… sets off down the yellow brick road. Yes, they’re off the see the wizard. Previews start Saturday for Thom Allison’s huge-cast production of The Wizard of Oz, the 1987 musical that licenses the Harold Arlen/ E.Y. Harburg tunes from the indelible 1939 movie. Chariz Faulmino stars as Dorothy, of heel-clicking fame, with John Ullyatt as the title eminence, Luc Tellier as the Scarecrow, Hal Wesley Rogers as the Tinman, Alexander Ariate as the Lion, Nadine Whitman as the Wicked Witch of the West. And in the crucial role of Toto, the alternating pair of starry canines Scooby and Koko. It runs through April 12. Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820.

And this, and every weekend,  at the Exchange Theatre (Thursdays through Saturdays till March 28) …

… Rapid Fire Theatre’s The Trial, a completely improvised court case which mines, for laughter, the rich comic chaos potential and general absurdity of The Law and the justice system. Judges, juries, witnesses, defence lawyers, crown prosecutors, court reporters … the possibilities are endless for ingenious improvisers. Tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com.

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Celebrating the work of women in the arts: what’s on at SkirtsAfire 2026

Posted on March 4, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

SkirtsAfire Festival 2026. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

SkirtsAfire, Edmonton’s 10-day multi-disciplinary festival devoted to  celebrating the work of women in the arts, is back Thursday for a 14th annual edition, dubbed ‘The Maps We Make’. And as usual the festivities are an A-line swirl of theatre, dance, poetry, spoken word, art, cabaret, comedy … and workshops, panel discussions and more. They’re happening in six venues, including for the first time ever ArtsHub Ortona.

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Their mantra is diversity — ethnic, cultural, and artistic, hospitality to creative artists and audiences of every stripe (including cis and trans women, non-binary people, and the 2SLGBTQIA+ community).

SkirtsAfire found its raison d’être, and its heartbeat, 14 years ago in lop-sided statistics: the under-representation of women in theatre. And this year, as artistic producer Amanda Goldberg explains, the festival’s audiences (last year in the 3,000+ range), will be seeing new theatre, at every stage of development.

Instead of a single mainstage production running the duration of the festival, this year’s edition has made use of its resources with a variety of feature presentations in shorter runs — a deliberate choice, says Goldberg, a theatre artist herself (her production of a new Cyrano de  Bergerac re-imagining by Jessy Ardern is the Citadel season finale in May).

I Am Eagle by the Indigenous playwright/ creator Matricia Bauer, is inspired by traumatic experiences of “silence and loss” as a ‘60s Scoop survivor. As Goldberg describes, the play, produced by SkirtsAfire, is fashioned as a parable: the tale of a young eagle snatched from its home nest and placed with a hawk family.

It faces head-on “a very personal experience,” Goldberg says of the new play, with revelatory ties to Indigenous history. But the reverb is universal: “it’s being told to be something you’re not, and not belonging.”

When Goldberg read the Bauer poem itself from which the play is created, her reaction was immediate and intense: “OMG, I can’t believe this hasn’t been published!….” And she’s enthusiastic too about the striking theatricality of the play, directed by Danielle LaRose: “two life-sized puppets (by Victoria-based puppet designer/builder Jessica Hickman), music, movement…. This will be a beautiful touring show.”

Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen by Jameela McNeil, SkirtsAfire Festival 2026. Photo supplied

Set in contemporary Edmonton, Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen by the multi-talented actor/playwright/singer Jameela McNeil is a celebration of the Caribbean community here. And in its remarkably complex story of a fraught mother-daughter relationship in a Jamaican family, it also steps up to explore intergenerational and cross-cultural tensions, the immigrant experience, and the knotty problem of consent. I saw an earlier workshop production at Nextfest in 2024, further developed at the RISER new works festival. And now Mrs. Pat’s Kitchen arrives at a full SkirtsAfire premiere, directed by Patricia Darbasie at the ArtsHub Ortona, in a partnership with Common Ground Arts Society.

Playwright/ actor Louise Casemore (Lucky Charm, Un-Dress, Gemini), a bona fide theatre innovator, is unveiling a new play at SkirtsAfire. After six years of gestation, Put Your Lips Together, billed intriguingly as “surreal neon-noir,” breathes its first public air at the festival as a staged reading. Goldberg directs, and explains that it’s based on “interviews with a hundred  women, in all different jobs including the arts” about their workplace experiences, from routine harassment to violent crime. Four women, strangers, find themselves in a diner, each with a story to tell about their treatment at work — and together they hatch a plan.

