Dayna Lea Hoffmann in A Hundred Words For Show, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

2022-2023 in Edmonton theatre (post-Fringe) was the season of …

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… a new home: Rapid Fire Theatre, Edmonton’s longest-running improv comedy, moved into spiffy, beautifully located, new place in Strathcona, the Exchange on 83rd Ave.

… a new company: Edmonton got a new indie theatre, AuTash Productions (named for the Farsi word for fire), who introduced themselves with a rare insider’s view of women’s rights, and lack thereof, in contemporary Iran (the thriller Anahita’s Republic).

Roya Yazdanmehr and Yassine El Fassi El Fihri in Anahita’s Republic, AuTash Productions. Photo by Henderson Images

… a new festival: yes, Edmonton audiences got Another F!*#@$G Festival, multi-disciplinary, adult, contemporary, at Theatre Network’s beautiful new Roxy in February. And it was a homecoming for the headliner, the Canadian marionettiste. actor/ playwright/ designer/ artisan Ronnie Burkett who brought his latest Daisy cabaret Little Willy.

… a new venue: the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, evicted from its long-time home, the Heritage Amphitheatre, by stunningly uncreative city plans to close Hawrelak Park for renos for three YEARS (really!), found a new home for its upcoming 34th summer season: a gorgeous vintage spiegeltent at Edmonton EXPO Centre. See the 12thnight news.

… a new prominence for multi-media design. It was everywhere on Edmonton stages this season; here are but four outstanding examples:

•the design for The Innocence of Trees, a portrait in time of abstract expressionist Agnes Martin at Theatre Network, was a work of art in itself: Briana Kolybaba’s set of hanging canvases at every angle (including a moving horizon), Even Gilchrist’s lighting, Ian Jackson’s projection-scape.

•Alison Yanota (set), Matt Schuurman (video design), Daniela Fernandez (sound) together created a kingdom of ice, a sort of floating ice floe,  and a kind of shimmering magic in Northern Light Theatre’s A Hundred Words For Snow.

Lianna Makuch in Barvinok, Toronto 2018, Pyretic Productions. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

•the memoryscape of Pyretic Productions’ Barvinok, created by Stephanie Bahniuk’s design — a bank of slatted light-permeable wooden walls — and Nicholas Mayne’s flickering projections of faces and movement playing across eight translucent windows.

•the internet-blasted world of the millennial couple in Subscribe or Like at Workshop West was captured by Stephanie Bahniuk’s screensaver blue apartment set with its tiny window on the world and seven angled screens, Roy Jackson’s eerie blue computer light, and Ian Jackson’s projections, which played across the walls and the screens, making reality and YouTube a weird sort of continuum.

A selection of performances that linger in the mind:

Maralyn Ryan in The Innocence of Trees, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

•Maralyn Ryan: Compelling as the abstract expressionist painter Agnes Martin in all her contradictions — rigorous in her art and troubled in her life —  in Eugene Strickland’s The Innocence of Trees at Theatre Network.

•Dana Lea Hoffmann: as the addled sleep-deprived grad student server, a beleaguered heir to the feminist success story, who’s at the centre of a chorus of alter-egos in Karen Hines’ provocative satire All The Little Animals I Have Eaten, at Shadow Theatre. It’s a wicked exploration of millennial disappointment and stress, with a cutting sense of absurdity. All of the above filter into this fine comic performance. See the 12thnight review.

A double-barrelled season of excellence for Hoffmann. In the solo show A Hundred Words For Snow, directed by Trevor Schmidt at Northern Light Theatre, she was utterly convincing as the teenage protagonist who takes us with her on a coming-of-age journey to the North Pole, and into the very heart of grief. Here’s the 12thnight review.

•John Ullyatt, compelling in his Scroogian debut as the furious, frozen-hearted man, encased in granite, propelled onto a journey into his own abused, impoverished boyhood in David van Belle’s adaptation of A Christmas Carol, at the Citadel. See the 12thnight review.

•Geoffrey Simon-Brown and Gabby Bernard – scary good in Liam Salmon’s Subscribe or Like at Workshop West (see 12thnight’s “The Season in Theatre part 1“).

