Rediscovering the self you’ve lost (with sun and sea): Shirley Valentine at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on June 27, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Stephanie Wolfe in Shirley Valentine, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the Mayfield, you have a chance to see a vintage show get a new lease on life — just like its heroine. 

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Shirley Valentine, a 1986 solo play by the Liverpool playwright Willy Russell, is one of theatre’s perennially affecting lost-and-found stories. As you’ll appreciate in Stephanie  Wolfe’s engaging, funny, touching solo performance, what Shirley at 52 has lost is … herself, the Shirley Valentine who dreamed and felt joy in life’s possibilities. And that’s what she finds — buried under layers of carrying on, sucking-it-up and making-do — on a life-changing trip to Greece.

Shirley Bradshaw née Valentine is a Liverpool housewife and mom whose life is so flattened by routine and the expectations of hubby Joe and grown-up kids that cooking up eggs and chips for dinner on a Thursday instead of the usual steak counts as radical. She’s so starved for human connection she talks to the wall. Which rather neatly solves the problem of many a solo show: why is the character onstage talking out loud to everyone, or no one?

Why doesn’t she leave? “I don’t know,” Shirley says flatly to the wall, like many fourth walls a better listener than conversationalist.

A lot has happened in the world of marriage and man-woman relationships since 1986. And, to be sure, a lot hasn’t. But Russell’s play isn’t really about that (thankfully, since Russell’s play would otherwise be having a mid-life crisis of its own). As Kate Ryan’s production and Wolfe’s warm and thoughtful performance give you to understand, it’s about re-discovering a sense of possibility in life, retrieving it from the anesthetizing effects of time.

When Shirley’s friend Jane invites her on a two-week trip to Greece, the idea is outlandish to her. But she does admit to a a touchingly modest dream: “drinking a glass of wine in the country where the grape is grown.” How can that be too much to ask?

I have to admit It took me a while to get into Shirley Valentine this time; I wondered if it was starting to show its age. In Act I, a kind of catalogue of the odds stacked against our heroine, Shirley relies for her unfailing good humour on self-mocking oldies and throw-aways that are more than a bit tired. Example: sex, she says, “is like Harrod’s. Over-rated.” Her observations, which she means to be funny, are a bit dusty. “I don’t hate men,” she declares. “I’m not a feminist!”

But gradually, I found myself won over, drawn by Wolfe’s charm into Shirley’s world, and the sudden cracks in the four-square solid architecture of her life. Wolfe, who’s adept at the Liverpool cadence with its distinctive upturns and inconclusive downbeat punchlines, takes a certain vintage quality into account as part of what another decade (or two) would gracelessly call “coping mechanisms.”

At some level, her little amused laughs that punctuate every observation are tinged ever so slightly by apology. Shirley, in Wolfe’s clever performance, knows she’s a bit passé, a heroine in a 40-year-old play, stuck in time. We feel for her; we share her insecurities.

Stephanie Wolfe in Shirley Valentine, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Which makes the transformation of Act II so splendid, captured by the golden glow of Trent Crosby’s lighting that takes Greek dawns into magical starry dusks. “Why do you get all this life if it can’t be used?” she asks, wonderstruck by beauty and ease instead of trying to find the funny side of low self-esteem. There’s a kind of revelation, as Wolfe conveys so affectingly, in Shirley’s regret that she’s been wasting so much of a limited supply of time and life — before she thinks again, that it’s not so much what’s been lost as what’s still to be found.

An evening with Shirley in her kitchen and then on the edge of the bright blue sea in Greece has a thoroughly enjoyable zen loveliness about it. It’ll make you take a deep breath and relax; it’ll touch your heart, and think about exactly what to do with your air miles. Doesn’t everyone have an inner Shirley Valentine waiting to be released?

REVIEW

Shirley Valentine

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre

Written by: Willy Russell

Directed by: Kate Ryan

Starring: Stephanie Wolfe

Running: through July 20

Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca

 

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Troy O’Donnell has a history with the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, and this year’s As You Like It

Posted on June 26, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Alexandra Lainfiesta in As You Like It, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Ryan Parker

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The play that opens Friday in a park overlooking the river valley is all about finding yourself on an excursion to the great outdoors, “the green world.”

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No wonder the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, which has gone camping with their resident playwright for 35 summers, has been attracted before now to As You Like It. That impulse, to head to nature, is part of their history, their personality, their jam. And it’s taken them this summer to Louise McKinney Park with David Horak’s 12-actor production of Shakespeare’s buoyant mid-period romantic comedy As You Like It.

Troy O’Donnell (centre) with Amber Borotsik and Josh Meredith, in rehearsal for As You Like It, Freewill Shakespeare Festival. Photo by Jenn Galm

It’s Troy O’Donnell’s fifth As You Like It, as a range of characters from servants to shepherds to dukes. This time he’s in the juicy role of Touchstone, the courtier clown employee of a tyrannical usurper, who accompanies fellow refugees, the witty heroine Rosalind (Alexandra Lainfiesta) and her cousin Celia (Dayna Lea Hoffmann), en route to the Forest of Arden.

Troy O’Donnell as Adam, Andrew MacDonald-Smith as Orlando, As You LIke It, Freewill Shakespeare Festival 2015. Photo by Lucas Boutillier

O’Donnell is part of Freewill’s original story, a founding parent who’s still on the board of the theatre company that grew from hopeful co-op to professional rep company — and become a venerable civic institution. He remembers the moment 35 years ago when he and a brave band of his closest U of A theatre school classmates, six in all, shared a bright idea. It was 1989, and one of their number, Annette Loiselle, had been to Calgary’s Shakespeare in the Park the summer before. Alert to possibilities, they eyed the Edmonton scene for a similar niche. And they found one. How can you claim to be a real city and not have summer Shakespeare?

“There was very little going on (in June and July) at the time,” says O’Donnell, ever affable and articulate in conversation. “It was long before the Citadel did shows then, only the Mayfield was running … it was a fallow time.”

Poised on the threshold of careers, the new theatre school grads were keen to practice their craft. “It had been drilled into us,” he remembers, that at the start “we should create our own work… to show what we could do, beyond a two-minute audition.”

“We were young, naive, and enthusiastic,” he says of his fellow 22-year-olds. “If we’d had any idea of how much work it would be…” (eloquent pause and laughter). The debut production of the new co-op Free Will Players, a party-hearty production of The Comedy of Errors directed by Susan Cox on the Heritage Amphitheatre stage in Hawrelak Park, was their contribution, as he puts it, “to the ‘legend of beg, borrow, steal theatre’.”

Ironically, O’Donnell wasn’t actually in it. In the interim he’d landed a gig in Robin Phillips’ double bill of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Crucible at the Citadel. And Citadel rehearsals started early. “So I took photos and made props.” He still remembers “dumpster-diving, literally!, with Annette at her old high school,” and discovering an outsized metal key. They were exultant.

In the Freewill summers that followed, O’Donnell found himself in all kinds of Shakespearean roles — comedies at first, then starting in 1998, comedies that played in rep with tragedies, histories, romances. Freewill’s first As You Like It was 1995; after that its stage mate was Richard III twice (2001 and 2008), and Coriolanus (2015).

Troy O’Donnell as Malvolio in Twelfth Night, Freewill Shakespeare Festival, 2011. Photo supplied

“On my tombstone they should put ‘servants, sidekicks, serviceable villains’,” says O’Donnell of his own Freewill history. Not to mention comic showstopper buffoons like the preposterous Don Armado in Love’s Labours Lost. “I’ve had my stockings garter’d twice,” O’Donnell says of the two Twelfth Nights in which he’s played the uppity servant Malvolio (most recently, in a spiegeltent in 2023).