As Goldberg points out, Casemore’s new play is tuned to our moment: did you know that “Canada has the lowest whistle-blower protection” of our fellow traveller nations?

Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, premiering at SkirtsAfire 2026, marks the return of the premier Canadian clown Shannan Calcutt to the world of theatre, after two decades on loan (as we Canucks see it) to circus in Las Vegas, with the Cirque du Soleil’s Zumanity and Mad Apple. Fringe audiences love Calcutt from her trilogy of hit plays starring the impulsive romance-seeking clown Izzy (Burnt Tongue, It’s Me — Only Better! and Out Of My Skin). In Things I Shouldn’t Tell You, Calcutt for the first time plays … herself. Her play, full of audience interaction as you might expect, shares personal stories, funny and relatable, about the taboo mysteries of being a mid-life woman, perimenopause included. Stay tuned for a 12thnight interview with Calcutt soon.

And the festival includes the fifth return of The Shoe Project, in which immigrant and refugee women, mentored by theatre professionals like playwright Conni Massing and voice coach Alyson Connolly, tell the stories of how they got here and how they adapted to life in a new land.

SkirtsAfire 2026 runs Thursday through March 15, in a variety of venues, including the Gateway Theatre, Walterdale Theatre, La Cité francophone, ArtsHub Ortona. The full festival schedule, including show descriptions and tickets: skirtsafire.com.

  

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SOUND OFF, the unique national Deaf theatre festival, is back, with a 10th birthday edition

Posted on March 1, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Where do groundbreaking multi-disciplinary bilingual performing arts festivals with a national embrace come from anyhow?

Short answer: Edmonton. Longer answer: need. Ten years ago, a enterprising U of A theatre grad got invited to speak on a panel that was considering a leading question, “Why Can’t I Get In?”.

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That question of the moment was particularly meaningful to Deaf theatre artist Chris Dodd. “I had a chance to speak at length about my frustrations and challenges with getting my foot in the door,” recalls the engaging Deaf actor/ director/ playwright/ artistic director/ consultant/ mentor, and new recipient of the Order of Canada. With the help of Vern Thiessen (the Workshop West artistic director at the time), “an event which celebrated Deaf creators and actors” — and turned out to be a festival — was born in that moment.

Chris Dodd, founder and artistic director of SOUND OFF Festival. Photo by Jade Dodd.

And it took root. SOUND OFF, unique in the country and on the continent, bilingual (English and ASL), and accessible and hospitable to both hearing and Deaf audiences, is back Tuesday for a 10th anniversary edition (through March 8 at the Fringe Arts Barns): seven mainstage plays from across Canada, four digital shows, no fewer than nine workshops, readings, panel discussions, comedy, improv — and for the first time a grand finale cabaret. The Deaf AF Cabaret includes “songs, dance, drama, stand-up comedy, audience interactions and even a bit from Deafy,” says Dodd of his own award-winning play. Altogether “more than 20+ events over the six days.”

The MaryRobbin Show, SOUND OFF 2026. Photo supplied.

SOUND OFF’s founding father is remembering the debut of the festival that has become a bona fide Canadian theatre success story. “We started rather modestly,” Dodd says. “We had three shows, two workshops, a panel and our first improv with Rapid Fire Theatre….”

“Vern and I always imagined the festival as a national event,” Dodd says. “The goal was to unite Deaf artists from across our far-flung country and give them a stage and a voice.” SOUND OFF number 1 brought in artists from Kingston, Ont (Deaf Spirit Theatre), Winnipeg (100 Decibels) and Regina (Deaf Crows)…. With a stroke of luck, along with some careful planning, we have people from all three original groups returning this year.” And the annual improv collaboration with Rapid Fire, a hit from the start, is a tradition that continues.

Says Dodd, ”the Saturday show, Theatresports: SOUND OFF Edition, has always been a highlight of the festival for me. It never fails to be uproariously hilarious. This year we’re going back to the original format from the first year, a hearing vs Deaf team.” As you might expect Deaf performers rock when it comes to physical comedy and non-verbal eloquence.

Born Between Waves, SOUND OFF FESTIVAL 2026. Photo supplied.

