Márquez meets Buster Keaton in Speechless, at Improvaganza

Posted on June 11, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

DJ Mama Cutsworth, Daniel Orrantia, Felipe Ortiz in Speechless, Improvaganza 2017. Photo supplied by Rapid Fire Theatre.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Even by the globe-trotting, frontier-busting standards of the  international improv comedy world, Speechless is an unlikely creation.

Two acrobatic circus-trained improvisers from Bogotá, Colombia and a female DJ from Winnipeg? Come on, the odds-against factor doesn’t even compute. And it’s especially appealing that Improvaganza, the Rapid Fire Theatre improv/sketch comedy festival where Speechless arrives June 20, is a homecoming: Improvaganza, after all, is where Speechless was born in 2013.

“I think of it as destiny!” declares Sarah Michaelson, aka Mama Cutsworth, a professional DJ who founded an academy for female DJs more than a dozen years ago. She laughs, but she’s not kidding, not really.

It’s not that improv is a huge departure for Michaelson, who’s friendly and far-from-speechless on the phone from the ‘Peg. The groundbreaking DJ, who’s “known for mixing genres and finding correlations,” as she says, loves a broad range of musical styles and eras, cutting-edge contemporary to vintage. And she’s improvised sound tracks for such Winnipeg improv stars as The Crumbs.

In 2012, Michaelson got invited to a German improv festival. And that’s where she caught sight of two South American improvisers with an unusual skill set. “Daniel (Orrantia) and Felipe (Ortiz) intrigued me!” she says, “not just because they had circus and clown background and training, but because the South American style is very different….”

As Michaelson explains,the disciples of North American improv gurus Keith Johnstone and Del Close have a certain attachment to ‘realism’ — they wear street clothes onto the stage, there’s a lot of talking.” The South American style, by contrast is “very physical, extremely theatrical, with a taste for the surreal.”

“In Brazil, for example, you see improv shows with extravagant lighting and costumes. In Colombia the literary genre of magic realism is a huge influence….” 

After that sighting of Ortiz and Orrantia, by the kind of coincidence Michaelson calls “happy accident” she found herself at Improvaganza, improvising music for Theatresports matches. And she got asked “could you do music for two Colombian guys?” Like all improvisers, Michaelson’s impulse was to say yes!.

“The Theatresports challenge was to do a scene about language….  We thought we’d do something without it. We did a little scene with no talking and it felt really special!”

It was, as she recalls, a scene about a small village in a jungle where the people had never seen seen a piano before. “Very beautiful, very poetic,” says Michaelson of the story. And it was told physically, with a musical soundscape instead of words. 

After that the three asked themselves “would it be crazy, too far-fetched, to do a long-form silent show?”  Speechless was born in those deliberations.

Michaelson thinks Speechless has a very different feel from the raucous, crackling energy of most improv and its solicitation of cues from the audience.  “We connect with the audience, get them to tell us a story, then tell a personal story of our own…. We’re looking for more heart, more beauty, more vulnerability in the story.”

The trio often includes montages, landscapes, hallucinatory scenes. “We might use bits and piece of the audience member’s story, a phrase that sticks with us, or an image…. Sometimes there are fantastical dream sequences or memory flashbacks. We try to be extremely cinematic, all of us using our skills to create something special. Exciting, and scary!” In Amsterdam this past January, Michaelson reports, “a lot of the audience ended up crying.”

Wordlessness is a plus, she thinks. “Although the story is clear, there’s still room for interpretation. The audience can inject their own lives into our storytelling. We use no names in the show — that way you can think about your own grandparents maybe or….”

“It’s deeply fulfilling, it feels meaningful,” she says of Speechless. “Daniel and Felipe are “very patient performers; they take a long time to build a story. That way, the audience starts falling into the rhythm and breathing with us….”

“This isn’t snappy improv! We’re not going for shock value…. We get a lot of inspiration from films, novels, music,” says Michaelson. “I wanted to get inside Daniel and Felipe’s heads, to find what was engrained in their hearts…. I started digging into the novels of (Colombian magic realist) Gabriel Garcia Márquez.” 

“We’re apart for most of the year,” Michaelson says. Often when they meet it’s in a foreign city none of them calls home. They’ve played Mexico City; they’ve toured Europe and the Middle East. When the three land in Edmonton this week, one arrives from Finland, one from Bogotá, one from Winnipeg.

“I consider Daniel and Felipe very close friends, but it is a long-distance relationship,” Michaelson says. “ You know what they say, distance is like wind to a fire: it blows out the small flames but strengthens the big ones.”

Tickets for Speechless: rapidfiretheatre.com

  

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The fine art of the spontaneous: Improvaganza invites the world

Posted on June 10, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

 

Calgary’s One Lions, Improvaganza 2017. Photo supplied by Rapid Fire Theatre.

 

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

True fact about the big wide world of improv comedy: it’s smaller than you think.

It’s the eve of an international comedy festival that will demonstrate this, in ways you didn’t see coming. Rapid Fire Theatre’s Improvaganza, a 10-day gathering of talent from hither and yon devoted to the principle of spontaneity in everything (especially laughter), returns Wednesday for a 17th annual incarnation.

And, as RFT artistic director Matt Schuurman explains, Improvaganza is a homecoming of sorts for many of the artists of the 20 or so troupes. They’ve arrived from, well, everywhere in surprising permutations and combinations. Many can trace their lineage back to this improv-mad theatre town, and Rapid Fire’s wide embrace of every kind of comic inspiration. This year’s edition of the comedy extravaganza is, says Schuurman wrly, “an homage to … ourselves!”

Take the headliners, for example. The talent pool of The Irrelevant Show, CBC Radio’s seven-year-old sketch comedy hit that takes to the Citadel’s Maclab stage Thursday (a big-house first for Improvaganza), includes more than a few artists who made their start in Rapid Fire’s Theatresports: Peter Brown, Mark Meer, Jana O’Connor, Neil Grahn, Donovan Workun. They’re showcasing a best-of selection of their favourite sketches.

CBC Radio’s The Irrelevant Show, with Neil Grahn, Jana O’Connor, Mark Meer, Donovan Workun. Photo supplied.

The first half of that evening, hosted by Schuurman and Julian Faid, is devoted to improv. And it unleashes an all-star Rapid Fire ensemble of improvisers, including former artistic director Amy Shostak, Ben Gorodetsky, Joleen Ballendine, and Joe Vanderhelm.

Improvaganza has a matchmaker gene. It’s typical of the festival lineup that Shostak, who’s moved to Vancouver, would return to her home town in an improv duo with Edmonton’s Ballendine. The worthy idea of Ra Power, says Schuurman , “is to try to have as much fun as possible. It’s very infectious.”

The two members of Calgary’s One Lions, Stephen Kent and Covy Holland, met in the “international ensemble” brokered at the 2012 Improvaganza. Schuurman has seen them, at the Vancouver Improv Festival, improvising their Waiting For ———, “where the blank is the name of an audience member.” For Improvaganza, this playfully literary duo, will premiere a new Mamet play, the one the American great somehow forgot to write: Glengarry One Lion.

Matt Folliott and Kirsten Rasmussen of K$M, Improvaganza 2017. Photo supplied by Rapid Fire Theatre.

