And back at the Citadel — a theatre update

Posted on April 15, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

The Garneau Block by Belinda Cornish, based on the Todd Babiak novel

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s not easy to plan, or even to use the word “postpone,” when the “until…” is up in the (thin) air. As Daryl Cloran says, circumstances “are constantly moving the goal post.”

We checked back with the Citadel artistic director this week. And what remains firm, despite the necessary vagaries, is the commitment of Edmonton’s largest playhouse to bring two of the current season’s theatrical victims, The Garneau Block and Peter Pan Goes Wrong (world and North American premieres respectively), to audiences as a number 1 priority.

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As Cloran puts it, The Garneau Block, cancelled by matters COVIDian the night before the final dress rehearsal, “will be a really great way to gather again when we can … a celebration of community!” It is, after all, a Citadel commission of a thoroughly Edmonton story, adapted by an Edmonton playwright (Belinda Cornish) from a hit novel by an Edmonton writer (Todd Babiak) that’s Edmonton in every particular, from Die-Nasty to the Sugar Bowl.

“It’s ready for an audience,” says Cloran. “We just left the set there (on the Maclab stage) and locked the door….”

Peter Pan Goes Wrong, the work of the Brit comedy outfit Mischief Theatre, was to have been running as you read this, in a production featuring 12 Canadian actors directed by Londoner Adam Meggido. It got three days into rehearsal before the pandemic closed it down. “We built the set,” says Cloran. “It’s still sitting in our shop.”

A comedy about theatre in which everything goes wildly wrong is the kind of hilarity that speaks to the moment. “When people come back (to the theatre), they’re going to want to laugh,” says Cloran.

The two shows aren’t cancelled. “Our plan right now is to do one  of them as soon as we can, late in the summer, maybe, or into next season….” Which means that the 2020-2021 lineup dates might have to be adjusted. And that is a complicated prospect, Cloran points out, since “next season has many co-productions. So it’s never just us when we make changes….”

Meanwhile ELVIS has left the building (possibly to check into the Heartbreak Airbnb). But he’ll be back — a year from now. 

The Citadel and the Vancouver Arts Club have put their joint production of ELVIS: the Musical (which was to premiere here in July, in an Ashlie Corcoran production) on hold till the summer of 2021. 

As You Like It. Photo by Dylan Hewlett.

Cloran, who was to have been in Chicago this week rehearsing a Chicago Shakespeare Theatre production of his festive Beatles-themed As You Like It, permits himself a sigh. Constant re-jigging and “shuffling around” a season lineup isn’t the most fun an artistic director can have. “I can’t wait to be back in a rehearsal room…. Today, someone asked me a question about something artistic  And it felt like such a glimmer of hope and light!” he laughs.

The COVID casualties of the current season include the presentation of Punctuate! Theatre’s After The Fire, Matthew MacKenzie’s dark comedy set in the aftermath of the Fort McMurray fire. But MacKenzie’s Bears will be, as scheduled, part of next season’s Highwire series of riskier fare in January 2021. 

Although the debut Collider Festival of new work, slated for this current season, has been cancelled, the Citadel is maintaining its new-play program. Amongst its six scripts at every stage of development is Prison Dancer, a new transmedia musical spun from a hit video about Filipino prisoners and their dance project. Another is Almost A Full Moon, a new Hawksley Workman/ Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman collaboration.

Meanwhile, the Citadel’s Young Musical Company continues to rehearse — on Zoom — their production of Stephen Sondheim’s Assassins, directed by Kate Ryan. Alex Donovan is directing the Young Acting Company rehearsals for The Wonderful World of Dissocia. And Tracy Carroll continues work with the Young Playwriting Company. 

As an alternative to refunds, tickets for postponed events will be honoured later, or the price can be donated. And 2020-2021 subscriptions, helpful in sustaining the theatre through these calamitous times, are available at 780-425-1820 or citadeltheatre.com.

Check out the Citadel’s Stuck in the House series —Edmonton artists creating, performing, and sometimes just chatting, from their own homes, to yours.

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Theatre heartbreak: a summer without the Edmonton Fringe

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Here’s the saddest of theatre news: brace yourself, Edmonton, for a summer without the Fringe. The upcoming 39th edition of our mighty Fringe, slated for Aug. 13 to 23, has been cancelled. The (250) shows cannot go on.

The uncertainties attached to the pandemic have made a live gathering on the scale of our biggest and most celebratory summer festival — and the first and largest of its kind on the continent — too risky, too precarious. “So heartbreaking,” says Fringe director Murray Utas of the hard decision. “We tried. We tried everything we could. We looked at every possible scenario of what it could look like (in August). And we just couldn’t see a path forward….”

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“What about going back to our grassroots as a local festival? The internationals would have to make decisions and soon that we wouldn’t have answers for. And the nationals, would they even be able to travel? What would our outdoor site look like? And there’s this: Will people even want to gather? They can’t even leave their houses at the moment…. What is our social responsibility in all of this?”

“There were so many unknowns,” says Utas. Isolation “is the opposite of the energy that makes our Fringe so special…. We’re thinking about the human beings.” In the Fringe’s long list of stake-holders, “we considered every one….” He adds, “because of our size we have to be this far out in front.” 

Murray Utas, 2017 photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Refunds will be made to all Fringe artists slated to perform at the 2020 Fringe. For the artists in the Fringe’s dozen official lotteried venues, their spot will be held for next summer’s Fringe; “they have first right of refusal,” says Utas.

The Fringe returns next summer for a 40th anniversary edition, Aug. 12 to 22, 2021. Meanwhile, as Edmonton contemplates the dark vision of a summer without the Fringe, the company at the ATB Financial Arts Barn is making plans. “Who are we?” says Utas. “We’re going to be the organization, the pivot that helps rebuild our community on the other side of this…. We’re going to bring artists together to create, to jam, to connect. We want to be a cultural community hub, a home for artists.”

Further announcements await. Today we mourn. 

