Allison Lynch, Andy Curtis, Denise Clarke, Geoffrey Simon Brown in Dream Machine, One Yellow Rabbit. Photo by Benjamin Laird.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A question for this theatre town of ours: what has Calgary got that we don’t have?

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

A: One Yellow Rabbit, an influential multi-disciplinary troupe of brainy incautious artistic renegades of the experimental stripe, with their own way of creating performance, and their own impromptu and unexpected international connections. Ah, and an annual January gathering of unexpected performance pieces, by them and others, that they gather under the banner High Performance Rodeo.

Photo by Donna Christensen

Edmonton met the Rabbits first at the Fringe here when no one knew exactly what Fringe was, much less what it could be — a natural pairing of the early ‘80s. And sure enough, the wildest stuff at early Fringes was Rabbit offerings. As the late great Rabbit Michael Green put it, “we had to be there.” The invitation to “just come, and do whatever you want,” as Fringe founder Brian Paisley always said,  was Rabbit bait. And it was irresistible.

In Edmonton we had a big regional theatre, and a startling proliferation of little theatres that became mid-sized theatres, and an unmatched assortment of indie theatres and co-ops inspired by the Fringe. But, damn, we didn’t have One Yellow Rabbit.

The High Performance Rodeo has turned 40 with this January’s 2026 edition. And in honour of the big four-oh, they’ve revived a signature Rabbits piece, their much-travelled 2003 Dream Machine. So I went to Calgary to see it.

The Dream Machine itself, a kind of modernist magic lantern with flickering light invented in 1960 by Beat poets Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville was built to mesmerize, to induce a drug-less high in the viewer. According to the program, “it never caught on.” And there it is, an accurate reproduction on the Big Secret Theatre stage. It’s a prop, the campfire so to speak, around which the eight-member cast of writer/director Blake Brooker’s production gathers from time to time in Dream Machine.

At the time, the idea of the show, according to Brooker’s program notes, was to see if the Rabbits could create a musical without characters or a story. It’s an homage to the Beats of the ‘50s, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gysin, and the rest, and their spirited waywardness — the individualist resistance to the forces of capitalist conformity in all its forms, aesthetic, sexual, commercial.

It’s a kind of free-associative amalgam of text, movement (choreographed by Denise Clarke), and the late David Rhymer’s fascinating music, sometimes lyrical sometimes jagged. It erupts into songs at times, or accompanies free-verse spoken poetry, or declarations like “I wanna play a killer in a movie.”

Andy Curtis, Denise Clarke, Geoffrey Simon Brown, Kris Demeanor in Dream Machine, One Yellow Rabbit, High Performance Rodeo. Photo by Benjamin Baird.

With some exceptions like Calgary poet Kris Demeanor’s delivery of the 1958 Ginsberg poem America at the outset — an attack on American ruthlessness that lands with uncanny precision more than half a century later — the spoken text and lyrics are by Brooker. “If words are a virus maybe I’ve caught it.” And they’re in the style and capture the rebellious sensibility of the Beats. Which is to say they’re clever, poetic, with a playful, witty turn of phrase about them. They enjoy the sounds of words, and unmooring them from their usual resting perches (“our ambitions are injurious”).  They take up the rhythm of repeating choruses (“take a drink, have a sniff, walk the park, in the dark …”).

Dream Machine isn’t what anyone would normally call a musical. Brooker prefers “song cycle,” or “oratorio.” The dreamy state that was the goal of the machine inventors leaves meaning with the audience to unwrap, or not. And it does take some patience to follow the show’s long, meandering route through lyrical passages with jagged, unexpected edges, all captured in the strange bursting diagonals of Clarke’s choreography.

If you let the experience wash over you, you make out recurring motifs. One is that you are your own light source. And it’s closely related to another: creative inspiration — where to look for it, how to keep it going, how to be a creative individual. “Our minds are focussed on a map that’s never been drawn.”

Brooker’s excellent cast includes Clark herself, a choreographic and theatrical muse for the company; the long-time One Yellow Rabbit performer Andy Curtis; the actor/playwright Geoffrey Simon Brown, and actor/singer Allison Lynch, with three fine musicians, Jonathan Lewis, Peter Moller, and Augustine Yates.

Dream Machine was a highly unusual theatrical undertaking in 2003. And a couple of decades later, in a world that’s turned back the clock and seems bent on curtailing freedom and repressing heterdoxy, it still is. “We’ve come to celebrate but we can’t remember what.” Ah, but there’s a 40th anniversary Rodeo to jog your memory. (It runs through Jan. 24. Tickets: oyr.org).

Dot, High Performance Rodeo. Photo by Donna Christensen

Human evolution of another kind is the exploratory impulse of Dot, a prop-heavy work-in-progress from the Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry. The idea is promising, a chronicle, at first playful then solemn, of our improbable human development from our originals as a small speck in a vast map-less cosmos.

The protagonist of Elaine Weyshko’s Dot bouncing upstairs and down valleys at the outset — surrealist aerobics? — is, yes, a dot. That small but game ink dot, created live by a human hand with a paint brush, takes on challenges, joins other dots, and they evolve into dimensional beings. puppets with their own gibberish language. Yearning, love, struggle, loss, absurdity and tragedy are all within the compass of the domesticated former dot in its (his? their?) expansive new life off the screen…. The scenes, though, at least so far seem laborious and over-extended, a repetitive showcase series for puppetry techniques. A dramaturgical tune-up in the storytelling is in order. Kudos though to the electronic score, delivered onstage live by the Hair Control duo of Rebecca Reid and Ryan Bourne.

Dot, Canadian Academy of Mask and Puppetry at High Performance Rodeo. Photo supplied.

Week 2 of the Rodeo is coming up. And with it Edmonton Fringe fave Monster Theatre arrives from Vancouver with the fun of Juliet: A Revenge Comedy, in which the Capulet girl takes charge of her own destiny, assisted by other Shakespeare leading ladies. There are cabarets, a solo puppet show (Body Concert),  a new dance theatre piece from Decidedly Jazz Danceworks (Rare Beauties), a concert collaboration between a pop star and a symphony orchestra (Vivek Shray: One Night Only), a new punk musical (Hucksterland). The list goes on.

Miss Rita’s Lucha Vavoom, High Performance Rodeo. Photo by Ron Lyon Photography.

Some of the country’s most distinguished theatre artists will be there. Daniel MacIvor’s Your Show Here is a solo exploration of the relationship between actor and audience. Pochsy fans take note, a dark, funny new work-in-progress from the great Canadian satirist Karen Hines (My Name Is Karen). And here’s the beauty of the Rodeo: you just can’t predict  what will happen in the theatre, A.I. begone!. when Miss Rita’s Lucha Vavoom (“think telenovela meets WrestleMania meets a horny fever dream,” hmm) arrives onstage Saturday, hosted by Rebecca Northan. Or three curious goblins, the ones who undertook productions of Macbeth and Oedipus, take charge of a gala, with a human in tow (Goblin:Gala). You just have to be there.

The High Performance Rodeo runs in venues of every size and shape through Jan. 31. Tickets: oyr.ca.