The award-winning Toronto duo K$M has Rapid Fire connections too. The K half, Kirsten Rasmussen, a U of A acting grad (we saw her in Azimuth’s Su-Kat), made her improv debut at Rapid Fire. Since then she’s gone from strength to strength, says Schuurman, who cites a bristling array of comedy credits including Second City, One Hour Has 22 Minutes, Schitt’s Creek, among them.

New York’s Reckless Theater, arriving at Improvaganza with Dark Sneak Love Action, a title to cherish, is a spin-off from 4-Track, a NYC improv troupe who’ve frequently shown up at the Rapid Fire festivities. “This is Reckless’s first foray into international touring,” says Schuurman. “They’re bringing four players. And we’re their first stop!”

There are Canadian comedy stars, like Vancouver’s agile Sunday Service. There are newer ensembles, like Edmonton’s five-member sketch troupe Marv n’ Berry.

The improbable marriage of talent that powers Speechless — two wordless improvisers from Bogota, Colombia and a DJ from Winnipeg — was brokered at Rapid Fire’s Improvaganza in 2012. They’ve travelled the world ever since. 

IGLU Theatre from Ljubljana, Slovenia. Improvaganza 2017. Photo supplied by Rapid Fire Theatre.

 

The traffic in international improv is both incoming and outgoing, of course. “Rapid Fire tours quite a bit,” says Schuurman mildly, by way of explaining the unlikeliness of Improvaganza’s first Slovenian troupe, IGLU Theatre of Ljublyana. “I saw them in Milan,” he says casually, as if championship Slovenian improv theatre companies were a regular part of the Canadian comedy scene.

It’s unpredictable, as Schuurman says of the Improvaganza chemistry that’s the gift that keeps on giving. And the “international ensemble” assembled with artists from around the world, is the capper to the Uncertainty Principle that keeps improv creatively spontaneous (and accumulating air miles like mad). This year’s 10-member ensemble includes artists from Amsterdam, Portland, Calgary, Vancouver, Atlanta, Winnipeg, and Edmonton. Its two directors, Kristen Schier and Christian Capozzoli, are from Philadelphia and New York (respectively).

Schuurman gets “over 100 applications” a year for Improvaganza showcase slots. “It’s a destination festival,” he says happily of an extravaganza that includes an improv or sketch showcase plus a Theatresports match in every show.

Portland’s Broke Gravy, Improvaganza 2017. Photo supplied by Rapid Fire Theatre.

And just so you know, I did ask about the enigmatic name of the Portland improv company Broke Gravy (June 17, 10 p.m.). Schuurman, who saw them in Vancouver last year, didn’t know what it meant either.

The Portland trio “interviewed an audience member about their family, their life, their romantic partner. And then, with a narrator in the James Earl Jones style, they did an homage to that person’s life…. It was a charming set!”

PREVIEW

17th annual Improvaganza

Theatre: Rapid Fire

Where: Citadel Zeidler Hall, the Club, and Maclab Theatre

Running: Wednesday through June 24, full schedule at rapidfiretheatre.com

Tickets: rapidfiretheatre. com

  

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Workshop West announces its upcoming 39th season

Posted on June 9, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Playwright Beth Graham. Her Pretty Goblins premieres at Workshop West next season. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the centre of Workshop West Playwrights Theatre’s upcoming 39th season, announced Thursday, is the world premiere of a new play by Edmonton’s Beth Graham.

In Pretty Goblins, by the multi-talented actor/playwright (The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble), we’ll meet estranged twin  sisters, spun together into a fantastical journey of discovery. The inspiration to write about sisters, says Graham, came from Christina Rossetti’s strange, fantastical sexually eerie 1859 narrative poem Goblin Market. “It’s a powerful, emotional, deeply felt piece.”says Workshop West artistic director Vern Thiessen. “Sisters, grief, addiction, the people in your life who vanish.”

Brian Dooley directs the Workshop West production that runs April 19 to 27, 2018. Casting for the two-hander awaits.

As a counterweight to Pretty Goblins in WW’s culturally exploratory and diverse line-up for 2017-2018, is John Ware Reimagined by Calgary-based Cheryl Foggo. Kevin McKendrick directs the play, an exploration of the legendary black figure who went from American slave to Canadian icon in a lifetime full of heartwarming improbabilities.

The black cowboy who was the “grandfather of ranching in Alberta,” as Thiessen puts it, has a history that resonated with playwright Foggo, whose roots are in black American culture. Ware’s is an Albertan story, better known in Calgary than here. And Thiessen hopes the production will be a springboard for investigating the black experience in Edmonton and north in the Amber Valley. Ancillary events are planned.

“It’s a joyous piece of theatre!” says Thiessen happily of the play designed for three actors and a pair of musicians. He had wanted to do John Ware Reimagined this past season, but couldn’t find the resources till now. It runs Nov. 9 to 19 at the Backstage Theatre.

Black culture and experience take the stage again in the deaf upcoming  Workshop West  season, with the return of BAM! (Black Arts Matter), curated by Nasra Adem, to the annual Canoe Festival (Feb. 8 to 18). The initiative was one of the success stories of the 2017 Canoe 2017. And so was the launch of Canada’s only deaf theatre festival Sound Off; it returns under the Canoe flag, too, curated by Chris Dodd. 

Since play development is central to Workshop West’s identity, Workshop West goes into the new season assisting six top-drawer playwrights at work on scripts: Conni Massing, Mieko Ouchi, Nicole Moeller, Chris Dodd, Joëlle Préfontaine, and Collin Doyle. “I could program the next four seasons easily,” declares Thiessen. “It’s a great place for an artistic director to be.”

And the season’s playwright-in-resident is Josh Languedoc, whose background is Ojibway, from the Saugeen First Nation. His work in progress is Stonechild.

Workshop West heads north next season: a tour of six Northern communities by the company’s hit production of Kenneth T. Williams’s Café Daughter, directed by Lisa C. Ravenbergen and starring Tiffany Ayalik. Before that, though, Café Daughter’s first stop is the National Arts Centre, where it opens mid-June.

As for playwright Thiessen himself, he’s heading east for six weeks. His immediate prospects include three openings in little more than a week this month: his Pugwash premieres at Ship’s Company Theatre in Parrsboro, Nova Scotia; Vimy opens at Soulpepper in Toronto; Of Human Bondage, Thiessen’s Somerset Maugham adaptation, is part of the latter’s month-long residency Off-Broadway in New York.

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Having Patience: Opera Nuova festival opens with G&S

Posted on June 8, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Martina Myskohlid and Justin Kautz in Patience, directed by Rob Herriot for Opera Nuova. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Twenty lovesick maidens we….”

Let romantic melancholy descend, my friends…. Patience may be a virtue, but it’s also a rarely performed 1881 musical satire/ operetta by the redoubtable team of W.S. Gilbert and Arthur Sullivan. Their sixth collaboration takes the mickey out of the late 19th century “aesthetic movement” and its disciples, the Oscar Wilde crowd, William Morris and the rest. 

Languid pre-Raphaelites, broody self-regarding poets, pseud-y preening rustics, all get theirs in the G&S operetta that opens the month-long Opera Nuova festival Friday night at the Capitol Theatre in Fort Edmonton Park. Maidens will succumb any day to the charms of a poseur poet over a macho dragoon.  And Patience has two! Apparently, it was the first production in the world to be lit entirely by electric light, at the Savoy in London.      