      

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How does it feel to have your face misrepresented? Whiteface, the play and now the film

Posted on April 13, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

Todd Houseman and Lady Vanessa Cardona in Whiteface. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the outset of Whiteface, a smug chalky-faced couple chat over dinner about their culinary and entertainment options.“Here we go,” sighs the woman, overcome with ennui and exasperation. “We’re always the monsters….” The man rolls his eyes. “I know, we’re always being attacked by reverse racism.”

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In the boldly configured 2018 play by, and starring, Lady Vanessa Cardona and Todd Houseman, jaded comes in layers — and masks — of white. Now, Whiteface — by Houseman, who’s Indigenous, and Cardona, a Colombian refugee — is a film. Artful and beautifully designed in light and sound, it’s the work of Everett Sokol, an award-winning Indigenous film director/ writer/ producer/ theatre artist whose startling breadth of skills puts him in a highly selective subset of creatives.

As Houseman explains — from Montreal where’s he’s a production away from graduating as an actor at the National Theatre School —  Whiteface began life as an experimental 15-minute performance at Mile Zero’s Dirt Buffet Cabaret. “And we started gradually expanding it, adding things here and there, trying new things” as the show made its way to from Winnipeg to the Edmonton Fringe in 2018, and last year to the the Poetic Arts Festival in Saskatoon.

Todd Houseman and Lady Vanessa Cardona in White. Photo supplied.

The imaged that gripped them from the start, Houseman says, “the idea of Indigenous actors painted in whiteface.… We wanted to show people the real price of cultural appropriation, how it feels to see your face misrepresented. A very conscious stereotyping of the White Face to tell this story of cultural appropriation.” In the course of Whiteface he and Cardona wrestle, in powerful choregraphed sequences, with layers of grotesque, white-faced masks, a tangible demonstration of how hard it is to peel off a distorted stereotype.   

Lady Vanessa Cardona in Whiteface. Photo supplied.

Whiteface directs its zingers at white entitlement, the insatiable appetite to take over other cultural identities, to claim credit for reconciliation or inclusivity. Houseman and Cardona’s “response to the legacy of cultural appropriation” especially targeted Westerns, “which are such a huge part of our narrative history,” as the former points out. The vast archive of Westerns is a veritable repository of Max Factor tan makeup: Indigenous characters played by white people are everywhere. Whiteface hones its satirical edge on that: “Indigenous actors playing white actors playing Indigenous actors.” 

Cardona’s experience with stereotyping as an immigrant had similar resonances.  “A lot of the ideas are universal to people of colour,” says Houseman of “the feeling of seeing something that is yours taken from you and misrepresented…. We wanted to offer people a broad perspective.” After all, there’s an assortment of racisms in North America, as he points out, “xenophobic, or class-based, or Indigenous racism which is a real part of this country….”

When Sokol caught Whiteface at the Edmonton Fringe, he saw a project admirably suited to his training in both theatre (at Grant MacEwan) and film (at Red Deer College). “I’d been keeping my eye open for a way to archive theatre in a film data base, that still complements it as theatre.”

He was attracted both to the inherent stylized theatricality of the show, and to its cultural thrust. “This is a show that has a lot of very absurd elements, with masks and (choreographed) dance, and a very important, relevant discussion point. And it’s done in a way that’s so bold and so confident!”

Todd Houseman in Whiteface. Photo suppied.

The trio were selected by Telus’s Storyhive initiative, and set about adapting the play for the screen. And as soon as the virus pipes down, Whiteface will be on the film festival circuit that includes Dreamspeakers, originally slated for the end of April and now on indefinite hold. And Sokol has plans for a feature-length film of Whiteface that will restore parts of the play that were cut for the short film version you’ll see on his website, and on YouTube.

“We didn’t know how audiences would receive it,” says Houseman of the satirical layers of white stereotypes, along with an indictment of white complacency that we’re living in times of reconciliation, of post-colonial post-racist harmony. “We built in pauses, gaps without dialogue, to be able to listen to the audience.” There have been objections, and the odd walk-out — and he and Cardona are far from amazed. 

What kinds of backlash have they encountered? “This is racist!” Houseman has heard, along with the thought that it’s wrong to marginalize white people. “Actually, it’s insecurity, it’s not wanting to be treated themselves the way their arguments treat people of colour.” 

Look for Whiteface at everettsokol.com/whiteface.

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Can live theatre live online? Ask improv and video expert Matt Schuurman

Posted on April 9, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

Rapid Fire players, rehearsing on Zoom from their own homes.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s a strange moment in history when live theatre has been struck down by the lack of its traditional venue (and raison d’être) — the room where people gather, and actors and audiences connect, in person.

So, the internet as theatre venue? Matt Schuurman, who’s both the artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre and an award-winning video designer, thinks of it as a kind of role reversal. “Video used to be in live theatre … an element there to support the storytelling and the action. At the moment, live theatre is in video….” But is that a sort of cultural oxymoron?

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“We’re looking for ways to say Yes to this, and look for the fun in it,” says Schuurman of the corps of elite Rapid Fire performers who’ve been online with each other for a couple of weeks, brainstorming, experimenting, and workshopping new programming ideas for the improv comedy company.

“Let’s stop trying to do traditional theatre in a non-traditional space — because you’re never going to be able to deliver.” Instead, ask “what is the gift this new non-geographical venue gives us?” He and his RFT cohorts are, he says, “looking for innovative ways to share our programming, deliver our mission for a while rather than disappearing.”

Rapid Fire, devoted to improv in all its forms, has long been the most internet-savvy theatre company in town. “In the old days,” at the company’s original digs, the previous incarnation of the Varscona Theatre where long queues waited outside to see their Friday late-night shows, they shared the stage with whatever set from whatever theatre production was in place or under construction. “It changed on a weekly basis, Shadow, Teatro … that’s what we had to adapt to,” says Schuurman. “It was a blessing and a curse…. Some sets were were extraordinarily fun to play on, some were extraordinarily restrictive — though there can be fun in those restrictions too.” 

What the Rapid Fire improvisers inherited when they moved downtown, as the sole occupants of Zeidler Hall in the Citadel complex, was “a big empty stage with a movie screen behind it. And we said Yes to that as well….We started incorporating a lot of video into our shows.”

