Michael Cox (centre) and the cast of The Full Monty, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s World Theatre Day, and the moment to reflect on the art form that, above all others, is about human connection — stories told live; beauty and sorrow, insights and experiences shared live — across cultures, ethnicities, generations, genders, and across time.

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

This week on Edmonton stages, you can join the excitement of two festivals (Expanse at Azimuth and Springboards at Workshop West). Until Sunday you can see a group of unemployed steel workers devise a brave, funny plan to rescue their lives, their identities and their self-esteem (The Full Monty at the Mayfield).

Lora Brovold in After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

You can have the fun of seeing an ingenious crime caper go wrong and scramble to right itself, in front of your very eyes (Heist, opening at the Citadel tonight). Until Sunday you can see a bunch of jaded showbiz stars take up the cause of a lesbian high school girl to realize her modest romantic dream in a conservative and disapproving town. realize her dream (The Prom at MacEwan University). You can see the world’s most famous tragic lovers go local, with hilarious specificity, and get it on against the family feud that separates the Hendays and the Yellowheads (Romeo and Juliet’s Notebook at Spotlight Cabaret). You can be moved by one-woman’s mission to put the work of a genius artist in front of the eyes of the world (After Mourning – Before Van Gogh at Shadow).

On World Theatre Day you can feel possibilities, in a harsh world that often feels like an assortment of dead ends. And for that, we owe our theatre artists, big time. As Michael Czuba’s new play After Mourning tells us, “every artist needs a champion.”