•Jim Mezon as the mad-as-hell prophet who isn’t going to take it any more, in Network, at the Citadel. In the end, of course, the role of the TV anchor in delivering “news” is completely inconsequential in the modern world. And the obliteration of “truth” in favour of corporate entertainment and ratings is a story that’s long gone as news. But the messianic rant and implosion of Howard Beale lived on in this performance in Daryl Cloran’s production. The 12thnight review is here.

Jason Sakaki, Kale Penny, Farren Timoteo (front), Devon Brayne in Jersey Boys, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

•Farren Timoteo as Frankie Valli in the Citadel’s Jersey Boys. A startling performance that not only landed those distinctively acrobatic falsettos swoops but filled out the human dimensions, so unusual in a jukebox musical, of a story about dreams, unexpected success and the pitfalls of fame. (He was also very funny in Elyne Quan’s new Teatro Live! comedy Listen, Listen and, earlier in the summer of 2022, A Grand Time in the Rapids). Check out the 12thnight review.

•Austin Eckert, surrounded by an excellent cast, in The Royale at the Citadel, in a nervy, charismatic performance as an ambitious Black boxer in the Jim Crow South c. 1905, whose dream of being the heavyweight champion of the world come attached to a horrifying reverb in racist segregated America. See the 12thnight review here.

•Sheldon Elter and Kristi Hansen in the Plain Jane production of Sweeney Todd, in interlocking performances as the vengeful barber and his creative capitalist accomplice Mrs. Lovett (see 12thnight’s “The Season in Edmonton Theatre, part 1“).

•Kristin Johnston and Linda Grass as a pair of flight attendants with an uneasy relationship with life at ground level, in Enough, at Northern Light (see 12thnight’s “The Season in Edmonton Theatre, part 1“).

•Chris Dodd as the wry, skeptical, and increasingly beleaguered Deaf public speaker we meet in his solo tragi-comedy Deafy, an insight into the complications that go into negotiating the hearing world (presented in the Citadel’s Highwire Series). Here’s the 12thnight review.

Julio Fuentes in Prison Dancer, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

•Julio Fuentes as the perpetual motion drag queen extraordinaire, and choreographer of the Filipino prison inmates in Prison Dancer, at the Citadel. See the 12thnight review here.

Connor Yuzwenko-Martin in Carbon Movements, SOUND OFF Festival of Deaf Theatre. Photo supplied.

Intriguing experiment of the season: Carbon Movements, an innovative dance/theatre  experience from the Deaf arts collective The Invisible Practice designed to create a performance that hearing and Deaf audiences could experience in the same way. In the opener for this year’s SOUND OFF festival, we of the audience wore Woojer vibrotactile belts that connected us viscerally, in vibrations, to the visuals onstage. The movements of Deaf artist Connor Yuzwenko-Martin on a stage of carbon particles that resisted his capture and control seemed to be a fascinating metaphor for our complicated relationship with the environment. Here’s the 12thnight review.

Sydney Williams and Kate Newby in Fresh Hell, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

Odd couples: Dorothy Parker and Joan of Arc (Conni Massing’s new comedy Fresh Hell at Shadow Theatre) sharing stage time? Did you ever imagine St. Augustine and Elon Musk in the same play? (Connor Yuzwenko-Martin’s After Faust, a RISER 2023 production)?

Newcomers of the year: Romar Dungo (Boy Trouble), actor-turned-sound designer Daniela Fernandez (A Hundred Words For Snow), actor-turned-playwright Emma Houghton (Freaky Green Eyes).

Did someone say ‘Macbeth’ inside the theatre? Joni Mitchell: Songs of a Prairie Girl, Jim Guedo’s inspired “theatrical collage” of the artist in five different eras at five different ages, at Theatre Network. First the production had to replace the oldest of the five Joni’s at the last minute (Christine MacInnis stepped up valiantly). Then, COVID struck, and the show closed early. Read the 12thnight review here.

Syd Campbell and Elena Eli Belyea in Gender? I Hardly Know Them, Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Nico Humby

And on a hopeful note: the new updated Gender? I Hardly Know Them sketch show, directed by Paul Blinov as part of this year’s Expanse Festival, was all about growing up queer in the prairies. No picnic. Beyond the vivid range of satirical characters was a positive sense of encouraging people to live their own identities, or multiple versions of them, with pronouns of choice to match. A funny and welcoming show. Read the 12thnight review here.