Rob Herriot, well known to Edmonton Opera audiences, directs the Opera Nuova production — their third year of G&S at the Fort —  that runs through Sunday. It’s cast from among the 59 singers of Opera Nuova’s emerging artist program, now in its 19th season.  

More about the festival — including Eugene Onegin, Cunning Little Vixen, and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel — coming next week. In the meantime, have Patience, ladies and gentlemen. Tickets: 780-487-4844, operanuova.ca.

 

 

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I went to that bash at Brad’s: Everyone We Know Will Be There

Posted on June 6, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Everyone We Know Will Be There, Tiny Bear Jaws at Nextfest 2017. Photo by Mat Simpson

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

So, I was at this house party last night….

Brad was turning 17, and (thank god) his parents were out of town. People got high. Kids got trashed, in every sense of the word. Kids had sex and got into fights, not necessarily in that order. Secrets got spilled, along with booze. Discoveries — mutual, sibling, and self — got made. And at one point, I kid you not, some of us found ourselves watching Planet Earth on Brad’s brother’s bedroom wall.

Tiny Bear Jaws may be small but it’s sharp of tooth (and eye and ear), judging by Everybody We Know Will Be There, premiering at Nextfest. In Elena Belyea’s site-specific play, happening in a house in the southwest Edmonton suburbs,  you get a close-up of contemporary teen world — because you’re there with teen party-goers.

Everyone We Know Will Be There, Tiny Bear Jaws at Nextfest 2017. Photo by Mat Simpson

You’re right next to them all the way, shadowing them upstairs and down, outside in the garden and leaning against the fridge in the kitchen, hearing what they’re overhearing, seeing what they’re seeing in person and on their cellphones, sharing their conversations, texts, and their throw-away lines, the smart-ass and the defensive. Every ‘fuck-you!’ is so close it makes your eyes water. How the hell does anyone survive high school, anyhow? 

Andrew Ritchie’s production isn’t about a teen party, it is one — in real time and real space, with real intimacy. And it feels compellingly authentic, thanks to intricate stagecraft in a whole house of rooms (plus the yard) and fearlessly natural performances from a cast of five principals and an ensemble of eight.  It’s Booze at Brad’s (to Teatro La Quindicina’s ‘50s-style real-time unravelling, Cocktails At Pam’s).

Everyone We Know Will Be There, Tiny Bear Jaws at Nextfest 2017. Photo by Mat Simpson.

Since you’re one of five following one of the five central characters — a total audience of 25 a show — through the party,  you see the occasion through one pair of eyes. So if you go to the show with someone, as I did, and get a separate assignment from your partner, there’s the bonus of  discussing on the way home what the party was like from another perspective.

Everyone We Know Will Be There, Tiny Bear Jaws at Nextfest 2017. Photo by Mat Simpson.

I ended up with the nerdy outsider who’s braved hostility and crashed the party, motivated by reasons you’ll have tp discover for yourself. My partner was with Brad’s brother’s best friend. We didn’t even have the same sense of what just happened at Brad’s place. Like every raucous party you’ve ever gone to, it’s virtually a different event depending on whom you hang with. 

You can only imagine how complicated this kind of spontaneous chaos, at the intersection of the individual and the group, is to synchronize. The natural rhythms of start and stop, and the scrambly, brusing escalation of tension fuelled by booze, happen at Brad’s place: stories within stories. Kudos to Belyea, Ritchie and stage/production manager Tori Morrison, all founders of Edmonton’s Found Festival, for figuring out the smaller personal arcs within a larger arc of a “play.”

I can’t tell you more without spoiling something for you. But identity and gender are evolving, malleable things. So is the tension between being an individual and being embraced by a group that could turn on you at any moment.

While my group was circling the house from the outside — a pursuit with door-slamming and yelling — a passerby rode by on his bike, did a classic double-take, and rode back in the other direction. He was wondering what he was missing. Who could blame him?

REVIEW

Everyone We Know Will Be There

Nextfest 2017

Theatre: Tiny Bear Jaws

Written by: Elena Belyea

Directed by: Andrew Ritchie

Starring: Eva Foote, Ashleigh Hicks, Roland Piers, Gabriel Richardson, Diego A. Stredel, plus and ensemble of eight

Where: 230 Westridge Rd.

Running:  through Saturday. Full schedule at nextfest.org

Tickets: 780-453-2440, nextfest.ca

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A Sterling year onstage: nominations for Edmonton’s theatre awards

Posted on June 5, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Andrew MacDonald-Smith stars in Crazy For You, Citadel Theatre. Photo by David Cooper Photography

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A musical comedy in which a town and its citizens are transformed by putting on a show — a notion that Edmonton can enthusiastically get behind — proved the top choice of jurors as the 30th annual Sterling Award nominations were announced Monday at the Varscona Theatre.

That show is Crazy For You. And the Citadel/ Theatre Calgary co-production directed by Dayna Terkatch scooped up nominations in eight of the 24 Sterling categories, including outstanding musical production and recognition of Andrew MacDonald-Smith’s captivating star performance as the star-struck rich kid who saves a theatre.

The juror gave double Sterling nods for Cory Sincennes’ set and riotous costumes, Gerald King’s lighting, and Don Horsburgh’s musical direction. In an unusual appreciation for the way the musical moved and danced onstage and raised the stakes on the fine art of the pratfall, both Terkatch’s choreography and Jonathan Purvis’s fight direction got nominations in the same category.

Actor Mathew Hulshof presided over Monday’s announcement — the prelude to the June 26 Sterling Gala at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre to celebrate the best of Edmonton theatre this past season.

If Crazy For You is reworked from an earlier Gershwin musical, the two other most nominated productions of the season have roots in other creations, as well. The indie Edmonton Actors Theatre production of Stupid Fucking Bird by the American playwright Aaron Posner is up for Sterling awards in seven categories; Chris Craddock’s adaptation of the Miriam Toews’ novel Irma Voth has six nominations.

Andréa Jorawsky as Irma in Irma Voth, Theatre Network. Photo by Ian Jackson/ EPIC Photography

Irma Voth, which premiered at Theatre Network in a Bradley Moss production, garnered Craddock an Outstanding New Play nod, along with nominations for director Moss, for Andréa Jorawsky in the title role, and for Kendra Connor in the supporting role as Irma’s feisty kid sister, along with Sterling salutations for designer Megan Koshka and for the multi-media ingenuity of Ian Jackson.

Cast of Stupid Fucking Bird, Edmonton Actors Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson.

Stupid Fucking Bird, a sassy, irreverent and apt retrofit of Chekhov’s The Seagull was recognized by the jurors with nominations in the independent theatre category, as well as for director Dave Horak. Four of the performances from its crack ensemble received nominations: Mat Simpson in the leading actor category, and Ben Stevens, Robert Benz, and Melissa Thingelstad as supporting actors.

Here’s a life-and-art reverb you won’t see anywhere else across the country this awards season. The late great theatre actor/ director/ impresario after whom Edmonton’s awards are named, actually showed up as a character onstage in a play this year — and as of Monday it’s a Sterling-nominated play at that.