As the quick-witted servant Grumio in The Taming of the Shrew, O’Donnell has ridden pellmell toward the stage on a motorcycle behind Julien Arnold’s Petruchio — and crashed. “Julien went to turn, on the gravel in the parking lot, and we went down. We got up and waved to the stage manager we were alive. She ran over and said ‘if you’re OK, park it and go!’. The two of us staggered onto the stage and collapsed.” The audience roared.

The young Troy O’Donnell as Lysander, Grade 4 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Photo supplied.

A certain inevitability attaches to O’Donnell’s relationship to Shakespeare, since it started in Grade 4. At Greenfield Elementary, as he explains, his debut was one of Macduff’s soldiers in Macbeth. He remembers his dad covering wooden salad bowls with tinfoil, for helmets. And the next year he rocketed to stardom as Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. “Our teacher believed in introducing kids to theatre and Shakespeare.” It took, big time.

Since that breakthrough role in Grade 5, O’Donnell has been in no fewer than eight Midsummer Night’s Dreams, at Freewill and elsewhere (and directed three). And it’s probably his favourite Shakespeare, “both for the number of times I’ve done it, and the beautiful language.”

As for As You Like It, his first was a double-assignment as Oliver, the hero’s  “the angry brother” and the young shepherd William. He’s played Duke Senior (the one who’s holding court out in the forest) a couple of times. He’s played Adam, Orlando’s servant…. And now, Touchstone. The character, as O’Donnell points out, is often played as a young urbanite, a hipster slumming in the woods, resentful, and exercising his wits at the expense of the locals. His Touchstone won’t be like that. “I’m an older Touchstone,” he says. “And I looked at the shift in power at court…. He’s been turned into a sort of messenger boy. He’s been the court Fool for many years. And now, the (usurping) Duke is ordering him to ‘go tell my daughter something’….. it’s not fun any more for him. And he’s ‘lemme out!’.”

O’Donnell says he’ll mine a reflective streak in the clown, inspired by the passing remark in the play about an unrequited love in Touchstone’s past. “He’s alone; the love of his life was a lost love.” In the forest, Touchstone will have a renaissance when he falls for the sweet country bumpkin Audrey.

As a Freewill founder and veteran cast member O’Donnell is hoping that this summer will be the company’s last in its extended exile from their traditional home in Hawrelak Park. First, the trials of COVID, then the city’s stunning decision to close the park for three YEARS for renovations. It’s been a test of resourcefulness and agility. Let no one argue the Shakespeareans haven’t been adaptable, a peripatetic life that took them to community leagues, small parks, a spiegeltent at Northlands, the Fringe, people’s backyards….

Louise McKinney Park, where Freewill presented small-cast adaptations of Macbeth and Much Ado About Nothing in 2021, is workable exile. But, as in last year’s tour of community hockey rinks, “there are extra expenses, for fencing, for security, for porta-potties….” And Mother Nature, always credited as Ambience Director in Freewill programs, gets to ham it up when there’s no tent cover.

The goal with the current Save Freewill Crowdfunding campaign, says O’Donnell echoing Horak, is to return to Hawrelak Park in 2026, “boldly, at full strength. Two big productions in rep, full casts of 15 or 16,” with all the trimmings including original music and design.

It’s time for a homecoming.

Contribute to Save Freewill at crowdfunding.alberta.ca.

PREVIEW

As You Like It

Freewill Shakespeare Festival

Directed and adapted by: David Horak

Starring: Mhairi Berg, Amber Borotsik, Brennan Campbell, Nadien Chu, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Alexandra Lainfiesta, Dayna Lee Hoffmann, Ian Leung, Josh Meredith, Troy O’Donnell, Cody Porter, Elena Porter

Where: Louise McKinney Riverfront Park, 9999 Grierson Hill

Running: June 27 to July 20

Tickets: freewill.bespoketicketing.com

 

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Remembering the season in Edmonton theatre, highlights part 1

Posted on June 25, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Goblin: Macbeth, Spontaneous Theatre. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In Goblin:Macbeth, the brilliant Spontaneous Theatre production that came to the Citadel’s Highwire Series this season, one of the goblin stars wonders aloud what the strange human ritual called theatre is actually for, anyhow. And he concludes, tellingly, that it’s something about humans sharing, breathing together.

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In a season when the world has delivered non-stop anxiety and polarizing chaos, live theatre, again and again, has offered … human connection, gathering, a tangible demo of community — by very definition.   

But you already know that if you’ve been in a theatre this season. So this is all about remembering some of the highlights onstage.

2024-2025 has been a challenge for live theatre. Building costs and running expenses have risen enormously, while grants are frozen and sponsorships are ever-harder to come by. The tension between negotiating this rocky terrain and remaining broadly accessible to audiences is tricky. Theatres have launched fund-raising campaigns and ticketing initiatives of various configurations. The boldest initiative of all is Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre’s move to make every ticket pay-what-you-will.

Remarkably, despite it all, this has been an excellent season for new Canadian work — long assumed to be the riskiest theatre fare — premiering at companies and on mainstages of every size in this theatre town. Horseplay, Stars On Her Shoulders, The Two Battles of Francis Pegahgamabow, After Mourning – Before Van Gogh, Jupiter, Mump and Smoot in Exit, Monstress, Heist, Cycle, Alphabet Line, Brick Shithouse, The Noon Witch, KaldrSaga, After The Trojan Women, Krampus: A New Musical, The Doorstep Plays … the list goes on.

Having the continent’s oldest and still biggest Fringe festival of its kind for 43 summers — in 2024 it sold 127,000 tickets and gathered a crowd of some 750,000 — arguably has something crucial to do with our hospitality to new Canadian plays. We’re an audience that knows what it’s like to be excited, or at least intrigued, by the new.

Here are 11 memorable productions from the season just past. I’m hoping they’ll trigger your own memories of the theatre you saw this season. And stay tuned for another 12thnight contribution coming soon, about memorable performances and designs, experiments, initiatives.

Alexander Ariate as Horse, Lee Boyes as Jacques in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifousl Set by Beyata Hackborn, lighting by Sarah Karpyshin

Horseplay. There are two best friends, a horse named Horse and a jockey named Jacques. at the centre of this irresistibly imaginative, funny, heart-tugging play by newcomer Kole Durnford. It’s a jock-ular relationship, you might say, that gets tested under the competitive pressures of the human world. Ambition, dreams, love, coming-of-age … it canters lightly in that expansive paddock. And it got an ingenious, physically exuberant premiere production at Workshop West, starring the outstanding Alexander Ariate and Lee Boyes, directed by Heather Inglis. Choreographer Amber Borotsik counts as an enabler, big time. The 12thnight review is here.

Goblin:Macbeth. What happens when a trio of curious goblins decide to have a go at theatre, and take Shakespeare’s tragedy in hand, attracted by the ghosts, the witches, and all the blood? We found out in the course of this playful, macabre, and funny Spontaneous Theatre creation, in Citadel’s Highwire Series in the Rice. The production, starring Rebecca Northan, Bruce Horak, and Ellis Lalonde, expert improvisers all, actually turned out a compelling, intelligible three-goblin production of the Scottish play, against all your expectations. Yes, the F-word (Fun) applies. I say give the goblins a Chekhov to play with. The 12thnight review is here.

Meegan Sweet and Gabby Bernard in Stars On Her Shoulders, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

Stars On Her Shoulders. Stephen Massicotte’s richly layered new World War I play is poised on the threshold between centuries, the Victorian sense of a woman’s lesser place in the human cosmos and a new world of possibilities for equality between the sexes. We meet five nurses in a convalescent hospital in France, a captivating ensemble in Heather Inglis’s Workshop West premiere production. It was set forth, meaningfully, on a gangway stage; what we saw was both a memory track and a glimpse of each other, now. It’s the season’s most profound, elegantly woven exploration of whether happiness is possible in a hopeless, shattered world. Now, there’s a question for us all. The 12thnight review is here.

