Cody Porter in Angry Alan, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Where do monsters come from? Do we all have one lurking in our dark cores? What conditions are ideal for creating or discovering or releasing our inner monster? Ah, and is there a point of no return?

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

The mysterious human capacity to be monstrous underpins the trio of plays in Making A Monster, Northern Light Theatre’s upcoming 49th season announced by artistic director Trevor Schmidt Monday. Two of the three are of Brit provenance; the third is the world premiere of a new Schmidt play, Monstress.

The world around us is rife with scary validation of Northern Light’s season exploration, to be sure; it hasn’t been a good year for reliable human decency, let’s face it. “In one play,” as Schmidt describes, “the theme is literal. In another, it’s by outside manipulation. And in the third, it’s a slow gradual process between two people who unduly influence each other.”

“The idea of a monster waiting in all os us to be discovered or revealed, or released …” has fascinated him, and generated question after question. “When do we turn into our primal selves? When does self-interest override community, love, safety? What step is too far? When is it too late to turn back after committing a monstrous deed, a betrayal, a crime?”

“The 2024-2025 season theme,” he says, “began to emerge, as it always does, once I found the first play, one that I responded to emotionally and viscerally.” That was Angry Alan, a very dark solo comedy by the Brit playwright Penelope Skinner (Fucked, Meek, The Village Bike), about masculinity in crisis and its toxic spinoff — in the mens rights movement that’s “quite terrifying,” as Schmidt puts it.

Roger the protagonist is the frustrated third assistant manager at a Safeway, stalled indefinitely in his rise to authority, seething with a sense of injustice, radicalized by the narrative promoted by the online activist of the title.

As Schmidt reflects, “there are some very persuasive men out there on social media that have perfected how to tap into male anger and disaffectedness, and radicalize it for their own advancement, building a kind of male army. It’s clever to tap into someone’s feelings of inadequacy, or under-appreciation and foment an anger that can be weaponized- all while appealing to someone’s “righteousness”. I would point to Jordan Peterson and Andrew Tate.”

Schmidt’s production (Jan. 24 to Feb 8, 2025) stars Cody Porter, “my first and only choice for Roger.” He is, Schmidt says feelingly, an actor seen far too infrequently on Edmonton stages.

Monstress, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

In Monstress, the new Schmidt play premiering Nov. 8 to 23, the playwright returns to his love of the Gothic in storytelling (We Had A Woman Before You). “A disgraced doctor, a woman ahead of her time in a male-driven world … a warped version of Victorian England,” as the playwright describes, is enlisted to revive, à la Victor Frankenstein, the dead-neck daughter of a wealthy man. And the identities of the doctor and her much-changed ‘creation’ begin to intertwine. Which one is the real monster?

“Definitely Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein,” says Schmidt of his inspirations for the new play, with its female narrator/protagonist. As for the double image of the women, “I would recall Persona by Ingmar Bergman, but I have never actually seen it! But the idea has lingered for years…. The blurring of identity, the creation of self, the idea of motherhood or caregiving, the moral responsibility of care….”    

Schmidt’s production stars Julia van Dam — introduced to Edmonton audiences in Northern Light’s A Phoenix Too Frequent at the start of the current season — and Sydney Williams as the doctor.

Eli Yaschuk and Rain Matckin in Radiant Vermin, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jan

Schmidt describes the season finale, Radiant Vermin, as a wicked satire cum dark comedy “SO brazen and bleak- and screamingly funny as it sends up the current housing market and superficial commercialism and greed.” Nothing like real estate to bring out the worst in people, right?

It’s a 2015 piece by Philip Ridley, “a very controversial and edgy playwright who helped found the ‘in-yer-face’ theatre movement in the UK,” as Schmidt puts it. The prickly questions it volleys at the audience abound: “How far would you go to achieve your goals? How much would you compromise your ethics? Your morals? Does doing bad things for a good purpose cancel itself out? Can you do bad things and still be a good person?”

Says Schmidt, Radiant Vermin has “a crazy, shocking premise that i can’t reveal, but i gasped out loud while reading it.” And, trust me, it takes a lot to make the Northern Light Theatre artistic director/muse gasp out loud. A young couple acquires their dream home — at a cost. I mustn’t say more.

Schmidt’s production (April 18 to May 3 2025) stars two recent MacEwan University theatre arts grads, Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk, and veteran favourite Holly Turner (The Testament of Mary, The Origin of the Species).

The season marks a continuation of a prolific creative era for Schmidt the playwright, whose new play Robot Girls premieres at Shadow Theatre next week. Schmidt’s script for Two-Headed/ Half-Hearted was shortlisted for the Gwen Pharis Ringwood Prize. We Had A Girl Before You had its U.S. premiere in Boston last fall, “also very validating in releasing a real fast and furious flow of writing,” he says. And his new thriller Candy & The Beast premieres at Northern Light, the season finale in April.

Subscriptions for the 2024-2025 Making A Monster season are now available at northernlighttheatre.com.