Has Dodd noticed trends among the participating artists? “It seems each year we find a common theme, deliberately or not. This (big birthday) year, of course, is about looking forward while looking back….” Dodd says he’s noticed “an expansion into areas that were not as well developed in the past, including signed music and Deaf dance performances.” He adds, “our shows are bold and uncompromising and they loudly say ‘we are here’…. We’ve even had a show about a Deaf serial killer, with near-nudity.”

In matters of accessibility, a lot has happened in a decade, to be sure, and SOUND OFF has been influential. In 2023, Dodd’s Deafy, in which he starred, was the first play by a Deaf artist to be produced on the Citadel stage ever, in 58 seasons. Theatres regularly include ASL interpretation, for example. The mainstage shows are all pay-what-you-can. And the festival has always taken great care to be friendly to both Deaf and hearing audiences.

Chris Dodd, creator and star of Deafy, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

And as for the future? What’s next, says Dodd, is ”to figure out how to expand the festival within the limits of our current funding and to discover new ways in which we can support Deaf artists outside the confines of the March festival…. Also, we’ll be looking to build partnerships with international Deaf artists and bring their work to our stage.”

PREVIEW

SOUND OFF 2026

Where: Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: Tuesday through March 8

Tickets, lineup, and full schedule: soundofffestival.com/tickets (all mainstage tickets are pay-what-you-can).

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& Juliet, & more: Broadway Across Canada announces a new season of musicals

Posted on February 27, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

& Juliet, Broadway Across Canada, photo by Evan Zimmerman

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The opener in the five-production 2026-2027 touring lineup announced this week by Broadway Across Canada is a hit jukebox romantic comedy musical with a witty, and joyful, premise.

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C’mon, haven’t you always wondered what would happen if Juliet (you know, that Capulet girl with the doom-laden first-ever boyfriend), resisted the downer ending of Shakespeare’s big-finish tragedy, and took charge of her own destiny? Not to mention got to sing …Baby One More Time?

& Juliet, a 2019 rom-com musical that arrived in New York from London three years later, gathers a 30-song jukebox crammed with pop hits from the archive of the Swedish chart monarch Max Martin taken up by pop stars like Britney, Katy, Ariana. In the script by David West Read, the Canadian-born writer of Schitt’s Creek, you get to find out what happens when Anne Hathaway turns dramaturg, and Will gets notes. & Juliet runs Sept. 20 to 27 at the Jube.

Mrs. Doubtfire, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The other musical in the lineup that’s new to Broadway Across Canada touring in these parts is Mrs. Doubtfire, based on the 1993 film. You’ll remember the premise, and the endearing performance by Robin Williams as a hapless husband, a man-of-good-intentions who gets the boot by his wife, and then poses as a nanny to spend quality time with his kids. The musical, which hits the Jube Jan. 12 to 17 2027, has music by the sibling duo of Wayne and Karey Kirkpatrick.

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Matthew Murphy

Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, billed as “Disney’s first new touring production of the beloved musical in over 25 years,” arrives Nov. 17 to 22, with its outrageously contagious Alan Menken/ Tim Rice score, and its original creative team. Expect to see the singing/dancing Armoire, and his domestic cohorts, in new costumes in this “tale as old as time.” It runs Nov. 17 to 22.

Hamilton, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Joan Marcus.

The season includes the return of Hamilton (June 29 to July 4, 2027), the most profoundly influential (and most awarded) musical of the contemporary era. Lin-Manuel Miranda’s audacious and dazzlingly theatrical musical, last here in 2022, offers a view of both history and musical theatre from the outsider’s perspective. It tells the story of an orphan immigrant who became one of America’s founding fathers, in a unique swirl of hip-hop, jazz, blues, G&S, and musical theatre.

Six, Broadway Across Canada. Photo by Joan Marcus.

Tudor-mania returns in Six, the clever musical that re-makes Henry VIII’s ‘ex’s as girl-power pop stars. It got honed at the Citadel in 2019 for its his Broadway incarnation, played there twice, and now it’s back and on the Jube stage May 4 to 9, 2027.

Meanwhile, the current Broadway Across Canada season continues with Les Misérables, at the Jube March 10 to 15.

Subscriptions for the 2026-2027 season: BroadwayAcrossCanada.ca or 1-866-540-7469.

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Snow, whatever. Get yourself to a theatre this weekend: a wealth of choices

Posted on February 22, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Eli Yaschuk and Bella King in I Meant What I Said, Teatro Live!. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A great weekend to be in Edmonton if you’re at the theatre. So many choices, so little time….