Darrin Hagen’s Witch Hunt At The Strand, which launched the Workshop West season, is one of the five nominees for outstanding new play. And Davina Stewart’s grandly imperious performance as the redoubtable Mrs. Haynes in a story unearthed from an ignominious chapter in our civic history, is up for a Sterling in the supporting actress category.

Two of the other nominees in the intriguing New Play category have a local resonance, too. Matthew MacKenzie’s (very) black “comedy” Bust, which premiered at Theatre Network, is set in Fort McMurray post-fire. And Stewart Lemoine’s For The Love of Cynthia, a comedy fable that premiered in the Teatro La Quindicina season, was written to be the first production in the newly refurbished Varscona Theatre. It involves a festive opening of traditional boundaries — the kingdom of Cynthia, about as big as a farm, is west of Drayton Valley and south of Lodgepole — and the creation of a play-with-in-a-play to celebrate.

The other new play nominee is unusual in provenance, too: Sister Sister, a dark-hued sibling dysfunction comedy by the American playwright Barbara Blumenthal-Erlich. Its debut production happened in Edmonton AB, at Northern Light, directed and designed by Trevor Schmidt. One of Louise Lambert’s two Sterling nominations is for her performance in Sister Sister; the other is her supporting work as the Nurse in the Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s production of Romeo and Juliet.

Farren Timoteo as Black Stache in Peter and the Starcatcher, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

In all, the Citadel comes away with 19 Sterling nominations, the most by far of any theatre company. In addition to the eight for Crazy For You, five — including outstanding production, director, musical director, and costume design — are for James MacDonald’s production of the Peter Pan prequel fantasy Peter and the Starcatcher, and the riotous star performance from Farren Timoteo as Black Stache, the one-handed pirate king and upstager whose evolving identity will not escape you.

Theatre Network received seven nominations in all, Edmonton Actors Theatre six for Stupid Fucking Bird. Of the Freewill Shakespeare Festival’s five nominations, four are for Marianne Copthorne’s Romeo and Juliet. Teatro La Quindicina’s five nominations, two are for Witness to a Conga, a Lemoine comedy in the outstanding production category, in which a man dances his way out of a heart-heavy boyhood into joyful forward momentum.  

Northern Light, and the indie company MadFandango (for Nancy McAlear’s production of Bryony Lavery’s enigmatic The Believers) will hoist a glass at the Sterling gala with four nominations apiece. After that, the nominations are dispersed pretty equally amongst companies of every size, from the Mayfield (Jesus Christ Superstar) to  Cardiac (Peter Fechter: 50 Minutes) and Wild Side Productions (10 out of 12).

The theatre for young audiences categories are dominated by Bello (a Concrete Theatre/ L’UniThéâtre co-production of a new Vern Thiessen play) and Hansel and Gretel (an original musical from Alberta Opera).

Zak Tardif, Onika Henry in Concrete Theatre’s Bello. Photo by Kim Clegg

On Sterling gala night at the Mayfield, hosted by Nadine Chu and Mark Meer, the Citadel’s Cheryl Hoover will be going home with the Margaret Mooney Award for achievement in administration. Betty Hushlak will receive the Ross Hill award for career achievement in production. To Maralyn Ryan, actor/ director/ playwright/ teacher/ mentor and founding artistic director of the highly influential St. Albert Children’s Theatre, goes the Sterling for most valuable contribution to Edmonton theatre.

The 2017 Sterling Award nominations

Outstanding Production of a Play: Romeo & Juliet (Freewill Shakespeare Festival); Disgraced (Citadel Theatre / Hope and Hell Theatre Company); Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Witness to a Conga (Teatro La Quindicina); Peter and the Starcatcher (Citadel Theatre)

Timothy Ryan Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical: Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Million Dollar Quartet (Citadel Theatre); La Cenerentola (Edmonton Opera); Jesus Christ Superstar (Mayfield Dinner Theatre); Ah, Romance! (Plain Jane Theatre Company)

Outstanding New Play (award to playwright): Irma Voth by Chris Craddock (Theatre Network); Witch Hunt at the Strand by Darrin Hagen (Workshop West Playwrights Theatre); For the Love of Cynthia by Stewart Lemoine (Teatro La Quindicina); Sister Sister by Barbara Blumenthal-Ehrlich (Northern Light Theatre); Bust by Matthew Mackenzie (Theatre Network)

Outstanding Director: Dave Horak, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Bradley Moss, Irma Voth (Theatre Network); James MacDonald, Peter and the Starcatcher (Citadel Theatre); Jim Guedo, 10 out of 12 (Wild Side Productions); Nancy McAlear, The Believers (MadFandango Theatre Collective)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role: Andrew MacDonald-Smith, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Mat Simpson, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Farren Timoteo, Peter and the Starcatcher (Citadel Theatre); Shaun Johnston, Annupurna (Shadow Theatre); Steve Pirot, The Preacher, The Princess, and A Crow (Azimuth Theatre)

Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role: Andréa Jorawsky, Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Stephanie Wolfe, The Search For Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe (Teatro La Quindicina); Louise Lambert, Sister Sister (Northern Light Theatre); Gianna Vacirca, The Believers (MadFandango Theatre Collective); Patricia Gomis, Moi, Monsieur, Moi! (L’UniThéâtre / Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre)

Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role: Robert Markus, Jesus Christ Superstar (Mayfield Dinner Theatre); Sheldon Elter, Love’s Labour’s Lost (Freewill Shakespeare Festival); Robert Benz, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Ben Stevens, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Jesse Gervais, Romeo & Juliet (Freewill Shakespeare Festival)

Outstanding Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role: Kendra Connor, Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Melissa Thingelstad, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Davina Stewart, Witch Hunt at the Strand (Workshop West Playwrights Theatre); Louise Lambert, Romeo & Juliet (Freewill Shakespeare Festival); Robin Craig, Sense & Sensibility (Citadel Theatre)

Outstanding Independent Production: Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre); 9 Parts of Desire (The Maggie Tree in association with Theatre of the New Heart); 10 out of 12 (Wild Side Productions); The Believers (MadFandango Theatre Collective); Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes (Cardiac Theatre)

Outstanding Set Design: Cory Sincennes, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Chantel Fortin, Witness to a Conga (Teatro La Quindicina); Megan Koshka, Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Trevor Schmidt, Sister Sister (Northern Light Theatre); Stephanie Bahniuk, Stupid Fucking Bird (Edmonton Actors Theatre)

Outstanding Costume Design: Deanna Finnman, La Cenerentola (Edmonton Opera); Megan Koshka, Peter and the Starcatcher (Citadel Theatre); Leslie Frankish, Sense & Sensibility (Citadel Theatre); Cory Sincennes, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Leona Brausen, Cocktails at Pam’s (Teatro La Quindicina)

Outstanding Lighting Design: Kerem Çetinel, Fortune Falls (Catalyst Theatre); Scott Peters, 10 out of 12 (Wild Side Productions); T. Erin Gruber, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Citadel Theatre); Daniel van Heyst, Annapurna (Shadow Theatre); Gerald King, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary)

Outstanding Multi-Media Design: Joel Adria, The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (Citadel Theatre); Ian Jackson, Irma Voth (Theatre Network); Matt Schuurman, La Raccourcie (L’UniThéâtre); T. Erin Gruber, The Believers (MadFandango Theatre Collective); Misha Hlebnicov, Peter Fechter: 59 Minutes (Cardiac Theatre)

