By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

What are they up to, the next generation of artists, the up-and-comers? Your chance to find out is close at hand. Nextfest, Edmonton’s multi-disciplinary festival of emerging arts, returns today to take over Theatre Network’s Roxy and environs for a 29th annual edition.

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“New” is the operative word at the 11-day festivities, which showcase — on stages, on walls, on screens, at performance “niteclubs,” in the park across the street — the work and the work-in-progress of 500-plus emerging artists. They create across the frontiers in theatre, visual art, dance, music, digital arts, film….  Ah, and original combinations of any or all of the above.

Nextfest director Ellen Chorley.

“Cool new stuff!” is the flag under which festival director Ellen Chorley flies. A multi-disciplinary artist herself who claims Nextfest as her own artistic birthplace in her high school years, the effervescent Chorley, who talks with built-in exclamation marks, explains that “emerging” isn’t a matter of chronological age; “it’s being in the first 10 years of your career.”

“Cool new stuff” in theatre, always bountiful at Nextfest, has expanded in Nextfest 2024. There are 15 mainstage plays, in addition to an assortment of play readings and ‘progress showings’. And there’s a new performance venue at the Roxy.

“A really strong year of applications” was the inspiration for adding a new theatre space to the Roxy’s Nancy Power and the Lorne Cardinal theatres, Chorley says. Nextfest has turned Theatre Network’s airy second-floor rehearsal hall into a little black box theatre. “It’s an intimate space, a big/little stage, with 30 seats and four mainstage one-person shows.

Where Foxes Lie by Jezec Sanders, Nextfest 2024. Graphic supplied.

It’s a high-contrast quartet, as she describes. The Ether Journey, by and starring Asia Weinkauf-Bowman, is storytelling, “an exploration of the importance of dreams and myths” as billed. Sophie May Healey’s Hysteria’s House is “a wild clown character piece,” says Chorley appreciatively.  Maiden Voyage, written and directed by Maigan Van Der Giessen is an experimental performance piece woven from improvised music and spoken word poetry. Chorley describes Jezec Sanders’ Where Foxes Lie intriguingly as “a dark kind-of-thriller.”

The number of applications for a theatre berth at the festival was the usual 100 or so, she says. This year Chorley led a Nextfest foray into the theatre season, October to December, called “My First Play,” a program designed to attract artists of diverse backgrounds — film, music, acting — who were interested in trying their hand at playwriting. And several pieces in Nextfest’s mainstage theatre lineup emerged from the work of 22 participants, much to Chorley’s delight. Ride Like Hell, as one example, is by Aldynne Belmont, a filmmaker by background. It’s a cross-country odyssey billed as “an irreverent riff on pulp literature and sapphic cinema,” that “just blew us away; we all at there laughing!”says Chorley.

This year Nextfest held a Playwrights Weekend in February, along with a workshop on producing theatre. Nextfest tries to follow artists through stages of development, from reading to “progress showing” to full production. And at Chorley’s instigation, Nextfest has been making a point of extending its reach into other festivals. The ambitious folk-rock musical What Was Is All and Madi May’s She/They have appeared at the Fringe in Nextfest productions. This summer Nextfest will produce Grace Fitzgerald’s Carter And The Train at the Fringe.

The Nextfest lineup in the Lorne Cardinal Theatre, the Roxy’s downstairs black box, includes plays by Christina Hollingworth (Meet Me At The Riverside), Ali Muhammad Khowaja (Pepperoni and Cheese), Megan Sweet (The S.P.O.T.T.), and Tori Kibblewhite (Your Heart Is Gushing Lavender).

Ms. Pat’s Kitchen by Jameela McNeil, Nextfest 2024. Graphic supplied.

And in the Nancy Power, you’ll find Grace Fitzgerald’s Carter and the Train, Jameela J. McNeil’s Ms. Pat’s Kitchen, Aldynne Belmont’s Ride Like Hell, Elyse Roszell’s The Hand That Feeds, and What Am I Looking At?!. The latter, by Stretcher Hymen and Hunny Moon, takes backstage at a drag show.

Nextfest’s popular curated performance/immersion nite clubs return on the weekends, starting with The SINsational Cabaret Friday, which finds its theme in the seven deadly sins, followed by the Pride Nite Club Saturday. The following weekend includes the annual Smut Nite Club (a perennial hot ticket), and for the first time there’s an all-ages event, The Kids Are All Right, a matinee nite club. As the Nextfest mantra goes, “come for the art, stay for the party.”

There’s free stuff, too. The first-come first-served workshops, for example, 15 in number and free for anyone intrigued, address a variety of subjects, including those that lean into practicality, “the business of the arts,” as Chorley says. You don’t have to be an artist to find out about clowns and clowning in a workshop led by star clown Christine Lesiak. Or Usha Gupta’s “Kathak: North Indian Classical Dance.” Or Katie Cutting’s “That’s The Spirit: How To Make A Movie Without Funding.” Chorley herself leads “Theatre Producing For Beginners.” And there’s even a one-on-one Nextfest mentorship program that pairs you with an arts professional.

Meanwhile, there’s tonight’s opening night ceremonies, which include performances, previews, music, a dance party DJ’ed by Moody Lion, and pizza. “Come and party with us,” says Chorley. “And celebrate new artists and new art in Edmonton.”

Let the Next-ing begin.

Nextfest 2024 runs through June 9 at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre (10708 124 St.) and environs. Full schedule and tickets: nextfest.ca.