At Improvaganza, RFT’s annual festival of long-form improv experiments, they tinkered with integrating live performers and lifestream video. Or cellphone texting as the source of audience cues. In the astonishing TEDxRFT, Julian Faid and Kory Mathewson devise an improvised Ted Talk on the spot, complete with screen imagery, on a subject chosen by the audience.

“Now we’ve been dabbling in livestream rehearsals,” on a variety of video conferencing platforms, Zoom, Facetime, Google Hangouts… At the click of a button you can turn off your camera. And poof, you’re gone. Entrances and exits can be mischievous. Or magical. Something to play with….”

Matt Schuurman, artistic director of Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo by Aaron Pedersen.

Schuurman created his first video design for theatre in Azimuth’s 2008 production of Su-Kat at the now-defunct Living Room Playhouse. “I had an animation degree; I was involved in theatre. I’d never had the opportunity to marry the two” till Murray Utas and Steve Pirot proposed show, “actually about animation and dream worlds,” and asked for his help pulling it off.

“I refocussed my education towards animation, thinking I’d end up in film and TV or maybe video games,” says Schuurman. “And instead it’s come full circle; it’s looped back to theatre.” Since then he’s created video designs for a wide variety of theatre companies and productions. “Some are developed with video in mind, like Su-Kat or Surreal SoReal’s Genius Code. With others it’s a complementary element, a choice like lighting or a set piece: ‘we need a beautiful sunset’. 

But through it all, the crucial question is “how does the video contribute to the other elements,” says Schuurman, “to pull off a successive cohesive piece.” In screen productions and adaptations, as he points out, “the medium is the finished project, the entire experience. For theatre, video is a piece of a larger puzzle, with the end goal of supporting the story.”

In the new, temporary, reality for live theatre, struggling as it is to make its presence felt in the online world, can its essence, the live, shared experience, be simulated? Experiments of every budget and technical expertise abound. Some are signposts to the main event. You can see actors performing excerpts from productions, or reciting poetry, in their living rooms; I point you to Broadway star Patti LuPone’s kooky series of Twitter videos from her basement. Or the Citadel’s engaging Stuck in the House series on YouTube. Or the wonderful Zoom sing-out by the original Hamilton cast of that show’s opening number, actor by actor — as a birthday present for a star-struck nine-year-old — on John Krasinski’s YouTube series Some Good News. 

Some are ingenious re-thinks. Die-Nasty has reimagined its live serial soap episodes at the Varscona as an online (YouTube) improvised radio play.

Some are full-scale productions, like Broadway Live or the National Theatre’s superlative screen series from their archive that began last week with One Man Two Guvnors, and continues tonight with Jane Eyre.

Schuurman points out that much depends on the intention. “If the idea is just a catalogue, an archive to be referenced, just turn on the camera and let it roll, it’s generally not very watchable….” For one thing, “a lot of our venues aren’t designed, or well equipped, to be TV studios.” And at home we have to rely on phones or laptops.

“I have yet to see a tool that can replace the experience of being in a room with people, sharing a story,” says Schuurman. “That’s what we’ve discovered in rehearsal, how much you feed off the energy of the crowd, the feedback of their laughs and their responses.” As the director of an online rehearsal, he’s learned to leave his mic on, so the performers can hear him laughing, or breathing.

But “if we’re spending a lot of time and resources on a temporary fix, maybe there are things that can continue,” says Schuurman. Stay tuned. In the next couple of weeks, Rapid Fire will be rolling out new adventures in online programming. “We’re looking at this as an offer, a challenge, an opportunity to find new ways to play.”

  

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Freewill Shakespeare Festival reschedules for 2021

Posted on April 7, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Alas, one woe doth tread upon another’s heel.…

The COVID crisis has claimed another arts victim. Not unexpectedly, the 2020 edition of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, the Bard’s annual summer foray into Hawrelak Park, has been cancelled. And its two alternating productions, Much Ado About Nothing and Macbeth, originally slated to open on the Heritage Amphitheatre stage mid-June, have been rescheduled for the summer of 2021, June 15 to July 11.

Yesterday Freewill’s sister festival in Vancouver, Bard on the Beach, announced a similar decision to defer its slate of productions till next year.

As Freewill’s new managing director Nikola Tonn explains, “we looked at every option” and contingency. Postponing dates till later in the summer in a much-used city-owned venue was an unlikely prospect, as was relocating on short notice. The festival’s only excursion into an indoor venue, SUB Theatre, several summers ago, proved financially disastrous.

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“With the current information before us it is the best decision for the safety of crew, cast, volunteers and patrons….”

“Next Monday our stage would be getting built,” says Tonn. “Rehearsals were scheduled to begin the second week of May.” The uncertainties, renewed on two weeks’ notice at every level of government, were untenable. She hopes that directors Dave Horak and Nancy McAlear, who were to have staged this year’s offerings, will be available for the 2021 productions. 

“Trying to balance a budget looks very different now,” says Tonn. “Ticket and concession revenue accounts for about half our budget,” which runs to about $630,000, depending on the productions. The annual artist budget is about $300,000. For the summer, a staff of two becomes 50, including administrators, artists, designers, and crew.

Festival passes and VIP passes for the 2020 festival went on sale at Christmas; refunds or deferments are available. Further announcements of summer activities (plus the introduction of Freewill’s new artistic director) await, slated for Shakespeare’s birthday, April 23.

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The year in podcast dramas: The Alberta Queer Calendar Project

Posted on April 4, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

The Alberta Queer Calendar Project

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Lately I feel like I’m constantly on the edge of a vortex. Swimming. Trying to keep my head above water.”

— Local Diva, Liam Salmon

In January when his “one-person drag queen drama” premiered in podcast form, playwright Liam Salmon can’t possibly have predicted how eerily the opening line of Local Diva would resonate by April.But then, who knew just how indispensable podcasts would prove?