Outstanding Score of a Play or Musical: Jason Kodie, Perception (L’UniThéâtre); Aaron Macri, The Preacher, The Princess and A Crow (Azimuth Theatre); Matthew Skopyk, Romeo & Juliet (Freewill Shakespeare Festival); Allan Gilliland, Sense & Sensibility (Citadel Theatre); Jenny Boutros & Etelka Nyilasi, 9 Parts of Desire (The Maggie Tree in association with Theatre of the New Heart)

Outstanding Musical Director: Don Horsburgh, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Bob Foster, Million Dollar Quartet (Citadel Theatre); Van Wilmott, Jesus Christ Superstar (Mayfield Dinner Theatre); Erik Mortimer, Peter and the Starcatcher (Citadel Theatre); Nicolas Samoil, Bonnie and Clyde: The Two Person, Six Gun Musical (Northern Light Theatre)

Outstanding Choreography or Fight Direction: Samantha Jeffery, Henry V (Grindstone Theatre / The Malachites); Laura Krewski, Jesus Christ Superstar (Mayfield Dinner Theatre); Dayna Tekatch, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary); Amber Borotsik, Bone Wars (Punctuate! Theatre); Jonathan Purvis, Crazy for You (Citadel Theatre / Theatre Calgary)

Outstanding Production for Young Audiences: Bello (Concrete Theatre, L’UniThéâtre); Bone Wars (Punctuate! Theatre); Hansel and Gretel (Alberta Opera)

Outstanding Artistic Achievement, Theatre for Young Audiences: Farren Timoteo, Director, Hansel and Gretel (Alberta Opera); Deanna Finnman, Costume Design, Hansel and Gretel (Alberta Opera); Stephanie Bahniuk, Set and Lighting Design, Hansel and Gretel (Alberta Opera); Mieko Ouchi, Director, Bello (Concrete Theatre, L’UniThéâtre); Vern Thiessen and Brian Dooley, Writing and Translation, Bello (Concrete Theatre / L’UniThéâtre)

Individual Achievement in Production: Adam Turnbull, Chris Kavanagh, Angie Sotiropoulos; Matt Currie 

Morgan Grau, Sarah Feutl, Graham Mothersill in The Fall of the House of Atreus. Photo supplied.

Outstanding Fringe Production: Scaramouche Jones (Blarney Productions); The Fall of the House of Atreus: A Cowboy Love Song (Troglodyte Theatre); Bat Boy: The Musical (Straight Edge Theatre / Patient Mango Theatre); Shakespeare’s Sirens: a burlesque revue (Send in the Girls Burlesque); Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Scona Alumni Theatre Co.)

Outstanding Fringe New Work (award to playwright): The Fall of the House of Atreus: A Cowboy Love Song by Jessy Ardern (Troglodyte Theatre); Trail and Error by Linda Wood Edwards (Northern Sabbatical Productions); Prepare for the Worst! by Trevor Schmidt & Darrin Hagen (Guys in Disguise); Shakespeare’s Sirens: a Burlesque Revue by Ellen Chorley, Morgan Smith and C. J. Rowein (Send in the Girls Burlesque); The Unsyncables by Rebecca Ann Merkley (Dammitammy Productions)

Outstanding Fringe Director: Luc Tellier, Never Swim Alone (Blarney Productions / Cowardly Lion Productions); Dave Horak, 70 Scenes of Halloween (Edmonton Actors Theatre); Corben Kushneryk, The Fall of the House of Atreus: A Cowboy Love Song (Troglodyte Theatre); Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Scaramouche Jones (Blarney Productions); Brent Felzien and Neil LaGrandeur, Cowboy: A Cowboy Story (Accidental Humour Co.)

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Actor: Graham Mothersill, Good with People (Trunk Theatre); Garett Ross, The Dirty Talk (Atlas Theatre); Chris Scott, Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Scona Alumni Theatre Co.); Robert Benz, Scaramouche Jones (Blarney Productions); Ben Stevens, Never Swim Alone (Blarney Productions / Cowardly Lion Productions)

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Actress: Jenny McKillop, Airswimming (Praise Doris Productions); Nadine Veroba, Bat Boy: The Musical (Straight Edge Theater / Patient Mango Theatre); Sarah Feutl, The Fall of the House of Atreus: A Cowboy Love Song (Troglodyte Theatre); Jayce McKenzie, Salt Water Moon (Whizgiggling Productions); Kendra Connor, Airswimming (Praise Doris Productions); Ellen Chorley, Trail and Error (Northern Sabbatical Productions)

The Margaret Mooney Award for Outstanding Achievement in Administration: Cheryl Hoover

The Ross Hill Award for Career Achievement in Production: Betty Hushlak

The Sterling Award for the Most Valuable Contribution to Theatre in Edmonton: Maralyn Ryan

 

 

 

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“A very Nextfest sort of play”: Meet two creators

Posted on June 1, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Garnish by Ashleigh Hicks, Nextfest 2017. Photo supplied by the playwright

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“What would be the craziest thing that could happen next?”

That’s the question — a very Nextfest sort of question — that playwright Ashleigh Hicks asked herself, moment by moment, as she was writing Garnish, premiering Thursday at Edmonton’s unique multi-disciplinary celebration of emerging artists, one of six mainstage productions. And it has something in common with the bold group improvisations  that find their way into Nest, a collective creation that makes it debut on the festival mainstage Saturday. 

The one is a scripted play, by a writer who was emboldened to “create a play by the seat of my pants…. It was like the closet doors that open in Monster Inc,” Hicks says, amused.

The other is a collection of vignettes devised by a five-member ensemble, the In Arms Collective, who did their brainstorming physically, up on their feet. Stuart McDougall, laughing, calls it “bodystorming.”

“We knew we’d be building a nest onstage,” he says, as a response to queer identity and gender expression, and the need to choose your own family and make yourself a home. After that, though, the In Arms Collective — artists in their early ‘20s who met at the U of A — was prepared to be surprised.

“We didn’t see a lot of queer performance going on,” says McDougall, a recent acting grad. “So, this is Edmonton, make your own! That’s what we did…. There’s nothing more Edmonton than taking a risk, and just doing it!” he declares. “We use theatre as our medium — it’s play, and ritual, and the opportunity to share a live experience with someone who’s there for you!”

Nest, by the In Arms Collective, Nextfest 2017. Photo supplied.

The vignettes, “which range from the absolutely ridiculous to the heartbreakingly simple,” all explore the queer experience in some way. “We’re trying to reflect our own experiences, and connect to our community. We not trying to represent all gay people…. After all, most of us are very white,” says McDougall, who made his Nextfest debut five years ago as an actor. He’s been back every June since. 

There’s a certain freewheeling elastic quality to the show McDougall describes. Every performance of Nest has dance breaks, audience participation in choosing costumes and doing make-up, and a 10-minute slot for a guest. Says McDougall, “each show will have its own flavour, be its own event.”

Nest by the In Arms Collective, Nextfest 2017. Photo supplied.

The guests include musical acts, one dance performance, and, intriguingly, “one philosophy essay,” accompanied by projections and singing.

