The young Jason Hardwick

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Consider for a moment the question that’s been asked — in every tone of voice, every degree of exasperation or relief, bemusement or amazement, wonder or perplexity — by every one of us, especially in the last three years. How did we get here?

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•How did we get here? The cabaret. It’s the name Jason Hardwick has given his new solo cabaret, his first one-man show How Did We Get Here?, happening Thursday at Grindstone Theatre as part of Conwitz Productions’ An Evening With .. series. “How did we, as a collective, get to this point?” asks actor/ dancer/ improviser Harwick. And he’s quick to add that he doesn’t mean the royal “we.” Nor is he looking for the conventional cabaret raison d’être of using his own personal bio as a coat rack on which to hang musical theatre songs.

“We quit theatre during the pandemic. And now we’re back at it. How did we decide to come to this show?”  Hardwick says “I sit and talk to the audience … face down the fears of doing it on my own. And then I sing songs,” accompanied by pianist/composer Daniel Belland. “I just love when I get to sing those songs…. Is there an arc? I’m not sure there is.”

the current Jason Hardwick

Hardwick, who’s droll and self-effacing, frequently performs with Guys in Disguise (most recently in Puck Bunnies at the Fringe). He’s also the artistic director of Die-Nasty, the weekly improvised soap opera at the Varscona, currently (through Dec. 11) in its circus mini-series Monday nights. Hardwick is Clarl the clown. He’s particularly known as a dancer, and even more particularly as a virtuoso in the rarefied art of tap dance (he teaches it at MacEwan University). Which is why, he explains, there will be no tap in How Did We Get Here?. “Everyone expects it, and I guess I’m tired of that expectation.”

He’d started to wonder if he landed roles just because he could tap. “This show is ‘look what else I can do’?” The 13-song playlist leans into the musical theatre repertoire, as you might expect from an actor who performs frequently with Plain Jane Theatre. “But, hey, there might be a Taylor Swift song; I’ve hear she’s popular…. And every song is taken out of context.”

“I find myself humming O What A Beautiful Morning every day,” says Hardwick, “and I’m not even from Oklahoma!” Another of his favourites, in the cabaret song list, is Empathy, “about having big feelings for inanimate objects.”

The lyrics will be up onstage with Hardwick, on a music stand. “I also want to say something about ‘perfection procrastination’,” putting off doing something because it won’t be perfect. “This is not going to be perfect, but it’s going to be something. And we’ll have fun!”

Hardwick’s special guest is Kayla Gorman. “I have so many talented friends who deserve to be in the spotlight, more than they are!” Tickets: showpass.com.

playwright Harley Howard-Morison

•How did we get here? The new play-in-progress. Speaking as we are of extreme versatility, this Sunday’s edition of Script Salon (a bona fide Edmonton success story) is a veritable live demo. It’s a staged reading of a new play, Redd Meats, by Harley Howard-Morison. Beef and beefs are involved.

Howard-Morison is a writer, a theatre maker, the founder of the indie company Cardiac Theatre; he’s the managing director of Theatre Network. Among other Cardiac bright ideas was The Alberta Queer Calendar Project (13 plays in podcast form by queer Alberta playwrights, including Makram Ayache’s The Hooves Belonged to the Deer, which recently ran in a fully staged indie production at the Westbury Theatre).

Intriguingly the protagonist of Redd Meats, set in the prairie hamlet of Redd, is “a scholarship vet student and part-time butcher,” a combination that seems to invite conflict from the get-go, who’s unexpectedly confronted by a ghost from the past. Theatre Network artistic director Bradley Moss directs a cast that includes Quinn Contini, Marianne Copithorne, Nikki Hulowski, and Mark Sinongco.

It happens at the Upper Arts Space at Holy Trinity Anglican Church (10037 84 Ave.) at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free; donations are enthusiastically welcomed.

•How did we get here? The birthday production. The indie company Foote in the Door Productions celebrate their 10th anniversary of musical theatre productions with a real charmer of a ‘60s rom-com. She Loves Me has Broadway cred, to say the least. It’s by the composer/lyricist team of Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick, the starry team who also brought the world Fiddler on the Roof and Fiorello!. The book (by Joe Masteroff) is an adaptation of the 1937 play Parfumerie by the Hungarian playwright Miklós László, set in a Budapest perfume shop in the 1930s.

Two sparring employees, the Beatrice and Benedick so to speak of She Loves Me, take solace from this job irritation in writing letters to their “secret admirers.” And here’s the romantic complication: their anonymous penpals are … each other. You might recognize the setup from the 1998 film You’ve Got Mail.

Melanie Lafleur directs the Foote in the Door production, which runs Nov. 17 to 26 at La Cité francophone. It stars the two company co-founders Ruth Wong-Miller and Russ Farmer, who met, as the theatre name tips off, at the Citadel’s Foote Theatre School.  Tickets: eventbrite.com.