Brick Shithouse, fenceless theatre at Common Ground Arts Society. Photo by Brianne Jang

Brick Shithouse. The characters of Ashleigh Hicks’ riveting body-slammer of a play, which premiered at Common Ground Arts Society’s Found Festival in a Sarah J Culkin production last summer, are between worlds, too. They’re restless, frustrated 20-something underachievers, who’ve been biding their time working shitty jobs, waiting for their ‘real lives’ to begin. And they take matters in their own hands, by live-streaming their fight club confident they’re safely anonymous behind a paywall. It’s a dangerous world out there in the online ether. Their coming-of-age has come and gone, and this is a group portrait of a stalled generation. The 12thnight review is here.

Dance Nation. The play, by the Pulitzer-nominated American writer Claire Barron, takes us into the fraught, funny, confusing world of pre-teen girls, competitive dance division, between girl- and womanhood. It comes with this unusual theatrical plié — an all-ages ensemble of actors play young dance-crazy girls, onstage and off-, coming of age in the locker room, at home, in the future and the past. Goldberg’s kick-ass nine-actor ensemble production, her first as the new artistic producer of the SkirtsAfire Festival, was led by the thorny friendship between two girls, a talented and a nearly-talented dancer, played by Sydney Williams and Kristen Padayas, both excellent. The 12thnight review is here.

Ron Pederson in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Adam Goudreau.

A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder. The wicked, not to say killer, musical comedy of the season, the Tony-winning Broadway musical by Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak, concerns the homicidal upward mobility of a penniless distant relation to the aristocracy en route to an earldom. The Grindstone Theatre production directed by Byron Martin, which marked the emergence of Grindstone Theatre into full-scale mainstage musicals at the Orange Hub, was ideal for the remarkable multiple comic talents of Oscar Derkx as the creatively aspirational D’Ysquith and Ron Pederson as an entire gallery of upper-class twits, buffoons, buffoon, and grotesques, who get offed in the course of the evening. In a selection of G&S and Noel Coward patter songs and ballads, the pair, backed up by an amusing Greek chorus, nailed the music too. Check out the 12thnight review here.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Luc Tellier (centre) as Puck, Citadel Theatre. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical. This highly (and to me, at least, unexpectedly) entertaining Daryl Cloran creation, which followed the multiple successes of his Beatles-scored version of As You Like It, ingeniously paired Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedy with a jukebox crammed with chart-toppers that are actually part of your DNA whether you know it or not. So the Bard’s lyric poetry ceded to the fun of seeing what happens serious actors apply their dramatic chops to songs with lyrics like “that’s the way I like it, uh-huh.” The rustic artisans, those perpetually hilarious amateur thespians preparing a production for a court audience, were the house band. And they rocked. And the sparkly visuals of the irresistibly danceable glam-rock era were a treat to see. Check out the review here.

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

Angry Alan. This smart, stinging little 2018 solo play by the English writer Penelope Skinner fastens its beady eye on a socio-cultural mystery: how does a reasonable, even decent, guy get radicalized by the whackjob claims of the ‘men’s movement’? It got a crack Northern Light Theatre production directed by Trevor Schmidt, starring the terrific Cody Porter in an utterly convincing performance as a man whose festering grievances take a fateful turn to radical men-inism when he finds himself in the dark online labyrinth. Funny and scary. The 12thnight review is here.

Sam Free and Bella King in On The Banks Of The Nut, Teatro Live! Photo by Ryan Parker

On The Banks Of The Nut. The tickle of this 2001 Stewart Lemoine screwball comedy, revived by Teatro Live!, starts with the premise: a hapless federal talent agent for the state of Wisconsin. He finds himself on a hinterland who’s who expedition in search of “a citizen of exceptional ability.” The aphrodisiac quality of great music — specifically Mahler’s Third Symphony — is crucial to their success. Funny and intricate in signature Lemoinian ways, with a mix of top-flight Teatro veterans and an excellent younger cast of stars, including Sam Free as the agent and Bella King as the take-charge heroine who instinctively knows that romantic chaos is fun for people. The 12thnight review is here.

Ellie Heath, Brian Dooley, Monk Northey in Jupiter by Colleen Murphy. Photo by Ian Jackson

Jupiter. Colleen Murphy’s new play, which premiered at Theatre Network, seemed to fall into a now-rare category of old-fashioned inter-generational family drama. That family is working-class, close (maybe too close), and haunted by loss, grief, grievance, ghosts, and a toxic secret. Powerfully acted by the ensemble of Bradley Moss’s premiere production, it moved through time with an inexorable Greek sense of inevitability. What happens to the promise of young people? Murphy, as usual, steps up unflinchingly. Have a peek at the 12thnight review here.

Stafford Perry, Heidi Damayo in A Streecar Named Desire, Citadel Theatre/ Theatre Calgary. Photo by Nanc Price.

A Streetcar Named Desire. An atmospheric Daryl Cloran production brought Citadel audiences a sepia- and jazz-tinged version of one of American theatre’s greatest plays about illusion and delusion. It seemed to unfold at a great distance upstage, like a sort of mirage, powerful but not quite involving. And as lighted (and dimmed) brilliantly by Bonnie Beecher, Lindsey Angell’s valiant but fragile Blanche DuBois, the embodiment of charm, its cruelties and limitations, stepped out of the shadows of her past into a semi-visible present. Check out the 12thnight review here.

Stay tuned for 12thnight’s Season in Edmonton Theatre, Part 2 — performances, designs, moments, experiences! 

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The sound of Silence: a new opera at NUOVA Vocal Arts, a review

Posted on June 24, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Phillip Addis and Teiya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 in Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Silence. Now there’s a puckish name for an opera.

With Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts has taken in hand an expansive, richly imagined 1999 play by the English playwright/screenwriter Moira Buffini. This new addition to the opera repertoire, adapted from a fascinating play, has a challenging score by Vancouver composer Leslie Uyeda and a debut libretto by playwright Darrin Hagen (undoubtedly his first chance to have his words in surtitles over a stage).

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The quasi-historical 1999 play, produced here many a season ago by Northern Light Theatre’s Trevor Schmidt, is captivatingly odd, and intricate, as Hagen’s libretto embraces. The setting is medieval: violent first-century England, Saxon rulers plagued by Viking incursions. But the resonances — questions of power, sexuality and sexual trauma, gender identity — are very contemporary.

It starts as a kind of historical sitcom, a peeved Norman princess Ymma (Lara Ciekiewicz) getting dragged to England (“what a dump!”) on orders from her bro, to be married for political reasons. And the comedy continues when she discovers that the groom-to-be is a 14-year-old boy, Lord Silence of Cumbria (Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野). Their wedding night is a rom-com gone comically off the rails when the boy discovers, to his amazement, that he’s actually a girl, raised by his mom in order to achieve some status and authority in a man’s world. Voilà, medieval same-sex marriage, with the rider that in a fractious world ruled by capricious men (have you ever heard of such a thing?), silence is a woman’s best defence.

Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

King Ethelred (Phillip Addis), the Saxon monarch, is a dope, a weakling whose favourite location is bed, in the fetal position. His enabler is a manly knight (Clarence Frazer), and his inner tyrant is unlocked when it dawns on him what he’s missing, i.e. Ymma. And a pursuit ensues. There’s also religious satire: the pagan Silence, who has a native wit about him/her/them, is schooled in Christianity by a priest (Matthew Dalen) who’s been railroaded into celibacy. He’s a rom-com hero in waiting, a narrative development that includes Ymma’s maid Agnes (Rebecca Cuddy).