A celebratory occasion at Teatro Live!. I Meant What I Said is Stewart Lemoine’s first new full-length comedy in seven years. And, as the playwright told 12thnight, it’s a window into inspiration, and the act of creation itself — a story about storytelling. A new generation of Teatro stars, led by Bella King, does the honours. Check out the 12thnight preview here. It runs through March 8 at the Varscona. Tickets: teatrolive.com.

Michael Watt and Dayna Lea Hoffmann in Countries Shaped Like Stars, Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

At the Fringe’s Backstage Theatre, it’s Murray Utas’s new production of Countries Shaped Like Stars, a fantastical musical fairy tale love story that charmed Fringe audiences here in 2013 with its oddball whimsy and wistfulness. Ingenious, fringe-y theatrical magic (with music). This revival, stars two accomplished young Edmonton artists, Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Michael  Watt. Have a peek at the 12thnight preview with director Utas here. It runs through Feb. 28. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

Susinn McFarlen in Burning Mom, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

Maybe the most irresistible thing in advance about Mieko Ouchi’s solo play Burning Mom, in which a 63-year-old widow steps up and out on a grand adventure is that it’s a (99.9 per cent) true story. How do you move forward in live from loss and grief? Ouchi’s mom up and decides to drive to Burning Man, the counter-culture festival in the Nevada desert — in a 26-foot RV. It runs in the Citadel’s Rice Theatre (an amazing achievement of RV parking in itself) through March 8. Check out 12thnight’s preview interview with Ouchi here. Tickets (if you can get ‘em) are at citadeltheatre.com.

Chris Bullough in Undiscovered Country. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

And if you hustle you can still catch a show at Theatre Network’s February Festival Weekend at the Roxy before it ends today. Four of the five offerings are culled from last summer’s Fringe. Today, you can still catch Chris Bullough’s Undiscovered Country and Shivamanohari Dance Company’s Dvaita / Duality. The 12thnight preview is here. Tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.

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The night is young and the music’s high: the Mayfield announces a new and music-filled season

Posted on February 20, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Come Monday to Chiquitita … the musical hits just keep coming, in the upcoming 52nd season announced by Mayfield Dinner Theatre artistic director Kate Ryan this week. It’s a lineup designed to capitalize on the theatre’s well-known musical strengths.

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At the Mayfield the jukebox will be having a Heat Wave, you might say. At the centre of the five-show lineup are two jukebox musical comedies and a musical that chronicles in its song list the music, and  the storied, dark, and highly dramatic life, of Johnny Cash. There’s a newly assembled tribute to the music of the 70s and 80s. And since the night is young and the music’s high, a new concert-style tribute to ABBA is the season finale, with text commissioned from Edmonton actor/ playwright Jocelyn Ahlf.

Ryan’s new season opens with The Marvelous Wonderettes: Dream On (Sept. 1 to Nov. 1), a 2008 Off-Broadway musical comedy that gathers to its light-hearted sitcom-esque bosom a remarkably fulsome collection of 50s and 60s hits, It’s My Party, Leader of the Pack, I’ve Got The Music In Me, You Don’t Own Me, Mr. Sandman among them. When the title song squad gets called upon to perform at their high school prom (the boys got bounced for smoking), they rise to the occasion, in four-part harmony. O wait, have I spilled the beans?

Julie Tomaino, the director/choreographer who’s also at the Citadel next season bringing Annie to the stage, directs The Marvelous Wonderettes, with musical direction by Jennifer McMillan.

Ryan herself directs the season’s other musical comedy, Jimmy Buffett’s Escape To Margaritaville (April 13 to June 13, 2027), a 2017 Broadway musical that’s a veritable mantra for de-stressing and escapism, full of Jimmy Buffett hits, puns, outrageous characters, and a demented plot you’ll have to figure our for yourselves. Ah, and also “an erupting volcano,” to challenge the ingenuity of the design team. Ryan calls it “our nod to the ‘lean-into-it ridiculousness of it. No-apologies fun.…kind of a Mamma Mia! meets Rock of Ages!” Musical direction by Jennifer McMillan.

Ring of Fire, a 2006 Broadway musical jukebox journey through the life and career of the Man in Black, tells its story through a song list of some 38 Johnny Cash hits. Rachel Peake, artistic director of the Grand Theatre (and a former associate artistic director at the Citadel), directs the Mayfield production Feb. 2 to April 4, 2027). Ryan was struck, she says, by the staging and musical excitement of Peake’s 2024 Arts Club Theatre production in Vancouver.