Hicks, born and raised in Cape Breton before she came west, thinks that “Nextfest is the reason I decided to pursue playwriting in the first place!”

Last year Hicks’s play Wolves premiered on the Nextfest mainstage. In January 2016 she was working on another show — “75 pages of a play I hated, to meet a deadline” — when Garnish upstaged it in a three-day outburst of creativity. “I started with a bunch of boxes onstage,” Hick says, along with the thought that “whatever prop I need can come out of a box — an umbrella, a microwave, a functional poster. Ah, or a character….”

Garnish by Ashleigh Hicks, Nextfest 2017. Photo supplied by playwright.

And so it began. Now there are 50 boxes, of all shapes and sizes. “And four actors pop out of boxes; it’s very sweaty in there, I think!”

The premise of Garnish, says Hicks, “is two good friends who discover that one of them is telling a lie, which puts a crimp in their friendship. And that gets worse ….. I hope it’s funny. But there’s a sad core to the play, based on the unravelling of this close companionship.”

“It’s goofy, nonsensical. Musical instruments get played badly. Which I find hilarious.” Hicks laughs. “I’ve written nothing like it before. Or after.”

“I think Garnish is a very Nextfest sort of play…. It’s  colourful, messy, loud, chaotic. It never stands still.”

For the full schedule of Garnish and Nest performances on the Roxy stage at Nextfest, see nextfest.org. Tickets: 780-453-2440, theatrenetwork.ca, or in person at the Theatre Network box office, 8529 Gateway Blvd.

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Get splashed by the new wave of artists: Nextfest is back Thursday

Posted on May 31, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Charred, created and performed by Mat Simpson and Ben Gorodetsky, at Nextfest 2017

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“OMG, it’s the best part of the year!”

— Stuart McDougall of In Arms Collective, creators of Nest

Hold that thought. It’s the eve of the innovative arts festival that tosses the leading question “so, what’s next?” into the crowd of up-and-comers — and watches to see what they do.    

Nextfest returns Thursday for the 22nd annual edition of its 11-day free-wheeling, cross-pollinating, multi-disciplinary showcase:  young artists, some 500 of them, under 30 and on the brink of pro careers. And speaking of “next,” the festival that Theatre Network dreamed up so many Junes ago arrives on the scene with a new and startlingly multi-faceted director.

Ellen Chorley knows what it’s like to be young and inspired by a festival where originality is category-resistant. She’s a veritable poster child for that kind of versatility. In fact, Nexfest is where the award-winning playwright/ actor/ director/ dramaturg/ mentor/ teacher/ producer/ curator, who has founded both a kids’ theatre company (Promise Productions) and an experimental burlesque troupe (Send in the Girls), made her start.

Nextfest director Ellen Chorley. Photo supplied.

“For me, as an artist, being part of that Nextfest community, was central!” declares Chorley. At 16, half her lifetime ago, she and her Citadel Theatre School classmates collaborated to create Caroline’s Court, a sort of courtroom/German-style cabaret cross-hatching, and took it to Nextfest.

Nextfest was where Chorley’s first play Bohemian Perso premiered; she was 20. “I was starstruck,” she laughs, recalling the emerging talent who stepped up to make it happen. “Amy DeFelice directed; Lora Brovold and David MacInnis were in it; Ryan Sigurdson did the music…. I’ve met so many contacts and collaborators there! People I still work with!”

Chorley first experimented with burlesque at one of Nextfest’s nite club performance parties. For the last four Nextfests, Chorley has been the “high school curator,” who turned an add-on into a full-bodied experience for hundreds of kids.

Since November, when she got the Nextfest job vacated by Steve Pirot (who left after 15 editions in order to run the iHuman Youth Society), Chorley has been talking to young artists, seeing their work, inviting submissions, “either actual scripts or pitches.” And, she reports happily, “there was a big response!”

The Nextfest generation of artists, she finds, regularly combine theatre and poetry with dance, or visual arts, or music and film — sometimes in a single show. They don’t call themselves actors or directors or designers. They identify as artists. “They don’t do just one thing,” says Chorley, who doesn’t, either. “But that’s the culture in Edmonton, a theatre city built by the idea of the Fringe and that DIY can-do attitude.”

The six-show mainstage theatre line-up, happening at the Roxy on Gateway (both on- and backstage), for example is a veritable seminar on the dramatically diverse ways theatre can get made, as Chorley explains.

Nest, by In Arms Collective, at Nextfest 2017. Photo supplied by Nextfest.

There’s a new collective creation, Nest, from a five-member ensemble investigating the queer experience from multiple angles. There’s a new scripted play of the absurdist stripe, Ashleigh Hicks’s Garnish. There’s a full-bodied site-specific play happening in real time, Everybody We Know Will Be There: A House Party In One Act.

There’s a theatrical experience devised from visual images, movement, storytelling and improv, Dirt Buffet Theatre’s Charred. Ben Gorodetsky and Mat Simpson were inspired by photographs of the natural landscapes and neighbourhoods devastated by the Fort McMurray fire.

There’s even a solo play with an infrastructure of comedy routines. In No Allegiances, creator /performer Marvic Adecer taps his background in stand-up to chronicle his experience of displacement emigrating from China to Canada, then going back again as an adult. Chorley calls it “funny and poignant.”

Photo supplied by Nextfest

In its talent broker mode, Nextfest found a team of Edmonton artists for Calgary’s Camille Pavlenko. The Jackal And Her Reflection blends the ancient and the contemporary in a fantasia on the Pharaoh Hatshepsut.

Additionally, Chorley has programmed four play readings, and a quartet of “workshop presentations” which, she says, are more elaborate than staged readings, but less than the full productions they’ll soon have.

Andrew Ritchie’s Assist Ed is one. It takes us to a hospital room where a man battles to be dead, a fraught subject if ever there was one. Julie Ferguson’s solo performance Antiquation is another. As Chorley explains, they’ve spent the last year collecting out-of-date technology from people’s basements — FAX machines, defunct TVs and computers, 8-Tracks, overhead projectors, cassette players. Larissa Pohoreski’s Moonshine is a technology-rich exploration of exploring your roots; hers are Ukrainian. And there’s even a “found space” presentation, Before The River, which takes its audiences into the great outdoors.

For sheer unpredictability, at a festival that specializes in that factor, it’s hard to top the Nextfest Nite Clubs, one-off themed performance parties full of surprising encounters. There are four, starting with Friday’s Trash Gala at the Roxy, presented by The  Orange Girls and The Donnas. Chorley describes it as a”surrealist-style dinner party, with people in black-tie, a weird night of things seeming normal. Funky. fun.” 

The Nite Club quartet includes Futuresmut, Saturday’s 10th anniversary edition of Nextfest’s lewd and crude Smut Cabaret. It comes with the come-hither advisory “costumes and lack thereof encouraged.”

The visual arts Nite Club Monster Masks, June 8, includes a tour to all the festival’s visual art locations, starting at The Paint Spot and ending at the Roxy. The Roaring Rebellion, which overlaps with the first day of Pride, June 10, is a retro-tinged homage to the people who weren’t afraid to be rebels and shit disturbers.

That bravery gets to the heart of the matter at a festival that celebrates the new wave of creators.

“It’s 11 days of the most supportive, open, beautiful community. where anything can happen.” says playwright Hicks. “You’re SO encouraged to be bold, make big decisions….”