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Salman’s play launched The Alberta Queer Calendar Project, a joint initiative by Cardiac Theatre and What It Is Productions, to showcase the talents of by queer Albertan writers and “broadcast to the world.” The aim? One original podcast drama a month for 2020. So far three, all by Edmonton writers, are up and running.

Salmon, who shares producer duties with Cardiac’s Harley Morison and Jessica Glover, traces the idea back two years to the inspiration of Toronto’s PlayMe podcast, audio versions of new (and newish) Canadian plays. “We wanted to feature queer Albertans,” says Salmon. “Our voices aren’t always as audible as elsewhere in the country….”

A playwriting grad of the National Theatre School in Montreal, Salman returned immediately to his home town after his time in the East. “There’s something about Edmonton that just feels more interesting to me…. Emerging (as a theatre artist) in Toronto is so different, so hard. Financially it doesn’t really work. In Edmonton you have more of a place, more access.”

Salmon spent four years in the Citadel’s Young Playwriting Company while he was doing an Education degree (in pre-COVID days he’s been teaching pre-school). He never gravitated to theatre via acting. “Playwriting made a lot of sense to me,” he says. His first play, All That’s Left, which premiered at Nextfest, chronicled the fortunes of a gay kid in a straight family. Silence of the Machine, in which “a perfect A.I. is forced to get pregnant” in order to prove her female credentials, premiered at the U of A’s New Works festival, won a prize at a horror fest, and was produced by Calgary’s Theatre Basement. “Sci-fi and horror elements really appeal to me….”

Image by Michael Vetsch.

The Queer Calendar Project producers spent about a year collecting submissions before the January launch, says Salmon. Their call was to “any queer-identifying writer from or residing in Alberta.” There were no stipulations about queer content, characters, themes. In fact, Salmon’s own original submission was about a straight couple. But as a one-person show in which a drag queen talks, Local Diva seemed more easily suited to the podcast form.

Most of the podcast dramas are under an hour, says Salmon of the calendar roster. They come in a wide variety of forms, subjects, styles: comedies, dramas, musicals, true stories…. Some of the writers are more established than others. If he’s noticed anything that the queer submissions share, it’s perhaps that they seem to have a special insight into what it means to be an outsider, to be outside looking in. “It brings a different texture to the work.”

As for Salmon himself, he figures “the last thing anyone needs at the moment is a head-on COVID drama. “Too much too soon…. The world feels on standby.” He’s thinking comedy; it’s more oblique. “A comedy about a theatre trying to put on a COVID production and what a terrible idea that is? A social-distancing comedy about woman falling in love with an A.I. toaster?”

Image by Michael Vetsch

Meanwhile, you can consult the Alberta Queer Calendar. The episodes for January through March are available at queercalendar.ca or any podcast archive, each sponsored by an Alberta arts organization: 

January: Local Diva, Liam Salmon’s “one-person drag queen drama” with support by Glass Bookshop

February: À vendre, Émanuel Dubbeldam’s “family drama” written and recorded in French (with English subtitles), with support by L’UniThéâtre

March: Suspension, Hayley Moorhouse’s “dark, absurdist comedy,” with support by the SkirtsAfire Festival and Edmonton Arts Council.

The full schedule of releases, available at queercalendar.ca, has been delayed by the current travails. Pending is April’s episode, Pretty Ugly by Brett Dahl, supported by Theatre Outré. 

The podcasts are free; donations to the Queer Calendar’s Patreon campaign are welcome. 

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A time for dreaming: we asked theatre artists what roles and plays they’d love to do

Posted on April 2, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

The Invisible – Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare, Catalyst Theatre. Photo by dbphotographics

Dead Centre of Town, Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

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Everything’s Coming Up Chickens, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo supplied.

Live theatre hasn’t disappeared. It’s just on hold, suspended like time and probability, until we can all be together again in person: artists and their audiences, people sharing stories in a room.

Along with the human proximity that’s built into live theatre by definition, theatre artists have lost their livelihood, their jobs, their income — all on hold. But as you can tell from the ingenious ways they’ve devised to keep connecting in this time of isolation, you can’t stop creativity. And it’s artists who will eventually help us understand the experience and its weird sense of unreality. 

Meanwhile, maybe it’s a time for dreaming. We asked theatre artists —  actors and directors and producers — about the roles and the plays they dream of doing.    

Kendra Connor in Skirts On Fire, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Mat Busby.

KENDRA CONNOR (actor, Teatro La Quindicina and Plain Jane star, Skirts on Fire, Everything’s Coming Up Chickens):

I have always had a soft spot for the older musicals. When I was a kid, I had a VHS tape of My Fair Lady that i watched over and over. I adored that musical and still do. I even sang Wouldn’t It Be Loverly in the Kiwanis Festival when I was in Grade 8, in a costume that my brilliant mother had cobbled together with a bunch of finds from Value Village. The part of Eliza Doolittle has been on my bucket list forever.

Also on my bucket list: I desperately want to play Amalia in She Loves Me again. I played that part opposite Farren Timoteo with Leave It to Jane years ago. We were just baby actors out of theatre school; Tim Ryan directed. It’s one of my all-time favourites. Would love to dig into it now that I’m a bit older. I’d also love to play Mrs Lovett in Sweeney Todd. Really, I’d love to play anything in any Sondheim musical! 

For plays, I’d love to take a stab at something by Noel Coward — Private Lives maybe? Blithe Spirit?

Belinda Cornish, Christine Nguyen, Nadien Chu, Sheldon Elter in The Winter’s Tale. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux Photography

BELINDA CORNISH, actor, playwright, director, improviser, producer, artistic director of Bright Young Things (her new play The Garneau Block was to have opened at the Citadel this season, postponed along with Peter Pan Goes Wrong):

“Plays I want to do, roles I’d love to play:

Joan Scott-Fowler in After The Dance by Terence Rattigan. It’s a beautifully bitter, big-cast comedy drama about the Lost Generation crumbling into liver failure in the ’30s. Like Noel Coward on a knife edge.

Gibbs (written as a male) in The Hothouse by Harold Pinter. Funny funny funny black comedy of menace set in a mysterious institution. Brilliantly reflects on authoritarian paranoia, and the brutal absurdities of bureaucracy.

Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth. This is, in my opinion, one of the most incredible plays ever written, savagely funny, epic and wild. I think it resonates most deeply with Brits…. “There’s a bass note that rings through it that sings, for good and ill, with the voice of the dark old gods of England.

Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing. I played her 10 years ago with the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, directed by Marianne Copithorne, and had a glorious time. It’s just one of those roles I’d love to take another crack at!

Scandalabra by Zelda Fitzgerald. It’s utterly bananas, and I’m not totally sure it makes sense. Which is probably why its inaugural production back in the 30s tanked and, as far as I know, was never done again. But I love her, her stage directions are exquisitely funny, and it features an invisible leprechaun … so, what’s not to love??

Mathew Hulshof and Chris Pereira in Bed and Breakfast, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

MATHEW HULSHOF,  actor (Happy Birthday Baby J, The Finest of Strangers, Skirts On Fire, Bed and Breakfast, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley): 

“My big dream show would be Angels in America. I have been obsessed with it since I was a teen.  I think I’d make a pretty good Louis. sI can relate to him because he also never stops talking. I also love how unlikeable he is and it’s very fun to play people like that. 

Dream big, right? 

Dave Horak’s production of The Skin Of Our Teeth, with Vincent Forcier, Stephanie Wolfe, Jeff Haslam, Lauren Hughes in The Skin Of Our Teeth, Bright Young Things. Photo by Mat Busby.

DAVE HORAK, director/ actor/ artistic director of Edmonton Actors Theatre, with directing credits that include Every Brilliant Thing, The Skin Of Our Teeth, Fun Home, The Winter’s Tale, Burning Bluebeard, Terry and the Dog. His Much Ado About Nothing at the Freewill Shakespeare Festival is, as of this week, still slated to open in mid-June). 

“I was supposed to start rehearsals on the new Hannah Moscovitch play at Theatre Network, Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes  (directed by Marianne Copithorne). Not surprisingly it was cancelled, but it makes the next month tough, both financially and emotionally.… At least I know I’m not alone.

One thing that having time gives me is that I’m able to catch up on reading plays and dreaming of future productions. Once this whole thing is over with, with so many actors out of work, I’d love to do a big- cast comedy! So I’m looking at those big comedies from the 30’s and 40’s: many of those comedies came out of the Depression, and I think there is always something so hopeful and optimistic in the writing.

One of my heroes is George S. Kaufman and I’ve always wanted to do You Can’t Take it With You. It’s a bucket-list play I think would speak to us now…. Did you know Kaufman’s debut was something called Someone in the House that opened on Broadway in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic. I guess Kaufman suggested that the best way to avoid crowds in New York City was to attend his play! 

He also wrote for the Marx Brothers and I really feel like I need some Marx Brothers right now…. On a different note, I’m just getting out of self-isolation, and I’ve been thinking of plays that capture that feeling:  Isolation, loneliness, hopelessness. No one better that Sam Beckett! And he’s pretty funny, in a really bleak way.”

Julien Arnold as Bob Cratchit. Photo supplied by Citadel Theatre.

JULIEN ARNOLD, actor/ director/ artistic director of Atlas Theatre, ( Mesa, The Finest of Strangers, Once,  A Christmas Carol, Two):

I’ve always wanted to play Dogberry (in Much Ado About Nothing), and the Apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, and the grave digger in Hamlet. Also, on a more ambitious note, Salieri in Amadeus. A part that I’d love to do but will probably never get the chance to: Tevye in Fiddler On The Roof!. 

MARGUERITE LAWLER, actor/ Rapid Fire Theatre improv star (The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius):

Marguerite Lawler in The Society For The Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography,

A lot of the (shows) that have been mulling around in my brain lately have been big shows, whether in theme or in spirit, which makes sense given our collective solitude…. I’m feeling the need to sing my love for someone from the rooftops or get into an elaborate fake sword fight right about now.

I would really love to play Hamlet. Specifically outside in a thunderstorm…. And I’ve even had time to pen some of my own soliloquies to throw on in there that I’m sure would fit right in.

I would love to play the girl in Once. I think the show is beautiful any time of day, but a story about music bringing people together featuring love is resonant in all new ways in the New World…. I would REALLY like to be in The Book of Mormon. I really would. I’m completely serious about this.

I think we will need to remember to laugh, so I dream of doing some really great comedies…. I want to play Pat Wallace in Punch Up! By Kat Sandler, or be in Good Mother by Damien Atkins, a play very near and dear to my heart that made me feel less alone after my own mother’s stroke. I would love to do Next to Normal, play Evan Hansen, be in Venus in Fur or The Last Days of Judas Iscariot.

JOHN ULLYATT, actor, playwright, playwright, director, street performer, aerialist (Every Brilliant Thing, Matilda, A Christmas Carol): 

John Ullyatt as Miss Trunchbull, Matilda The Musical. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

“I’ve been busy working on house renos (drywall) for a replacement gig at the moment.… Working with my neighbour, learning and having a good time…. 

Really, I’ve been so lucky to play so many great roles. I’d gladly do any of them again: Frank ’n’ Furter, Biff, Brick, Emcee, Katurian Katurian Katurian, Billy Bishop, Charlotte von Marlsdorf…  But during the rehearsal for Matilda, I stopped and said I didn’t have to do anything else, because I got to do everything I’ve ever wanted and more!  Throwing a kid by their pigtails!? Being a hulking ogre who does a gymnastic ribbon sequence!?  Being terrible to children for fun!?  All there.

I’d like to go back and do the first and second Dr. Grot shows. I’d love to work with Mike Kennard and John Turner. I’d love to play Richard III again, and Richard II. I’d like to play all the roles I didn’t get cast in that were real heartbreakers ( I won’t mention them). George III in Hamilton.  Hamlet (in a very re-imagined version). I’d love to work with Peter Hinton on anything. Metamorphoses? …. Dave Clarke is working on a couple of things that I would love to do….”