I only tell you all this so you get the gist of the complications of this venture. They escalate exponentially, in the way of a cross-century farce, when the characters attract, and are attracted by, exactly the wrong people. It’s a lot.

I had a chance to catch this original new addition to the opera repertoire this week, and was struck by the unexpected (to me) way that the artifices of opera can give the period rhythms of the language a kind of enjoyable natural comedy. It’s one thing for Agnes to speak of the vomit in her employer’s hair, and another, more amusing really, to sing it.

Cast of Silence, centre Lara Ciekiewicz and Teiya Kasahara 笠原 貞野, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

The cast of six in Kim Mattice Wanat’s production are all powerhouse singers — there’s nothing silent about Silence needless to say — and accomplished actors, with a six-member orchestra (directed by Gordon Gerrard) to match. And the characters do come vividly to life, in the dexterous storytelling of Hagen’s libretto. It brings them together in various configurations to address, each from a different angle, the intertwined themes of freedom and home.

As an innocent disconcerted by the successive stages of self-discovery, Silence, in Kasahara 笠原貞野’s performance, is an alert catalyst for the action, always in re-assessing mode. And their arias are full of jagged soaring intervals that speak (well, sing) to the always  elusive identity quest of this appealing title protagonist. Ymma is feisty and smart, a wary survivor of trauma in Ciekiewicz’s musical and dramatic portrait. Her scenes with Silence are funny, and increasingly touching. Addis is a funny, then scary, king in charge. Times being what they are, the parallels aren’t just oblique.

To me, judging by this first outing for the new piece (handsomely appointed on a set by Daniela Masellis, lighted by Lieke den Bakker), the momentum of the story and the stagecraft start to unravel in the fragmentary last third of the piece. Despite the escalating pace of the narrative, the later scenes seem both cluttered and a bit inert. And the magic mushroom sequence, comical in theory, doesn’t quite land. But then, when do the dope-smoking scenes ubiquitous in stage sitcoms work either?

But Silence is a fascinating debut, ambitious and theatrically challenging. You can see the attraction of the play to an opera company — big characters that seem even bigger in a small-scale production, a fulsome story, a commanding sense of anachronism.

REVIEW

Silence

NUOVA Vocal Arts

Libretto by: Darrin Hagen adapted from the Moira Buffini play

Music by: Leslie Uyeda

Directed by: Kim Mattice Wanat

Starring: Clarence Frazer, Phillip Addis, Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野, Rebecca Cuddy, Matthew Dalen, Lara Ciekiewicz.

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: through June 27

Tickets: showpass.com

 

  

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Get festive: it’s a four-festival weekend on (and above and near) Edmonton stages

Posted on June 20, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Lee White and Inbal Lori of The Lorilees in Deep Dream, Improvaganza 2025. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

We sure do know how to get festive in this town. It’s a FOUR-festival weekend on (and above and near and beyond) Edmonton stages. So a toast is in order.

•At the Exchange Theatre in Strathcona, Rapid Fire Theatre’s Improvaganza 2025, an international showcase of innovators in the fine and roistering art of spontaneity, is underway through Sunday. The annual festivities assemble an array of improv talent from around the world (and often reconfigure these deluxe forces in unexpected ways). This year’s lineup includes troupes from Berlin, the U.K., France and Israel, Vancouver. Ah yes, and RFT’s hit Improvised Dungeons & Dragons, a costumed extravaganza led by Mark Meer.

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The shows happen in unusual formats. In Deep Dream the Berlin duo The Lorilees, for example, conceive of the stage as poised on the imaginary border between between sleeping and being awake, with dreamy visuals to match. In The Play’s The Thing, Chris Mead, Ali James, and John Oakes from the U.K. improvise an entire Shakespeare play before your very eyes and ears. Vancouver-based Tightrope Theatre from Vancouver improvises a sci-fi mystery thriller, The Yes Files. And on Saturday afternoon Kidding Around is the Improvaganza edition of Rapid Fire’s kids’ show.

Check out the lineup and improvise yourself some tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com.   

•Alberta Circus Arts Festival, the brainchild of Firefly Theatre’s Annie Dugan, a multi-faceted performer herself who likes her art up in the air, is back through Sunday at La Cité francophone. It comes with an international array of performances, workshops, and fun hangs (in nearly all senses of that word). Flô: Immersive Circus, created by the Quebec-based duo circus artist/sailor duo Alexia Gourd and Hugo Noel, imagines an adventure in the middle of the Atlantic. And it uses circus arts, music, video and immersive technology — it happens in a “ship” — to take us there. On a ship, really.

Full schedule of shows and activities: albertacircusarts.com.

•NUOVA Vocal Arts Festival, which embraces the worlds of musical theatre and opera, launches two of its shows this weekend. One is a new opera, Silence, based on a 1999 play by the English playwright/screenwriter Moira Buffini: music by Leslie Uyeda and libretto by Darrin Hagen. Kim Mattice Wanat’s production runs at the Orange Hub (10045 156 St.) through June 27. Have a gander at 12thnight’s preview interview with Hagen in this new adventure in writing for the playwright/ actor/ director/ composer/ activist, queer historian.

The other is the ‘50s Broadway musical comedy Once Upon A Mattress, running at the Capitol Theatre at Fort Edmonton through June 28. Tickets: nuovavocalarts.ca.

•The Thousand Faces Festival returns Saturday and Sunday, bringing to the hospitable and diverse Alberta Avenue ‘hood an enticingly global array of performances  — theatre, dance, music, storytelling — and food. The locale is the great outdoors outdoors at the Alberta Avenue Community Centre (9210 118 Ave.). Cuban Movements, a troupe that has delighted Fringe audiences, is in the lineup. So is The Qala Troupe, Edmonton’s first Hindi language company. And Theatre Prospero brings The Doomed Prince, inspired by Egyptian mythology to the festival; the audience get to play the characters.  Check out the schedule at thousandfaces.ca.

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Play into opera: Darrin Hagen turns his hand to writing a libretto. And the rest is Silence, premiering at NUOVA Vocal Arts

Posted on June 19, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

Cast of Silence, centre Lara Ciekiewicz and Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Darrin Hagen has written plays, songs, stories, essays, queer histories, a memoir, an award-winning film documentary. He’s created drag cabarets (and sometimes starred in them too), devised queer tours, hosted web series, created music videos. He’s acted, directed, dramaturged. He’s composed sound scores; he’s written string quartets and requiems. He’s a veritable poster child for versatility.

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But he has never written an opera libretto — till now.

Silence, premiering Saturday on the Orange Hub stage in a NUOVA Vocal Arts commission, is Hagen’s libretto-writing  debut. The opera adapts a highly unusual 1999 play by the English playwright/ indie screenwriter Moira Buffini, with music by Vancouver composer Leslie Uyeda.

Darrin Hagen, playwright/ actor/ director/ filmmaker, composer/ activist and now librettist. Photo supplied.

The new opera, the inspiration of NUOVA artistic director Kim Mattice Wanat, is a project “three years of obsession” (as Hagen puts it) in the making. And it started with a proposition by Mattice Wanat, and this from Hagen: “You do know I’ve never done this before?”

It’s the same question Hagen asked when the proposition of the film Pride vs. Prejudice: The Delwin Vriend Story, was put to him. “But Saying No doesn’t get you anywhere!” he declares, with his signature Hagen rumble of a laugh. That film documents the inspirational story of a man, fired for being gay, whose challenge of a hostile government led to a seminal Supreme Court decision that has changed the lives of LGBTQ+ people in this country and beyond. It premiered a year ago at the Rainbow Vision Film Festival (“40 years to the day I was crowned Miss Flashback in 1984”). And its year on the festival circuit since then has included a European premiere in Poland.