PREVIEW

Nextfest 2017

Where: Theatre Network’s Roxy on Gateway, L’UniThéâtre, and a variety of Old Strathcona venues

Running: Thursday through June 11. Full schedule and show descriptions at nextfest.org

Tickets: in person at Theatre Network, 8529 Gateway Blvd., or by phone at 780-453-2440, or online at theatrenetwork.ca,

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Psst, are you going to Brad’s party? Everyone We Know Will Be There

Posted on May 30, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

Everyone We Know Will be There: A House Party In One Act, Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo (from 2016 workshop production) by Mat Simpson.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Hey everybody, we’re invited to a party at Bradley Freeman’s house.

He’s turning 17 and, yay, his parents are away somewhere, on a yacht. So he’s having people over.

In Everyone We Know Will Be There: A House Party In One Act, the new site-specific play created by Elena Belyea for her company Tiny Bear Jaws, we’ll be partying in a house (and back yard) in Westridge. An audience of 25 max, we’ll be divided up into five “pods,” each assigned to follow one of the five central characters through the house. And we’ll be meeting up with an ensemble of eight other party guests from time to time.

Everyone We Know Will Be There  — one of six mainstage productions at this year’s Nextfest (the multidisciplinary festival of the next generation, opening Thursday) — is theatre up close. Very close. So close you can see what characters are texting to each other on their phones. Belyea likes her theatre that way.

There is something about actor/playwright/creator Belyea, built into her artist DNA, that resists the idea of theatre in formal conventional configurations and spaces. “That’s why I write plays: the idea of live-ness. Immediacy. Intimacy. What is the story that needs to be told with people next to it?”

That sensibility is something she shares with director Andrew Ritchie, artistic director of the “site-sympathetic” Shakespeare company Thou Art Here. And technical director/ production manager/ stage manager/ sound designer Tori Morrison is tuned to the same frequency, too.

After all, five years ago the three enterprising friends had the bright idea of founding Found. All three have moved on now. But the Found Festival of intimate original theatre specially designed for the unexpected spaces of Strathcona — stores, bars, memorial chapels, back alleys, apartments — returns later this June (under Beth Dart’s artistic directorship).

Her house party play had its origins, says Belyea, in a second-year theatre-for-young-audiences playwriting project in her time at the National Theatre School. “I asked myself ‘what is the play I wish I could have written for a younger version of myself?’”

So who was this contagiously exuberant person when she was 17? “I felt like a young weirdo … isolated, alone,” Belyea says.

“I originally wrote it as a black box play,” she says of a production that’s 14A (“all that underaged drinking and making out…”). “But it felt like it should be in a house. That was how it was supposed to move; the script was not a very good indication of what it was.”

As Belyea explains, there isn’t one single narrative; there are five. “Five plays in one, really,” thinks Morrison. They belong to Bradley the host (who incidentally has his own Facebook account and Twitter feed), his older brother, his best friend, his best friend’s girlfriend, and an unpopular girl with a case of hero worship who’s crashed the party. “Each character has something they’re pursuing. And it all escalates into a giant explosion.”

Since we’re following different principals, we’ll come away from Bradley’s party with different perspectives on the experience. In this it’s like Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More, a long-running “version” of Macbeth that has its audiences on the move following characters through an old warehouse complex in New York. Belyea credits it as an inspiration. She’s a big fan, too, of Toronto’s immersive indie Outside the March; she mentions their TomorrowLove, which walked its audiences through a former funeral home.

Belyea, Ritchie, and Morison tried out Everyone We Know Will Be There in a workshop run a year ago, at Belyea’s mom’s house. “The cat was a wild card,” grins Morrison, “always sitting on chairs the actors were supposed to sit on.” The spontaneity this demanded amused actors and audiences for the four-performance run. 

The cast — four of the five central roles will be occupied by returning actors — wanted to know if they’d  would be bringing Cecily to the new location, a friend’s mother’s house on Westridge Road. “No!” Belyea declared emphatically. “The throwing up in the car” was a deal-breaker.

Felines aren’t the only wild card in a production where scenes are running simultaneously in different rooms in the house. Everyone We Know Will Be There is a veritable stress test for the director and the stage manager. “I’m multi-tasking,” says Morrison, a recent National Theatre School technical theatre grad of unstoppable good humour and inventiveness. “I’m on this page (of the script). And also that page!”

Morrison has posted herself to the Bradley track; four assistant stage managers are in charge of the other central characters. “The ways in which the characters interact with each other, and with the ensemble” are a huge challenge of focus, communication, and timing.

“The timing demands a lot of courage,” says Belyea, who’s been scattering “fake family and baby photos” of the two fictional brothers judiciously around the house. “There’s stage fighting! And holy crap! the audience is so close!” 

Everyone We Know Will Be There: A House Party In One Act, Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo (from 2016 workshop production) by Mat Simpson.

When you take theatre out of formal theatres, you demand an extra dimension in resourcefulness from the actors and crew. “There are safety issues. And neighbours (Belyea and co have done a lot of flyer-ing). No backstage. No theatre lighting system to make the main characters stand out.” Ah yes, and someone had to figure out the beer cans. “The cast drinks 26 fake beers a night,” laughs Morrison.

Incidentally, contribute 500 bucks to Tiny Bear Jaws’ Fund What You Can campaign (tinybearjaws.com), which continues till opening night, and they’ll name their fake beer after you. (Or you could pay less and have a real beer and discuss the play one-on-one with director Ritchie.)

“We’ve created a new cue-ing system,” grins Morrison. Since the characters are teenagers, they’re anatomically joined to their cellphones. “We use emojis: a cat is ‘stand by’, a dog is ‘go!’, an octopus is ‘something’s gone wrong’.”

Morrison has also created the sound design — tricky, too, under circumstances where the home sound system with its high school party music has to integrate with a more theatrical system of follows and fades. There’s projection, too. “Some characters watch Planet Earth; one character is shooting video….”

Everyone We Know Will Be There: A House Party In One Act, Tiny Bear Jaws. Poster image by Meags Fitzgerald.

As with Belyea’s solo show Miss Katelyn’s Grade Threes Prepare For The Inevitable where we were her class, the audience can’t sit back passively at Everyone We Know Will Be There. “When an audience comes to a show, what are the rules? And how can we subvert the expectations?” says Belyea. “We want to create an experience that’s visceral, immediate, and memorable.”

“In three years at Found (five for Morrison), we’ve had a lot of time to do things wrong,” laughs Belyea, who’s taking Everybody We Know Will Be There to Calgary’s Swallow A Bicycle after its Nextfest run. Some things can’t be improvised. “You have to have a rain contingency plan. Found taught me that.” 

PREVIEW

Everyone We Know Will Be There: A House Party In One Act

Nextfest 2017

Theatre: Tiny Bear Jaws

Created by: Elena Belyea

Directed by: Andrew Ritchie

Starring: Eva Foote, Ashleigh Hicks, Roland Piers, Gabriel Richardson, Diego A. Stredel, plus an ensemble of eight

Where: residential house, 230 Westridge Road

Running: June 1 to 10 at Nextfest, full schedule at nextfest.org

Tickets: 780-453-2440, theatrenetwork.ca (discount for audiences seeing the show a second time)

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O, to be a kid again: yes you can! The Kids’ Fest is back

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Liz Nicholls

The Man Who Planted Trees, Puppet State Theatre Company. Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Imagine a world where a real live man unzips a suitcase — from the inside — and climbs out.