The holiday seasonal extravaganza is a tribute to the music of the ‘70s and ‘80s, the legendary artists who sprang into the collective consciousness on vinyl — biggies like Queen, Fleetwood Mac, Donna Summer, Madonna, Michael Jackson…. Legends of the 70s & 80s (Nov. 10 2026 to Jan. 24, 2027) pairs the music direction, arrangements, and orchestrations of Bob Foster (whose list of Mirvish Productions credits is distinguished) with text by Christine Bandelow and Kevin Dabbs (The 90s: It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, One Night With Roy Orbison).

For One Night With ABBA, the Mayfield season finale concert tribute (June 29 to Aug. 8, 2027) — leave ’em burning and then you’re gone — Ryan has enlisted the services of playwright and Teatro Live! star Jocelyn Ahlf to write the text, with music direction, arrangements, and orchestration by Jennifer McMillan.

Subscriptions and tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca

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Theatre Network’s best-of-Fringe ‘February Festival Weekend’: the lineup

Posted on February 18, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Jezec Sanders in Where Foxes Lie, Ready Go Theatre at Theatre Network. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Theatre Network is throwing a bash, a five-show February Festival Weekend, at the Roxy. Thursday through Sunday they present a quintet of productions — four of them from last summer’s Fringe — on the Nancy Power and Lorne Cardinal stages.

In the lineup is Where Foxes Lie, Jezec Sanders’s adroit, disturbing solo thriller about the viral spread of a vicious rumour in a small town. A prairie gothic horror show of mounting dread by the dexterous young playwright who brought the Fringe The Cabin on Bald Dune. Sanders himself stars in this cleverly constructed ghost story — a ghost story told by a ghost? — in which the act of storytelling itself drives the story. Intrigued? And there’s this: his eerie co-star is a gooseneck lamp. Erik Richards’s soundscape for the Ready Go Theatre production he directs is a major asset too. If you missed it at last summer’s Fringe, don’t blow it again.

Chris Bullough in Undiscovered Country. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Undiscovered Country, by and starring the magnetic actor/ playwright/ singer-songwriter Chris Bullough, held over at the Fringe, chronicles the quest of of fictional “90s country rock legend” Tyler Wainwright Jr. to find the song that will snatch us all from the toxified apocalypse. I found it lyrical and hypnotic, and darkly comic, when I saw it in an earlier incarnation. Bullough is a true original. And his songs have a mesmerizing poetry all their own. “Hide me away in a clear-cut forest…. Float me away on a river polluted.”

Unkl Stiv’s Looping Machine by and starring Steve Pirot. Photo supplied.

And speaking as we are of true originals, the February Festival Weekend is your chance to meet theatre artist Steve Pirot, if you haven’t before. The actor/ playwright/ poet philosopher, who has a brilliance all his own, has a way of unhinging words from their usual mooring and putting them together in unexpected ways. And Unkl Stiv’s Looping Machine, billed as “a spoken-word rhapsody,” sounds like Pirot weirdness at its finest.

It’s Just You And Me by the contemporary dance troupe Viva Dance Company, a hit at the Fringe, is an exploration of “the fluidity of identity” and the “continual reinvention of self.” Stephanie Lilley, the company founder, directs a cast of 12.

It’s Just You and Me, Viva Dance Company. Photo supplied.

Joining the four Fringe shows in the weekend lineup is Shivamanohari Company’s 11-dancer Dvaita / Duality, which explores, in amalgamating Kuchipudi and Balinese dance forms, colonial constructs of gender, and distinct but complementary male and female energies.

February Festival Weekend runs Thursday through Sunday at the  Roxy. The full show schedule and tickets: theatrenetwork.ca.   

   

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Falling in love with a show: Countries Shaped Like Stars, in a new production at Fringe Theatre. A preview

Posted on February 17, 2026 by Liz Nicholls

Michael Watt and Dayna Lea Hoffmann in Countries Shaped Like Stars, Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Nearly 15 years ago, in the chaotic excitement of reviewing Fringe shows, I found myself in a nondescript church basement in Strathcona: musty church basement smell, sullen lighting, inauspicious wooden church chairs.