Phillip Addis and Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 in Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price

From the start, Silence appealed to Hagen for its juxtaposition of light and dark, a medieval England setting and contemporary resonances: “so medieval and so modern!” It juggles gender and sexuality, the seduction of tyrannical power and vengeance, an imminent apocalypse … it’s a juicy palette. The title character, as Hagen explains, is a boy, the 14-year-old ruler of Cumbria, who discovers on his wedding night that he’s a girl: a secret medieval same-sex marriage. Then there’s a king, weak and risible until, when crossed, he gets out of bed and turns into a cruel and violent tyrant — hey, is this sounding at all familiar for our moment?

Silence “feels perfect for an opera,” says Hagen, echoing director Mattice Wanat. “Elevated characters, kings, priests, heroic action, fugitives, high stakes … an epic story told in a small work.” Silence unfolds in arias, duets, a trio, ensemble numbers. “And when they all sing together, it’s so exciting!”

Telya Kasahara 笠原 貞野 in Silence, NUOVA Vocal Arts. Photo by Nanc Price.

There’s no spoken text, per se. Hagen’s libretto, laced liberally with lines from Buffini’s play, is the lyrics, Hagen says. “And Leslie’s music — challenging, dissant, atonal — drives the plot and the characters. Always forward! It’s alive with character and intent at every moment.” Hagen says he responded to the challenge of a libretto by arranging it on the page like stanzas of poetry. And then composer Uyeda did her work. And in rehearsal, adjustments of the score have been made “to respond to the rhythms and energy of the performers.”

“I’m in awe of the performers and the team,” declares Hagen. “They show up and sing on day 1 (of rehearsals)!…. It’s like watching Olympic athletes. And they sing full-out every time.”

A chamber ensemble (“no accordion in this show!” says Hagen of the notable absence of his own signature instrument), six singers, a conductor, costumes, lights…. “A small opera, a huge show!”

Hagen, who’s just finishing his term as the U of A’s Lee Playwright-in-Residence, has been “watching and learning,” as he puts it modestly, at opera rehearsals, a new scene for him. And meanwhile, he’s been hanging out with the Shakespeare crowd too. The Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s upcoming production of As You Like It features an original Hagen score (with the play’s songs composed by Mhairi Berg). The play’s court scenes have “an electronic synth base.” Then, as the characters repair to “the magical world” of the  Forest of Arden, the music goes acoustic. And it all ends with a flourish, “a full-on techno dance party, as Hagen describes.

Luckily the opera and the Shakespeare are rehearsing on the same floor of the Fine Arts Building at the U of A. Or the Hagen schedule would implode.

It’s been an intensely creative post-COVID era for him. Pride vs Prejudice continues to tour film festivals. And this summer, in a writer’s residency at Wallace Stegner House in East End, Sask.,  Hagen will  be turning his play Witch Hunt at the Strand, which culls from a sorry chapter in Edmonton history, into a book (“creative non-fiction” as he describes). And then … the Fringe, and the latest instalment of the serial adventures of Flora and Fauna he co-creates with Trevor Schmidt. In Flora and Fawna Face Their Fears, the intrepid and quite large little girls face “a new threat to their relationship.” Stay tuned. No mean girls allowed.

The NUOVA Vocal Arts festival also includes two musicals: Once Upon A Mattress (June 20 to 28) and Between The Lines (June 26, 28 a,

PREVIEW

Silence

NUOVA Vocal Arts

Libretto by: Darrin Hagen adapted from the Moira Buffini play

Music by: Leslie Uyeda

Directed by: Kim Mattice Wanat

Starring: Clarence Frazer, Phillip Addis, Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野, Rebecca Cuddy, Matthew Dalen, Lara Ciekiewicz.

Where: Orange Hub, 10045 156 St.

Running: Saturday through June 27

Tickets: showpass.com

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New plays for size large stages: the Citadel’s Collider Festival is back

Posted on June 17, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Think big. That’s the not-secret agenda of the festival that returns to the Citadel Friday. The Collider Fest, named for the collision of artists and forms, is all about developing new plays for size large and x-large performance mainstages, here and in the big wide Elsewhere.

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As associate artistic director Mieko Ouchi points out, that’s a part of the theatre ecology that the Citadel is uniquely positioned to support and nurture, a niche not occupied by Edmonton’s smaller theatres and indies. “We didn’t want to replicate what other theatres do very well,” she says.

Chosen for the readings are five new scripts poised for future productions on larger stages. The line-up for the four-year-old festival includes readings of two plays commissioned by the Citadel. One is an adaptation — “a fresh new take” as Ouchi puts it — on Cyrano de Bergerac, the Edmond Rostand classic, where wordplay meets swordplay. Playwright Jessy Ardern has retained the 17th century Paris setting, and in an homage to the dexterous verse form of the original adapted it entirely in rhyming couplets. As Citadel artistic director Daryl Cloran has said, it has an appealing “contemporary resonance.” Amanda Goldberg directs the Collider reading that opens the festival Friday. And her production is the grand finale (May 2 to 24, 2026) of the  Citadel’s upcoming 60th anniversary season.

The other Citadel commission is from playwright Mac Brock (Boy Trouble), the managing producer of the Common Ground Arts Society. And it’s especially created for the Citadel’s Young Company, a pre-professional teen ensemble training program. A cast of a dozen or so will play characters their own age, the 16 to 21 range, in a prairie story of “two siblings investigating the disappearance of their mother,” as Ouchi describes. The goal of the commission includes “helping young people discover how to approach new work.” The June 22 reading is led by Mel Bahniuk.

Collin Doyle’s new play The Riverside Seniors Village Theatrical Society Presents: William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet gets a Collider reading June 21. “A really funny, very charming script,” as Ouchi describes, “that takes us backstage, into auditions and rehearsals at a seniors’ drama club that’s decided to put on Romeo and Juliet.” A “somewhat former” actor-turned-librarian gets talked into directing the show by her aging auntie. And the backstage collision of egos, bodies, and faulty memories in a story about young love, is a rich vein of heart-tugging comedy, says Ouchi who directs the reading.

In this the 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth, Katherine Koller’s adaptation of Persuasion gets a reading at the festival June 21 at 2 p.m. The Edmonton playwright is an expert on all things Jane. And among Koller’s preparations for creating the script designed for a cast of 10”, she toured every location mentioned in Austen’s sprawling final novel, published in 1817. And there were a lot. The biggest challenge was “distilling key moments, key scenes,” says Ouchi. Workshop West’s Heather Inglis directs the Collider reading, co-presented by Script Salon.

Nowhere With You: An East Coast Musical, by Calgary-based playwright James Odin Wade, is “another approach to adaptation,” Ouchi says. Wade, who’s originally from the Maritimes, culls from the songbook of the well-known singer-songwriter Joel Plaskett.

Citadel associate artistic director Mieko Ouch. Photo supplied

As Ouchi (who directs the reading) describes, at the centre of Nowhere With You is a musician who’s stalled and looking for renewed creative energy. He returns to his hometown of Halifax, and to his parents’ garage where his career really began in jam sessions, to be with his people and find that spark. The homecoming is complicated by relationships with his relatives, his friends, an ex-lover. Wade’s musical is designed for a cast of actor-musicians, says Ouchi, who directs the reading. And Plaskett’s music invites theatre artistry because “his hallmark is that his songs are incredibly conversational…. They flow beautifully from text into song, and back into text.”     