Where a big-mouth wiseacre Dog breathes life into a gentle story about tree planting, one acorn at a time, across the span of two world wars. Where a mouse named Marvin takes us on a glow-in-the-dark cosmic adventure to Mars, aboard his homemade rocketship.

You can get to that world from here. It’s just up the road, in fact, on the banks of the mighty Sturgeon. That’s where six-day festivities devoted to the power of the imagination are to be found, starting Tuesday and running through Sunday June 4.

Johnathan Burns. Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival.

With the return of the International Children’s Festival — for a 36th annual edition that’s a day longer than the usual five — St. Albert is where you can locate Jonathan Burns. He’s a ridiculously supple pretzel of a guy from Pennsylvania, whose feats of contortionist comedy, starting with that suitcase, have no respect for the laws of probability, as Leno, Letterman, and James Corden audiences have discovered.

It’s where you’ll find the Puppet State Theatre Company of Edinburgh, and their captivating production of The Man Who Planted Trees, first seen at the Kids Fest in 2010 (I can personally recommend this enchanting show). And it’s where you’ll find Moon Mouse: A Space Odyssey, a return visit by New Orleans’s ingenious Lightwire Theatre.

These are three of the eight MainStage shows in festivities that attract an annual audience of some 55,000 people to put down their clickers and fire up their imaginations instead. The proportions get juggled, year to year, but the mix of theatre, dance, puppetry, storytelling, comedy, music — and permutations and combinations of all of the above — remains in place.

Sangja (Boxes) by Pangaea Arts and ArtStage SAN. Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival

Sangja (Boxes), for example, an unusual collaboration between Vancouver’s Pangaea Arts and ArtStage SAN of Seoul, uses puppetry, live actors, physical theatre, projections, and music from East and West, to tell the moving story of a boy adopted from one culture to another, a world away, and displaced in both.

In an era where cultural diversity and identity are scrutinized from every angle, Sangja could hardly be more topical. Pangaea artistic director Heidi Specht explains that the genesis of the story was true life. Her brother David Warburton was adopted from South Korea at two-and-a-half by a Vancouver family of artists — their mother is a composer, an uncle runs a Vancouver theatre company.

He arrived in Canada as a Korean. It was as an adult of 28 that he went back to Korea for the first time, to the very orphanage where his story began. 

“Everything about Korea I had to re-discover,” says Warburton, whose search for identity was complex and emotional. “I had rejected my Korean identity” but his life as a Canadian kid was a struggle, full of anxieties.

“We didn’t realize his struggle at the time,” says Specht. “But as a child you’d be fearful about sharing your feelings, and hurting your adoptive family.”

As Specht explains, “in Korean society adoption is a stigma, it’s hidden, secret, tabu….a national embarrassment that Korea, on the one hand, ‘the miracle of Asia’ economically’, is one of the largest exporters of children in Asia.”

“When we started researching,” she says of a show years in the making, ”puppetry seemed a good metaphor for the journey; puppets aren’t in control; they can’t make their own choices….”  That’s how Pangaea’s partnership with ArtStage SAN came about.

Sangja (Boxes). Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival

The show uses bunraku puppets that are almost human in scale; the David character is embodied in three different sizes, baby, teen, and adult.

The verbal text, in Korean and English, is at a minimum, and that too figures in a story about struggling to bridge the gap in order to communicate. “As an adoptee you lose your language…” says Warburton, currently the Director of Touring and Business Development for the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. 

The cast includes three Koreans and two Canadians.“My partner and I play David’s parents,” laughs Specht. “I’m 20 years older than David, so it’s like re-living our life as parents this time.”

BAM Percussion. Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival

Another adaptation of form comes courtesy of Quebec’s inventive BAM Percussion, which has turned drumming into slapstick comedy.

Eighteen years and a lot of Air Miles ago, as Jean-Sebastien Dallaire tells it, a trio of drummers from Gatineau “were entering our ‘20s wondering what to do with our lives.” Veterans of every kind of rock and salsa band, Dallaire and friends considered something serious, like Taiko drumming. Briefly. “Then we started clowning around.”

The result was a show they tested, in a 15-minute form, at Montreal’s Just For Laughs. “We figure we’d know right away if we’re funny or not.”

European agents picked them up for gigs. And they’ve been touring the world whaling away on things ever since. Cultural habits and values differ around the globe. But there was no destination where slapstick comedy involving, among other objects of percussive invention, their signature big blue drums, wouldn’t work, says Dallaire, the only remaining founding member. BAM arrives in St. Albert fresh from a 10-show tour of China, “our 29th country.” 

“Our idea is to do as much as possible with the least possible,” says the exuberant Dallaire, who explains that they don’t ship any of their props or instruments. “We bring them!”

Packing stuff to travel the globe has been “a big learning curve,” says Dallaire. The set-up includes “three big drums, one small drum, a variety of props, including PVC piping that comes apart and fits in a hockey bag….”

“ We transform them!” he laughs. “An airplane, a war trench, a horse … it’s like a kid playing with a cardboard box and transforming it into a million things!”

“In 1999 we never dreamed our lives would be like this,” muses Dallaire. “Rock bands (typically) last three years! We’re all good friends, in our ‘40s, all daddies with responsibilities. And we get to entertain people and make them happy. What a great thing that is!

“We get to be big kids and play around. And that’s a privilege….”

Niniimi’iwe by Winnipeg’s Aboriginal School of Dance. Photo supplied by St. Albert International Children’s Festival.

FEATURED PERFORMANCES: As above, Jonathan Burns, The Man Who Planted Trees, Moon Mouse: A Space Odyssey, Sanja, and BAM Percussion. Also: Madagascar: A Musical Adventure, culled from the DreamWorks hit movie and  performed by the St. Albert Children’s Theatre (invariably one of the Kids Fest’s hottest tickets); Niniimi’iwe, an exploration of aboriginal cultures through movement and music from Winnipeg’s Aboriginal School of Dance; Treehouse TV’s Splash’N Boots: CBC TV’s kids’ entertainer Will Stroet.

FULL LINEUP AND SCHEDULE: childfest.com. And there’s a free app available for download there.

NEW THIS YEAR: For the first time, the Kids Fest has added Sunday to its life span. It was a weekend expansion motivated by public feedback, says the festival’s new program presenter Neil LeGrandeur.  School groups dominate the weekdays. On the weekend, it’s families. Instead of Friday night performances, parents preferred to hang with their kids at the festival both Saturday and Sunday.

TICKETS: The $13 tab for mainstage shows is up by $2 from last year’s edition. They’re available from the Arden Theatre box office (780-459-1542) or ticketmaster.ca.

Site activities are $3. As LeGrandeur suggests, “the best value is the$20  kid Butterfly Pass, which includes a ticket to a featured performance, unlimited access to site activities, a caricature trading card, and a bag of popcorn.

Shaw’s Toddler Town: for kids four and under. Tickets are $10, with free admission for the adults they bring with them.

Free stuff: an outdoor stage and a brigade of roving performers.

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