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What happened after that was an hour or so of pure theatrical magic, the kind you don’t forget. With only a ladder, water glasses, a whirly-wind, and a couple of lamps, Emily Pearlman and Nicolas Di Gaetano of Ottawa’s Mi Casa told an enchanting musical love story fairy tale. Like all musical love story fairy tales should, it started with ‘Once Upon a Time’….”

The show was Countries Shaped Like Stars. And I remember it as if it were yesterday.

At a time when countries were shaped like stars and “anticipation grew on trees,” Gwendolyn Magnificent and Bartholomew Spectacular, a dragonfruit seller and a purveyor of popsicles, meet every Sunday at the Intercontinental Market of Pivotal Miscellany. And they fall in love. Then they return to their respective neighbouring peninsulas where they “knit allegories into toques, and run “orphanages for words you wish you’d thought of at the time.”

There was just something about it. It was whimsical, in an unforced way; it was wistful; it touched down lightly — with music performed by the characters. And it had such an imaginative way of prying words off their usual prosaic perches. Irresistible. I fell in love with its oddball charm and its heart. Ah, and so did Fringe’s new (at the time) artistic director Murray Utas.

“They made magic happen. And I think that is a testament to the power of storytelling!” Utas says. “There is nothing more celebratory than getting into a room with people and telling them a !!*!ing good story!”

Michael Watt, Dayna Lea Hoffmann in Countries Shaped Like Stars, Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

That love affair with a show is why a new production of Countries Shaped Like Stars, directed by Utas, opens at the Backstage Theatre Friday, in Fringe Theatre’s off-festival season. It stars Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Michael Watt, two of Edmonton’s most sought-after young actors, as Gwendolyn and Bartholomew.

Partly what captivated him, says Utas, is the way Countries Like Stars captures something of the DIY magic that’s close to the heart of Fringe Theatre. “It invites the kind of resourcefulness that went into the original production,” which was at the country’s festivals, and even returned once to Fringe Theatre here in 2016.

“A skeletal crew with not a lot of budget to make it happen,” Utas says with his usual exuberance, on a Fringe Cafe break from rehearsal. “At the Fringe we don’t have the budget for things and stuff, but we do have the budget for people … the beautiful humans who are with me on this ride!”

Ah, the journey. Utas reached out to creators Pearlman and Di Gaetano. They had a script; they even had the music, from a production four or five years ago. And after their joyful Fringe experience here as a bona fide sleeper hit, they were happy to share. Utas assembled other artists who’d fallen in love with Countries Shaped Like Stars too, among them designer Even Gilchrist.

Dayna Lea Hoffmann in Countries Shaped Like Stars, Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

“It’s an embarrassment of riches!,” says Utas, whose conversation typically happens in a volley of exclamation points. Edmonton directors and audiences have discovered the multi-talented Hoffmann and Watt in a striking variety of starring roles. The former, who has an arsenal of circus skills, is a co-creator and co-star of the hit bouffon show Rat Academy, returning in April, this time to the Theatre Network mainstage. And Watt, who shone in dozens of comic roles in The 39 Steps at Teatro Live! this past fall, has a history of original musical creations with creative partner Jacquelin Walters (Let’s Not Turn On Each Other).

Says Utas “we’re about to showcase these two performers with a little something maybe people haven’t seen…. They imbue a story with whimsical magic and emotional depth.”

Michael Watt in Countries Shaped Like Stars, Edmonton Fringe Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Perhaps the trickiest part of Countries Shaped Like Stars, he thinks, is the “delicate balance” between narration and dramatic scenes with the characters. And, as Utas points out, a big part of its charm and impact is its simplicity, its theatrical ingenuity. This time, it happens in a real theatre though, with the resources that implies. Utas says that he’s been at pains not to lose its DIY qualities in theatrical over-production. “But it’s going to have a little bit of zhuzh to it.”

It’s a case of judging “what do I need to tell this story,” and resist over-embellishing with technology. The characters do talk to the audience, and then return to each other, says Utas of the easy, unforced  crowd interactions built into Countries Shaped Like Stars.

“Theatre is hard…. So I want to make sure that we’ve enjoyed he experience of making it as much as the experience of sharing it,” he says. “At the end of the day we all love good stories. And this is a good story!”

PREVIEW

Countries Shaped Like Stars

Theatre: Edmonton Fringe Theatre

Created by: Emily Pearlman and Nicholas Di Gaetano

Directed by: Murray Utas

Starring: Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Michael Watt

Where: Backstage Theatre, Fringe Theatre Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.

Running: official opening Friday, through Feb. 28

Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.    

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