Tapping “original source material, with the extra hook of being somewhat familiar to audiences” is something of a theatre trend happening across the country,” says Ouchi of the appeal of adaptations. Which is why Collider includes a workshop on that subject, led by Amiel Gladstone (Onegin). Beth Graham and Ainsley Hillyard, collaborators on Mermaid Legs, lead a workshop on “equitable devising with choreography and playwriting.”

Full schedule of Collider Festival events: citadeltheatre.com. The readings are free; donations are welcome at the door.

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The season in Edmonton theatre: the 2024-2025 Sterling Award nominations

Posted on June 16, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical. Costumes by Deanna Finnman, set by Hanne Loosen, lighting by Jareth Li. Photo by Nanc Price.

The cast of Ashleigh Hicks’s Brick Shithouse, Found Festival 2024. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A large-scale jukebox musical adaptation of Shakespeare’s most popular comedy and a small-scale bruisingly physical indie production proved the top choices of jurors as the 36th annual Sterling Award nominations were announced Monday. Named for the theatre pioneer Elizabeth Sterling Haynes, the Sterlings celebrate excellence in the Edmonton theatre season just past.

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The top nomination magnets are, to say the least, a study in contrasts. The Citadel production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ‘70s Musical, and fenceless theatre’s body-slamming Brick Shithouse, a collaboration with Common Ground Arts Society’s Found Festival, each have eight nominations in the 26 Sterling categories.

The former dives into the chaos potential of love in the psychedelic forest by pairing the rom-com hit of the 1590s to a jukebox of 25 1970s chart-toppers. Daryl Cloran’s production, a best musical nominee, has nods for Jameela McNeil’s leading performance as Titania the r&b queen, and for both Ruth Alexander and Oscar Derkx in supporting roles as rustic thesps and band members. As well, the ensemble cast of 16 is nominated, along with Deanna Finnman’s flamboyant 70s costumes, Ben Elliott’s musical direction in this Bard meets Supertramp enterprise, and Gianna Vacirca’s choreography.

Ashleigh Hicks’ Brick Shithouse, with its gallery of desperate 20-something under-achievers who opt to jump-start their lives behind the dangerously transparent paywall ‘anonymity’ online, is an outstanding indie production contender. It also has Sterling nominations for the playwright, for Sarah J Culkin’s direction, Gabriel Richardson’s supporting performance, as well as the ensemble of his cast-mates. And designer Even Gilchrist is nominated in both the set and lighting categories.

Zachary Parsons-Lozinski as Frank-N-Furter in Rocky Horror Show, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

Grindstone Theatre’s production of Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show, the opener in its new mainstage series at the Orange Hub, has six nominations, including outstanding musical, Beverly Destroys’ costumes, Simon Abbott’s musical direction, Sarah Dowling’s choreography, Zachary Parsons-Lozinski’s star performance as Dr. Frank-N-Furter and Josh Travnik’s supporting performance as Riff Raff.

The SkirtsAfire mainstage production of the Claire Barron play Dance Nation, a glimpse into the fraught lives and tensions of teenage competitive dancers, also has six nominations — for director Amanda Goldberg, for Kristen Padayas in the lead role category and Kijo Gatama in a supporting role, for the ensemble, for Kena León’s soundscape, and for choreography by Julie Murphy and Gomathi Boorada.

Dance Nation, SkirtsAfire Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography

 

Alexander Ariate as Horse in Horseplay by Kole Durnford, Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux. Set and costumes Beyata Hackborn, lighting Sarah Karpyshin

The other top Sterling draws are four productions with five nominations each. Horseplay, an unusual two-hander by newcomer Kole Durnford that premiered at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, has two characters, one a horse and the other his jockey, joined in this exploration of a friendship and loyalty under duress. Its five nominations are in the outstanding production category, as a new play nominee, for Heather Inglis’s direction, for Alexander Ariate’s ingeniously comic and physical leading role performance, and for Sarah Karpyshin’s lighting.

Damon Pitcher, Jacob Holloway, Victoria Suen, Amanda Neufeld in Krampus: A New Musical, Straight Edge Theatre at Workshop West. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

The Workshop West/ Straight Edge Theatre production of Krampus: A New Musical, a macabre seasonal offering, also has five nominations, including outstanding musical, Michael Clark’s musical direction, the score by creators Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, and leading and supporting performances by Amanda Neufeld and Damon Pitcher respectively.

The third of the season’s offerings with five Sterling nominations is Andrew Ritchie’s Cycle. The Thou Art Here Theatre production has its creator and star, a cyclist dangerously undaunted by weather and traffic, atop his bike. It’s a contender for new play, for indie production, for Kristi Hansen’s direction, for Liv McRobbie’s sound score, and for T. Erin Gruber’s multi-media design that sent us careening through the streets.

Andrew Ritchie in Cycle, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

The five nominations for Rachel Peake’s Citadel/Grand Theatre co-production of Disney’s FROZEN: The Broadway Musical include nods for both Chariz Faulmino and Kelly Holiff in leading roles, Andrew Cohen in a supporting role as the nice-guy shopkeeper,  musical direction by Steven Greenfield, and the multi-media design by Amelia Scott.

Of the five outstanding production nominees, a particularly competitive category, two, Kole Durnford’s Horseplay and Colleen Murphy’s Jupiter, are premieres, the former from Workshop West and the latter from Theatre Network. Two are from the Citadel, last summer’s The Play That Goes Wrong (a co-production with Theatre Calgary and the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre) and Goblin:Macbeth, the imaginative work of Spontaneous Theatre production. The fifth is Trevor Schmidt’s Northern Light production of Penelope Skinner’s Angry Alan, which has an outstanding director nomination for Schmidt, and one for the solo star Cody Porter as a reasonable sort of guy red-pilled against probability into the online extremism of the “men’s movement,” as well as the online soundscape of Amelia Chan.

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

In the always contentious new play category Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre premiered two of the contenders, Kole Durnford’s Horseplay and the new Stephen Massicotte play Stars On Her Shoulders. They’re up against AJ Hrooshkin’s Alphabet Line, a Prairie Strange production which premiered at Edmonton Fringe Theatre, Ashleigh Hicks’ Brick Shithouse, and Andrew Ritchie’s Cycle.

The contenders for the Timothy Ryan Award for outstanding musical include two Grindstone productions, Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show and A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder, which marks the morphing of the company into the seasonal big-time. Their musical competitors are A Midsummer Night’s Dream: the ‘70s musical, Krampus: A New Musical, and Edmonton Opera’s production of Die Fledermaus.

In the end, the Citadel comes away with 25 Sterling nominations, the most of any theatre by far. Workshop West has 11, Northern Light six, with the rest dispersed amongst smaller theatres and indie companies.

The theatre for young audiences categories are dominated by Alberta Musical Theatre’s production of Rapunzel and include nods for The “Away” Project at the Silver Skate Festival. And the Fringe categories disperse the nomination honours widely, alighting on such new musicals like Collin Doyle and Matt Graham’s Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) for Plain Jane Theatre, Trevor Schmidt’s thriller Black Widow Gun Club for Whizgiggling Productions, and Liam Salmon’s Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries from Low Hanging Fruits.

On Sterling gala night, July 14 at the Westbury Theatre, the indispensably versatile Gina Moe will be honoured with the Margaret Mooney Award for Outstanding Achievement in Administration, Nico Van Der Kley will receive the Ross Hill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production. And Gerry Potter, the venerable founder of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre and Rising Sun Theatre, will receive an award for his outstanding contributions to Edmonton theatre. There’s a special Sterling this year, too, in “sustainability and community stewardship,” and it goes to Tessa Stamp.

Congratulations to all the nominees. Gala tickets: fringetheatre.ca.

The 2024-2025 Sterling Award nominations

Outstanding Production of a Play: Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Angry Alan (Northern Light Theatre); The Play That Goes Wrong (The Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); Jupiter (Theatre Network); Goblin:Macbeth (The Citadel Theatre and Spontaneous Theatre).