Coralie Cairns, Nadien Chu in The Roommate, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

CORALIE CAIRNS, actor, artistic associate and general manager of Shadow Theatre (Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, The Roommate, most recentlyThe Children, cancelled several performances into its run). 

“Hmm, off the top of my head Mary Tyrone from Long Day’s Journey into Night by Eugene O’Neill. Love the writing and the complexity of the character. I’ve been navigating the business side of the theatre and the Varscona since we entered this strange, surreal world so will have to have a think about your question.…

MIEKO OUCHI, director/ playwright/ actor/ co-artistic of Concrete Theatre (Pia and Maria, The Silver Arrow: The Untold Story of Robin Hood, Songs My Mother Never Sung Me, The Antyssey):

“Mine would be a strange collection (of roles) I’m afraid. Auntie Mame: I LOVE Rosalind Russell in that kooky movie. Evelyn Mulwray in Chinatown: despite Roman Polanski, I so love this movie. Robert Towne’s screenplay may be the best ever. And the role of Evelyn is magnificent. Sorry, all I’m thinking of right now are movies!  I’ll keep thinking…

Jeff Haslam and Cathy Derkach in The Finest of Strangers, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Mat Busby Photography.

JEFF HASLAM, actor/ director/ star and ex-artistic director of Teatro La Quindicina (Fun Home, Lend Me A Tenor, A Likely Story, The Finest of Strangers, The Bad Seed, The Skin Of Our Teeth): 

“My fave answer always used to be ‘the role that hasn’t been written yet’ because my best friend and hero is a playwright and I always did all the new plays and worked for the new play companies, and that’s sorta why I stayed here.… Think I’ll go with my original gut answer.”

Byron Martin in Macbeth, Malachite Theatre. Photo by BB Collective.

BYRON MARTIN, actor/ director/ playwright/ producer/ artistic director of Grindstone Comedy Theatre and Bistro (The 11 O’Clock Number, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, Urinetown):

“Yes, it is such a strange reality right now, I feel like I’m in hibernation mode.… These days I dream more of what plays I hope to produce and direct: A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder; Avenue Q; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; The 39 Steps: The Book of Mormon, The Rocky Horror Show, Reefer Madness; Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog. A fairly obscure David Mamet, Keep Your Pantheon.

I’m also really focusing on getting ThunderCATS (an original musical) to its next stage of development….”

Get Happy! directed by Kate Ryan, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo suppied

KATE RYAN, actor/ director/ playwright/ artistic director Plain Jane Theatre Company (Fun Home, most recently creator/director of Get Happy!).

So, musicals I have been dreaming about, listening to and singing out in my living room: Gotta love Sondheim! I would love to direct or act in any of his musicals! I never tire working on his songs, such complex thoughts and feelings…. I find myself singing everything these days from Dot in Sunday in the Park with George to Mama Rose in Gypsy. Right now-our old English sheepdog Charlie is my audience, so I sing “Charlie, why can’t it be like it was?” (Merrily We Roll Along).

Mostly I’ve been working on and dreaming about the musicals I’m hoping to do some time in the near future. Teatro La Quindicina’s Everybody Goes to Mitzi’s (July) and Sondheim’s Assassins with the Citadel Theatre’s Young Company. The Citadel has enabled us to continue working on Assassins via Zoom. A company of 10, a musical director and myself: it’s a whole new rehearsing experience for all of us. We got the ‘Zoom giggles of weirdness’ out on Monday evening, and start up again tonight.”

Playwright Ellen Chorley with cast of Everybody Loves Robbie, Jayce McKenzie left and Richard Lee Hsi. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

ELLEN CHORLEY, actor/ playwright/ director/ artistic director of Send in the Girls Burlesqueand Nextfest (Everybody Loves Robbie):

“As I get older and progress in my career my dreams about the arts have changed.  I definitely graduated theatre school with a bucket list of dream roles but now my dreams for my corner of the theatre world have definitely changed…. They’re more focussed on writing, producing. As a playwright, my dream is to be produced more on a national level and have a play published.  As a producer, my dream is to make Edmonton a hotbed of innovative and exciting work, so young artists can feel as if they can create here and STAY HERE….”  

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Shadow Theatre focuses on local writers next season

Posted on March 28, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

Elena Porter, Julien Arnold, Linda Grass in The Wrong People Have Money, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Shadow Theatre will finish its current season — but not until the fall.

The Wrong People Have Money, the Shadow season finale with the resonant title (I can see you nodding), was to have premiered at the end of April. In updated news, says artistic director John Hudson, it will premiere Oct. 21 to Nov. 8 at the Varscona Theatre. 

“Since we now can’t do everything we planned,” says Hudson of the new reality that saw the cancellation of Shadow’s production of Heisenberg after just three performances, “we’re committing to the new plays by local writers. That’s our priority.” So premieres of plays by McColm, Conni Massing, and Darrin Hagen will happen under the Shadow flag.

“We’ve been working on it for two years,” says Hudson of The Wrong People Have Money, five-actor comedy by McColm, whose writing credits include assorted movies of the week and episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation. The timely fantasia on brainstorming and ingenuity is “such a great satire, very funny, very sharp.” Hudson describes the premise: “a professor teaches a class about striving for the impossible, and gets a lot of publicity (for the speculative assignment) ‘what if you took Greenland and moved it south, to the middle of the Atlantic?’.” Is this completely loony? Is this the great business opportunity we’ve all been waiting for? Feasibility studies ensue.

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Hudson’s cast includes Linda Grass and Elena Porter, with Steven Greenfield and Andrea House taking on a variety of roles. One of House’s characters has “a very funny anti-Canada rant,” says Hudson. And plays the professor. 

The Wrong People Have Money, which remains part of the current season, bumps the 2020-2021 season opener to occupy the October slot. And Bloomsday, the much-produced “missed love story” (as Hudson puts it) by the American playwright Stephen Dietz, has been re-scheduled to Shadow’s 30th anniversary season in January 2022.

2020-2021 season image, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied.

