The cast of The Prom, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Jacy Eberlein

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“I just wanna dance with you/ Let the whole world melt away/ And dance with you/ Who cares what other people say?”  — The Prom

In The Prom, the double-sided Broadway musical comedy/ satire that opens Thursday at the Varscona Theatre, you’ll have fun of watching a bunch of narcissistic Broadway veterans (with Broadway-sized vanity) undertake a career rehab/ celebrity activism field trip.

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Their destination? the homophobic American heartland, small-town Indiana, where a 17-year-old lesbian has been barred from bringing a girl to the high school prom. And that side of the 2018 Broadway musical feels important and timely in our moment in time and space where history seems to be spinning backwards.

The NUOVA Vocal Arts production directed by Kim Mattice Wanat, the company’s 95th show, is perfectly placed to celebrates 25 years in the life of a theatre company that hasn’t so much changed its stripes in the last quarter of a century, but continually expanded its reach — in cabarets, in festivals, in site-specific re-inventions of the repertoire, in the repertoire itself.

As artistic director Mattice Wanat explains, the optic of the company she founded in 1998 was originally fixed on opera, “and bridging the gap between university training and the professional stage.” Opera NUOVA (as per its former name) was designed to train and showcase emerging opera professionals from across the country. “Over the part five years, “we’ve incorporated more musical theatre.” she says.

Witness this 25th anniversary season which culminates in a vocal arts festival (May 24 to June 23) in which musical theatre and opera rub shoulders, in intimate settings. It includes two contemporary American chamber operas, When The Sun Comes Out and As One at Concordia University’s Al and Trish Huehn Theatre. And Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music and Rossini’s Il barbiere di siviglia at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park. And the musical Titanic at The Robert Teller Hall at Concordia.

The Prom in rehearsal, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Mel Bahniuk

“We’re trying to extend our reach and build bridges into the community,” says Mattice Wanat of a season that’s already included Dear Edwina, a musical for the nine to 15 crowd and the multi-general Irving Berlin holiday musical White Christmas, which sold out seven shows at the Capitol Theatre in December.  “We want to embrace emerging artists, both young professionals and community artists…. And seeing the stage occuped by (both) has been an experience that’s really inspiring.”

With operas like When The Sun Comes Out and As One, with their gay and trans protagomnists, and now the musical The Prom (book by Bob Martin of The Drowsy Chaperone fame and Chad Beguelin, music by Matthew Shlar), Mattice Wanat hopes to attract the LGBTQ-plus community, both as artists and audiences.

Traditionally, as she points out, the opera audience is a quite specific demographic. “I wanted to change the face of how we were doing opera, in more intimate settings…. I went to the Freewill Shakespeare Festival in the park and thought “if they can do this with Shakespeare, why can’t we do it with opera? Way more access, more fun, more inclusive!”

The cast of The Prom, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Jacy Eberlein

The mixed professional/ community cast of 28 in The Prom “includes lots of generations,” says Mattice Wanat. “High school artists, MacEwan and U of A grads, folks that are like my age: 15-year-olds to a 56-year-old.”

She’s enlisted Brett Dahl, a queer actor/director and recent U of A Masters degree grad as assistant director. “I felt it was important to have someone from the queer community,” she says. Their goal is to attract both LGBTQ+ audiences, and audiences who are more ‘conservative’ — “to extend the narrative.”

The Prom, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Jacy Eberlein.

Dahl, fresh from directing his queer-focussed adaptation of Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida as his MFA degree production, argues that The Prom “doesn’t target ‘the other side.” That would be the PTA in Edgewater, Indiana, led by the show “villain” Mrs. Green, who goes to extraordinary lengths to prevent infiltration of the prom by Emma and her girlfriend. It mocks the Broadway vets, narcissists whose save-the-world expedition is comically self-serving.”Both sides have flaws, and room to grow,” says Dahl, who will soon direct a production of Jordan Tannahill’s Is My Microphone On? for the Citadel’s Young Company. “Everyone is on a journey of acceptance.”

“The play sends a message of acceptance and joy; it tries to embrace everyone.”

Mattice Wanat echoes the thought. “The music is funky and fun! Dress up and have a party! The reprise of Dance With You says it all, Mattice Wanat thinks. “This time, is’s ‘dance with you in life’. Be out in the world. Live proudly as your true self! And that’s a beautiful thing.”

The Prom runs Thursday through Sunday at the Varscona Theatre, 10329 83 Ave. Tickets: eventbrite.com. Full NUOVA Vocal Arts Festival schedule at nuovavocalarts.ca.