The Timothy Ryan Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical: Krampus: A New Musical (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Straight Edge Theatre); A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre); A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Grindstone Theatre); Die Fledermaus (Edmonton Opera).

Outstanding Independent Production of a Play: Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre); KaldrSaga: A New Queer, Old Norse Cabaret (Cardiac Theatre); After the Trojan Women (Alma Theatre); The Maids (Putrid Brat).

Outstanding New Play (award to playwright): Ashleigh Hicks, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Kole Durnford, Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Andrew Ritchie, Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre); AJ Hrooshkin, Alphabet Line (Prairie Strange Productions); Stephen Massicotte, Stars on Her Shoulders (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre).

Outstanding Performance by a Performer in a Leading Role (play): Cody Porter, Angry Alan (Northern Light Theatre); Lindsey Angell, A Streetcar Named Desire (The Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary); Alexander Ariate, Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Julien Arnold, The Woman in Black (Teatro Live!); Kristen Padayas, Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival).

Outstanding Performance by a Performer in a Leading Role (musical): Zachary Parsons-Lozinski in Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre);  Jameela McNeil in A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Chariz Faulmino in Disney’s FROZEN (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre); Kelly Holiff in Disney’s FROZEN (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre); Amanda Neufeld in Krampus: A New Musical (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Straight Edge Theatre).

Outstanding Performance by a Performer in a Supporting Role (play)
Alexandra Dawkins, The Maids (Putrid Brat); Gabriel Richardson, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Sheldon Elter, A Streetcar Named Desire (The Citadel Theatre and Theatre Calgary); Kijo Gatama, Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival); Michael Watt, Bea (Shadow Theatre).

Outstanding Performance by a Performer in a Supporting Role (musical): Josh Travnik, Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre Society); Oscar Derkx, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70’s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Ruth Alexander, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70’s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Andrew Cohen, Disney’s FROZEN (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre); Damon Pitcher, Krampus: A New Musical  (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Straight Edge Theatre).

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play or Musical: the cast of Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); the cast of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Grindstone Theatre); the cast of Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival); the cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70’s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); the cast of Goblin:Macbeth (Citadel Theatre and Spontaneous Theatre).

Outstanding Director: Sarah J Culkin , Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Heather Inglis, Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Trevor Schmidt, Angry Alan (Northern Light Theatre); Kristi Hansen, Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre); Amanda Goldberg, Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival).

Outstanding Set Design: Tessa Stamp, Jupiter (Theatre Network); Beyata Hackborn The Play That Goes Wrong (The Citadel Theatre, Theatre Calgary, and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); c.m. zuby, The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow (Shadow Theatre); Even Gilchrist, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Daniel vanHeyst, Where You Are (Shadow Theatre).

Outstanding Lighting Design: Even Gilchrist, Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Whittyn Jason, Brother Rat (ReadyGo Theatre and Edmonton Fringe Theatre); Larissa Poho, Monstress (Northern Light Theatre); Sarah Karpyshin, Horseplay (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Siobhán Sleath, Heist (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre).

Outstanding Costume Design: Deanna Finnman, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Cory Sincennes, Disney’s FROZEN: The Broadway Musical (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre); Beverly Destroys, Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre); Patrick Du Wors, Die Fledermaus (Edmonton Opera); Philip Edwards, Goblin:MacBeth (The Citadel Theatre and Spontaneous Theatre).

Outstanding Score of a Play or Musical: Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, Krampus: A New Musical (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Straight Edge Theatre); Josh Meredith and Erik Richards, Brother Rat (ReadyGo Theatre and Edmonton Fringe Theatre); Richard Feren, Heist (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre); Jinting Zhao, Nato Downs and Ari Rhodes, Bear Grease (A LightningCloud Production, presented by The Citadel Theatre); VISSIA , Rapunzel (Alberta Musical Theatre Company).

Outstanding Sound Design: Kena León, Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival), Liv McRobbie, Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre); Dave Clarke, Monstress (Northern Light Theatre); Amelia Chan, Angry Alan (Northern Light Theatre); Lindsey Walker, Bea (Shadow Theatre).

Outstanding Musical Direction: Ben Elliott, A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Simon Abbott, Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre); Michael Clark Krampus: A New Musical (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and Straight Edge Theatre); Lyndon Pugeda, The Ballad of Johnny and June (The Citadel Theatre); Steven Greenfield, Disney’s FROZEN (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre).

Outstanding Choreography/Fight/Intimacy Direction: Sam Jeffery (fight and intimacy direction), Brick Shithouse (Fenceless Theatre and Common Ground Arts Society); Julie Murphy and Gomathi Boorada (choreography), Dance Nation (SkirtsAfire Festival); Sarah Dowling (choreography), Richard O’Brien’s Rocky Horror Show (Grindstone Theatre); Gianna Vacirca (choreography), A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The ’70s Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Siobhan Richardson (fight and intimacy direction), Heist (The Citadel Theatre and The Grand Theatre).

Outstanding Multimedia Design: Corwin Ferguson, Heist (The Citadel Theatre & The Grand Theatre); T Erin Gruber, Cycle (Thou Art Here Theatre); Matt Schuurman, After Mourning – Before Van Gogh (Shadow Theatre); Amelia Scott, Disney’s FROZEN: The Broadway Musical (The Citadel Theatre); Aaron Macri, The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow (Shadow Theatre).

Outstanding Production for Young Audiences: Rapunzel (Albert Musical Theatre Company); The “Away” Project (The Silver Skate Festival).

Outstanding Artistic Achievement for Young Audiences: VISSIA (composer), Rapunzel (Albert Musical Theatre Company); Maxwell Vesely (performer), Rapunzel (Albert Musical Theatre Company); Even Gilchrist, Tessa Stamp, and Whittyn Jason (designer), The “Away” Project (The Silver Skate Festival); Camille Pavlenko (pPlaywright), Rapunzel (Albert Musical Theatre Company).  

Outstanding Fringe Production: Bright Lights (Blarney Productions); Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits); Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical (Plain Jane Theatre); WROL (Without Rule of Law) (Light in the Dark Theatre0; Bull (High Rise Productions).

Outstanding Fringe New Work (award to playwright): Liam Witte, 27 Pictures (Bicycle Built for Three Productions); Liam Salmon, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits); Collin Doyle and Matt Graham, Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical (Plain Jane Theatre); Angie Bustos, The Picture of Elias Graham (Theatre Tahanan); Trevor Schmidt, Black Widow Gun Club (Whizgiggling Productions).

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Individual: Zachary Parsons-Lozinski, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits); Lauren Brady, OWEaDEBT (HEYwire Theatre); Robyn Clark, WROL (Without Rule of Law) (Light in the Dark Theatre); Rachel Bowron, Bright Lights (Blarney Productions); Elyse Roszell, The Picture of Elias Graham (Theatre Tahanan).

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Ensemble: the cast of Bright Lights (Blarney Productions); the cast of Fear Fables (Entertainment Purposes Only); the cast of Black Widow Gun Club (Whizgiggling Productions); the cast of WROL (Without Rule of Law) (Light in the Dark Theatre); the cast of Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical (Plain Jane Theatre).

Outstanding Fringe Director: Luc Tellier, Bright Lights (Blarney Productions); Kate Ryan, Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical (Plain Jane Theatre); Owen Holloway, Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries (Low Hanging Fruits); Trevor Schmidt, Black Widow Gun Club (Whizgiggling Productions); Emily Marisabel, WROL (Without Rule of Law) (Light in the Dark Theatre).

Outstanding Individual Achievement in Production: Trent Crosby (production manager); Kat Evans (production manager); Patrick Fraser (technical director); Lore Green (stage manager).