The upcoming season, reduced from four to three productions, opens in January 2021 with The Mountaintop (Jan. 20 to Feb. 2). The 2009 play by the young American writer Katori Hall — launched originally in a London fringe theatre before its 2011 Broadway incarnation starring Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett — is spun from a turning point moment in American history. It’s 1968 in a cheap Memphis motel room, the night before the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King. 

The infrastructure of The Mountaintop, named for one of King’s most celebrated speeches, “is King’s interaction with a mysterious housekeeper,” says Hudson. “It’s about the nature of legacy and what we accomplish in our lives.”

Hudson is considering bringing in “the beautiful Rosebud Theatre production” of last fall, directed by artistic director Morris Ertman and starring Ray Strachan and Patricia Cerra.

The season includes two premieres by star Edmonton playwrights. Fresh Hell by Conni Massing (March 10 to 28) is, thinks Hudson, “a huge departure” for a playwright best known for her wry, off-centre comedies and romances.

“She’s never written anything like it,” he says says of a play that’s an trio of imagined encounters between two formidable women: the American writer/ poet/ activist/ critic Dorothy Parker and Joan of Arc. “In one of her suicide attempts, Dorothy Parker conjures Joan,” says Hudson. And themes that come up between them includes “sacrifice, legacy, being a woman in a male-dominated world….”

Hudson has assembled an all-female team for Fresh Hell. Tracy Carroll’s production stars Kate Newby as Parker and Paula Humby as Joan. “It’s a fascinating journey to be on with Conni, as she exercises different muscles as a writer,” he says. 

The season finale is a new play by Darrin Hagen, the presiding muse of Guys in Disguise and the author of such plays as The Empress and the Prime Minister, Tornado Magnet, Buddy, With Bells On. As Hudson describes, 10 Funerals (April 28 to May 16, 2021) follows the same couple as they age together through 30 years: in each scene they’re returning from a funeral. Four actors play the couple, younger and older. “There’s so much heart and warmth in Darrin’s writing. But it’s funny as can be!”   

“We’ve lost two shows this season,” says Hudson. “And there’s a real (financial) hit to that. But we have a great board and we’re a pretty stable, well-managed company…. We’re plunging more and more into new work. It’s a real focus and passion of mine.” 

Further information at shadowtheatre.org, 780-434-5564.

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‘Hello. My name is Jamie Cavanagh. And I want to be Wolverine’.

Posted on March 27, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

Jamie Cavanagh in Wild James: A Wolverine Fan Film. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In a mapless, chaotic universe, it’s kind of reassuring to find a goal, and a campaign, to get behind. Here’s one, and it even has clarity and showbiz sense on its side: Jamie Cavanagh wants to be Wolverine.

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Now that Hugh Jackman has retired from his movie alter-ego as the iconic, super-powered,  brooding Marvel character, star of X-Men and Avengers, Cavanagh is campaigning Disney to occupy that role in “the inevitable MCU reboot,” as he puts it.

And why not? Start with the Wolverine origin story, and the way it synchronizes with Cavanagh’s own: “My home town is Edmonton, Alberta, Canada” as the multi-faceted Toronto-based actor/ playwright/ director/ comic improviser says in his official candidacy launch on YouTube. And it’s right here in northern Alberta that James Howlett, who would grow up to be Wolverine, was born in the late 19th century. “Initially it was probably because of its remoteness and harshness, the middle-of-nowhere,” Cavanagh concedes. But, hey, amazing things have happened here, as we know.

Jamie Cavanagh in Wild James: A Wolvering Fan Film. Photo supplied.

On the phone from Toronto Cavanagh remembers “a campaign that got a bit of news traction a few years ago to get a Wolverine statue in Churchill Square.” But Cavanagh’s affection for Wolverine goes much farther back. “Since always,” he says. “Ever since I was a kid. He’s the coolest. Great powers. Tough…..” 

Theatre audiences here have applauded Cavanagh’s work on stages large and small, including Freewill Shakespeare, Theatre Network, Shadow, Punctuate!, Rapid Fire. Until the virus he was going to be the title character in the Citadel/ Vancouver Arts Club co-production of Peter Pan Goes Wrong, right after a Toronto production of The Huns at the Brighton Fringe across the pond. He has an ever-expanding resumé of film, TV, and online credits. He trains MMA and kickboxing three times a week. In short, Cavanagh has every possible credential for playing Wolverine  — except one. Fame, and maybe that’s over-rated, as Cavanagh wants to explore. Since Disney is in the position of re-casting the character with the distinctive super-powers, now is the moment for his Make Jamie Wolverine campaign. “I wanted to beat the story, to come in before the announcement” of a new star.

Coralie Cairns, Davina Stewart, John Sproule, Jamie Cavanagh in Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J. Chalifoux.

His agent has told him “that’s not the way this industry works.” But the the actor/ comedian, a U of A theatre school grad most recently seen here in a very funny turn in Shadow’s 2019 season finale Vanya and Sonia and Masha and Spike (he played the remarkably fit Spike), is undeterred. “I’m testing the gatekeepers a bit,” he says. “How much can I actually do by myself?”

Quite a lot, actually. There’s a petition to sign at makejamiewolverine.org.  There’s a beautifully shot, intensely acted short film Wild James: A Wolverine Fan Film, starring Cavanagh as the young Howlett, beginning to discover his special powers and beset by hostile thuggish locals who reject him as a freakish outsider. The fight scenes choreographed by Jeff Hanson are highly impressive. Hey Disney, this is one visceral, kick-ass audition.

“OK, it’s a crazy idea,” says Cavanagh, currently working on another unusual venture, Outside the March’s unique on-the-phone experiment, The Ministry of Mundane Mysteries, custom-made for every ticket-buyer who contributes a mystery from their life for the cast to improvise. “Is it possible for me, a relative unknown, to be considered for the role of Wolverine? There are no precedents, no blueprints.”