Special Award: Achievement in Sustainability and Community Stewardship: Tessa Stamp

Outstanding Contribution to Edmonton Theatre: Gerry Potter

The Margaret Mooney Award for Outstanding Achievement in Administration: Gina Moe

The Ross Hill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production: Nico Van Der Kley

 

 

 

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Your last crack at a couple of festivals and a screwball on E-town stages, a small 12thnight survey on a wet weekend

Posted on June 14, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Live theatre lives in the moment (not a new thought but one to consider this wet weekend in Edmonton) It’s your last chance…

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•… And also your first, to see Sprouts, Concrete Theatre’s annual festival of new plays specially planted for kids, today at 12:30 and 2:30 p.m. in the Westbury Theatre. Let a kid take you to see three new plays in one hour, seeded and awaiting further growth. Little Crow and Magpie by Shyanne Duquette, The Club Conundrum by Jasmine Hopfe, and Hayley Moorhouse’s Wanda, Wendy and the What-If Walrus. Concrete’s idea, it being planting season, is to enlarge the Canadian repertoire of plays for kids, by tapping a diversity, in experience and ethnicity, of writing talents. Over the years, some of the authors are playwrights trying their hand at engaging a new and younger audience; some are actors or choreographers, journalists or novelists expanding their skill sets to include writing for the stage. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca. (And there are lobby activities before each performance).

Rachel Bowron and Mathew Hulshof in On The Banks Of The Nut, Teatro Live! Photo by Marc J Chalifoux

• … to catch (through Sunday) a sparkling homegrown screwball at the Varscona: Teatro Live’s revival of the 2001 Stewart Lemoine comedy On The Banks Of The Nut. You’ll have the fun of watching a take-charge heroine (Bella King) screw up people’s lives, on the principle that, sure, things could get more chaotic, but they also could be a lot more entertaining. The cast, including Sam Free, Rachel Bowron, Mathew Hulshof, and Karen Johnson Diamond, has a larky time with the Lemoine-ian sense of humour. Have a peek at the 12thnight review. Tickets: theatrolive.com.

•It’s the grand finale weekend of Nextfest, the multi-disciplinary festival of emerging artists at the Roxy. The MainStage lineup includes Batrabbit Collective’s clown show Rat Academy 2: Gnaw and Order by and starring Dayna Lee Hoffmann and Katie Yoner as a pair of rodents up against it in a rat-free province. It’s a sequel to their much-travelled Fringe hit, and will be re-worked into a new version especially for the upcoming Fringe. The 12thnight preview is here. I had a chance to see Mika Boutin’s Televangelists and The Most Beautiful Man by Kate Couture. I can recommend both: accomplished in structure, acted with go-for-the-gusto commitment.

The former takes us into the heart of darkness (in a stunningly visceral way) in the Canadian punk rock scene c. 1997. See the 12thnight interview with Boutin here. The latter has a kind of heart-tugging hilarity about it: it’s a stage memoir in chapters of a young woman with a shift job as a Santa’s elf, a rich fantasy life, and a history of  bad experiences with men. There is, after all, a dark side to a guy in a red suit and fake beard, who invites strangers to sit on his lap and tell him their secret desires. You’ll want to see more of the eminently likeable, comically inventive Kelsey Jakoy.

The Roxy is crammed with Nextfest activity. Tickets and a full schedule: nextfest.ca.      

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A Fringe Full Of Stars: the upcoming 44th annual Edmonton Fringe Festival has a theme, and shows

Posted on June 13, 2025 by Liz Nicholls

A Fringe Full Of Stars artwork by Yu-Chen (Tseng) Beliveau, Edmonton Fringe 2025.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Where theatre meets astronomy (by starlight): the upcoming 44th annual Edmonton Fringe has its theme.

A Fringe Full of Stars, this year’s edition of Edmonton’s mighty summer theatre festival, running Aug. 14 to 24, was christened Friday. “Amazingly, we discovered that at the edge of the Milky Way, a fringe of new stars are born,” says Fringe Theatre executive director Megan Dart, a playwright herself. “Our (light-up) constellation is is made up of artists, onstage and backstage, volunteers, sponsors, donors, the team, you the audience … everyone’s a star. It’s the most magical thing; it brings out the joy in everyone.”

The cosmos that is North America’s oldest and largest Fringe festival is lighted by 1600 artists in 223 shows in some 40 venues. As Fringe director Murray Utas explains, 90 of those shows are selected by lottery, and run in 10 official Fringe-run venues, each acquired (and sometimes built) by the festival, at a cost of roughly $15,000 apiece. The other 133 are in BYOVs, bring-your-own-venues acquired and equipped by artists themselves, and mostly in Old Strathcona (with exceptions like the four curated venues at La Cité francophone, and the odd outlier downtown).

The size of A Fringe Full Of Stars represents deliberately modest growth from the lineup of last year’s Find Your Fringe, with its 215 show in 38 venues, and 185 shows the year before that at The Answer Is Fringe. Fringe 2025 assembles shows and artists from here, across the nation, and around the world, nine countries in all. Utas and Dart are determined to “build up the audience and build capacity” before allowing the festival dimensions to expand more dramatically. “We can’t outpace our audience, and our resources,” as Utas puts it. “We’re the largest (of the Fringes on the circuit) in North America, by far. And most of the others, including Winnipeg, have cut back.”

To this starry galaxy are added such Fringe traditions as the (free) nightly music series in ATB (aka McIntyre aka Gazebo) Park. And the (free) KidsFringe, for younger fingers — some 14,000 in number last summer — and their grown-up companions, returns to Lighthorse Park, curated and directed by Alyson Dicey.

The Late-Night Cabaret, a Fringe starry starry night hit of 14 years standing that started out in the Backstage Theatre,, returns to its larger digs at the Granite Curling Club. Last year it sold out all its performances there.

Dart and Utas celebrate the return, for the 12th summer, of the Fringe’s “lead festival partner ATB Financial. Ah, and in their third year Sea Change, “the exclusive beer provider of the Edmonton Fringe,” (which just has to be named from Shakespeare’s The Tempest: “a sea change into something rich and strange”). The Sea Change initiative of the summer is a new brew: Fringe Beer Tent Blonde Ale, “a beer with theatre in it,” as Dart and Utas say. It’s available at hospitality hot spots all over Strathcona and a portion of the proceeds from every can sold go to support the Fringe.

Pêhonân (nêhiyawêwin for “meeting place”), the Indigenous-led initiative assembled by the Fringe’s Indigenous Director MJ Belcourt Moses, will be found throughout Fringe site. It includes not only performances on a stage, but “art installations, self-directed tours, (stops) where you might learn how drums are made …” as Utas describes. A “celebration of storytelling” in all its forms, says Dart.

And that’s a theme to which both she and Utas return again and again. “The  Fringe movement is the movement of the future,” says Utas, whose mentorship reach includes countless Zoomed ‘town halls’ with Fringe artists who request it. “In my time, art is more precarious than it’s even been. And it’s more essential than ever. And when it’s gone it’s gone…. We battle back against darkness with stories, with art. And we gather!”

And this just in: More than a thousand volunteers, in teams, make the Fringe possible every summer. And Dart reports that as of Friday, 86 per cent of volunteer positions have been filled (so step up the pace if you want in). The year-old Sustain Fringe campaign to expand the community of monthly donors started modestly last year with 34. That number is now more than 540. And since expenses continue to expand exponentially, the campaign continues: fringetheatre.ca/give. If every Fringe ticket-buyer contributed $5 a month, the Fringe would become “instantly sustainable.”

Festival guides to A Fringe Full of Stars are on sale July 30. Festival passes and tickets August 6.

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