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The Digital Fringe: Chase Padgett’s bright idea for tough times

Posted on March 26, 2020 by Liz Nicholls

For Science! starring Christine Lesiak, available on Digital Fringe. Photo by Johanna Hung.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Fringe has always been a lab for bright ideas. That’s why the people love it; that’s what it’s for, this bright idea hatched in Edmonton 38 summers ago. So here’s a new one, from Fringe fave/ playwright/ actor/ musician/ and now video producer Chase Padgett, of 6 Guitars and Nashville Hurricane fame.

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Digital Fringe is a series that brings 10 Fringe hits — in a wide range of styles and genres — to you in your living room stronghold, for a Fringe-y ticket price of $11.99 (or the entire season for $39.99) of which 90 per cent goes directly to the artists.

Search either Digital Fringe Volume 1 on vimeo.com or go to www.digitalfringefest.com. And you’ll find shows that include TJ Dawe’s Operatic Panic Attack (which Padgett filmed at the Vancouver Fringe), Reality Crack, an unclassifiable experimental piece written and performed by Candace Berlinguette and Laura Raboud (filmed at the Edmonton Fringe), and For Science! Small Matters Productions’ delightful clown experiment in applying the scientific method to matters of the stage (filmed here).

It all started out a year and a half ago, at the end of the 2018 Edmonton Fringe, Padgett’s project for capturing and preserving the pleasures, challenges, and excitement of top shows from the circuit of Fringe festivals across the country. And it’s still that. But in this new world of isolation and uncertainties, postponements and cancellations, it gains an additional creative lustre — for both Fringe audiences and artists who have suddenly lost their financial (and artistic) footing. Padgett himself is one.

Chase Padgett and Christina Garies, in Chase Padgett Gets Married, at Edmonton Fringe 2019.

Fringe credentials don’t come more gilt-edged. His actual wedding last summer was a one-night Fringe show, Chase Padgett Gets Married at BYOV 20, the Garneau Theatre. 6 Guitars was slated for a Toronto run this very week with Mirvish Productions, and is now on indefinite hold. “Right now I’d have been waking up in Toronto, getting ready for my matinee,” says the amiable and articulate Florida native on the phone from his new home, Vancouver, B.C. “Here I am, surfing the apocalypse like everyone else. 

The “Fringe tour,” a circuit of Fringe festivals that crisscrosses the country (and the continent) and contributes mightily to artist incomes, is now precarious, every step of the way. As Padgett points out, his home town Fringe in Orlando — slated for May 11 and the oldest and “widely regarded as the best in the States” as he says — has been cancelled. Heartbreaking news. Another May Fringe, in London, Ont., has been rescheduled for late September.

TJ Dawe in Operatic Panic Attack. Photo supplied.

The mighty Edmonton Fringe, the oldest and the biggest of them all, owns August, just before Vancouver and Victoria, and after Montreal, Toronto, and in July, Winnipeg. “I sure hope it happens,” says Padgett, a 10-year veteran of the Fringe tour. “No one really knows at this point…. What I do know is we’ve all already lost gigs we needed to pay the bills.” Digital Fringe “just gives us a way to maybe weather the storm a little better. Also, I can work on video without going outside!”

Padgett unspools his digital idea back to its origins. “For 10 years (on the Fringe circuit) I’d been seeing shows that blew me away…. They became lore; there was a romanticism to them,” he says of legendary Fringe shows that vanished into the cultural ether as titles alone. “And I thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool to re-live them?’ And in a way that would be more than just an archive.”

And there was a financial impetus too. Unlike film and TV, “there are no residuals for stage actors, no mailbox money for them, no cast albums…. If I could prove a viable business model for monetizing theatre beyond a cast recording, if it became financially viable, the whole world of indie theatre would transform. It would open more doors. And maybe even raise the bar (on indie productions) in time….”

There Ain’t No More, starring Willi Carlisle, Breaker/Fixer Productions

The inspiration came from affection. “I love the environment of the circuit,” Padgett says of the world of the artists who move from Fringe to Fringe across the country. “It’s a very interesting life; I feel part of this very special fraternity.”

As every indie theatre artist will tell you (and I can attest, from a zillion press kits), “it’s so hard to get good video,” he says of the theatre need that he set about filling, the vast gap between Netflix quality and the average archival video footage of the average theatre artist. “In every town I’d hear ‘does anyone know anyone who does video?’”

Padgett, who “nearly went into electrical engineering in college,” tapped the technical side of his brain. He taught himself video production, “a real craft … tailored for a Fringe environment, set-up in 30 minutes. I was learning and providing a service to artists.”

In the summer of 2018 Padgett “didn’t have a lot of gear,” only a camera he’d been using to capture his own Disney cruise line shows (a showbiz life he details in his Fringe show Heart Attacks and Other Blessings). He was in full borrow-stuff mode. But he had a discerning eye — and ear. “For a real professional production you need multiple cameras. And it needs to sound great.” It’s in audio that most theatre videos fall dramatically short, says Padgett, a top-drawer musician himself as his theatre fans know from his shows which invariably include music. “The eye is way more forgiving than the ear.”

And, as Padgett points out, especially in Fringe productions which tend to be sparing in the visuals, the presence of the audience via expert aural capture is indispensable in creating a sense of space and dimension.

The current Digital Fringe series is Volume of a long-term dream for “a video-on-demand service for new theatre … a sort of Netflix for new creative work by minds that love the theatre.” He’s already thinking of a Volume 2 that will include storyteller Paul Strickland’s 90 Lies An Hour that he filmed last year. 

His medium-term plan was to mention Digital Fringe in post-performance shout-outs this summer, “and build awareness.” But the world overtook him. Times being what they are, very tough for artists, he went into production tempo. “I just want to ease the pain a little bit for everybody…. I wish I had more more diversity (in artists and genres). But this is all the video I had on hand.”

Padgett will be shooting more shows, whenever the Fringes ramp up this summer. Look for his updated Heart Attack and Other Blessings at the Winnipeg Fringe in July, and the Garneau Theatre BYOV in August. “If it happens, I’ll be there!”

The first 100 people to use the promo code “freefringe” will get a 100 per cent discount. And if you’re struggling to get the ticket price together, email Padgett at PeacockFarmProductions@gmail.com for a hand with that.

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