A cabaret, an opera, a comedy, thriller, a festival: yup, a weekend of theatre in Edmonton

Posted on June 9, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Dolly Parton and Andrew MacDonald-Smith, My First Hundred Years. Graphic by Ryan Parker.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

For your weekend entertainment, Edmonton theatres are standing by, and you shouldn’t miss your chance. You could experience …

… the reinvention of cabaret.

For one thing, there’s nothing like getting the scoop first-hand. In his delightful “biographical cabaret” My First Hundred Years, a gloriously fake memoir, Teatro Live! and Citadel star Andrew MacDonald-Smith sings songs and tells “first-hand” stories from a century of instinctively being in the right place at the right time. He’s onstage with a grand piano and a wonderful pianist, Frances Thielmann, who knows exactly what to do with that instrument.

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So…. good times with Andrew’s old pals George and Ira, with a little first-hand insight about why the Gershwin he’s going to sing isn’t more famous. MacDonald-Smith was there when Irving Berlin was courting Ellen, his wife-to-be, against the express wishes of her dad. The show, for Edmonton Opera in the Citadel’s intimate Rice Theatre, opens with Berlin’s Blue Skies, and the deliciously rhymed I Love A Piano. “I know a fine way/ to treat a Steinway….”  Our man onstage was on a first-name basis with Yip Harburg. No one who starts an anecdote casually with first-hand travel advice from Ivor Novello can  really afford to be ignored.

And, as for Kurt Weill (and Lotte and Bertolt ) and those times in Berlin in the 20s, “it was fun till it wasn’t, so I left.” MacDonald-Smith, an urbane and genial “historical context” in a suit, didn’t forget to remember, as a lovely Irving Berlin song has it. And that thought weaves its way through the cabaret, written in witty fashion by playwright Stewart Lemoine.

It extends to the music itself, which restores the songs you do know to their original context so they feel fresh, without the stamp of decades of pop and jazz singers making them their own. There’s a chilling version of Mack the Knife, for example. Brother Can You Spare A Dime is a highlight, devastating in performance.

Most of the songs I didn’t know, like the very strange Black Max, by William Bolcom, all jagged intervals and rhythms. Some I’d only heard of. And a familiar number from that contemporary philosopher of positivity Dolly Parton turned out to be an ear-opener.

It’s a fine 70-minute entertainment, running through Sunday. 12thnight talked to two of the collaborators, MacDonald-Smith and Lemoine in this preview.  Tickets: edmontonopera.com.

Farren Timoteo in Listen Listen, Teatro Live. Phoro by Eric Kozakiewicz

… another view of music altogether. It’s the last weekend of Teatro Live’s premiere production of the Elyne Quan comedy Listen, Listen at the Varscona. Its premise will make you smile. A Muzak afficionado (played by the terrific comic actor Farren Timoteo) is called upon to heroically defend his music of choice, and his oddball situation of being utterly attentive to music that’s expressly designed to be ignored. The conceptual opposite, musically speak, of paying attention to the lyrics, as demanded by My First Hundred Years. 12thnight interviewed the playwright here. And here’s the 12thnight review. Listen, Listen runs through Sunday at the Varscona, in a production directed by Teatro Live’s Belinda Cornish. Tickets: teatroq.com.

Gabby Bernard and Geoffrey Simon Brown in Subscribe or Like, Workshop West. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

… your last chance to see Subscribe or Like at Workshop West, a play that speaks, powerfully, to the strange disappearance of “reality” and “truth” in our world, poised as it is between online and in-person connections. Check out the 12thnight interview with playwright Liam Salmon here, and the review here. It runs through Sunday at the Gateway Theatre in Strathcona. Tickets: workshopwest.org.

… Austen city limits. We can’t get enough. In a season that has included a Sterling-nominated reinvention of Pride and Prejudice at the Citadel, and a production of the backstage musical comedy Austentatious at Walterdale next month (July 12 to 22), there’s Austen in opera form at Opera Nuova this weekend and beyond. Mansfield Park, a 2011 chamber opera version of the 1814 Austen novel by the English composer Jonathan Dove.

With a nod to Austen’s Regency milieu, Brian Deedrick’s immersive production happens in the Wedgwood Room at the Fairmont Hotel Macdonald Sunday (1 and 7:30 p.m.), Monday and Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Tickets: operanuova.ca.

Graphic by Psi Lo.

… emerging in progress, happening before your very eyes. Nextfest, Edmonton’s remarkable 28-year-old celebration of emerging artists, continues through Sunday on every stage and in every nook and cranny at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre. 12thnight had fun, as always, talking to festival director Ellen Chorley about the 2023 lineup, and was fascinated to meet four of the Nextfest’s up-and-coming mainstage playwrights: Madi May, Cayley Wreggit, Kijo Gatama, and Bashir Mohamed.

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Cosmic time-travelling into history: Black Alberta at Nextfest

Posted on June 8, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It started with history:  the story of Black civil rights in Alberta, and leading players in a real-life narrative of which Albertans are woefully ignorant. And from that writer/historian Bashir Mohamed has opened a door into the world of theatre.

But Black Alberta, premiering at Nextfest, isn’t a history, as the writer explains on the phone from Vancouver, where’s he’s based these days. “People don’t have to do their homework to watch the show!”

It’s sci-fi,” says this relative newcomer to theatre of his new two-hander. “Space is actually the setting for most of the scenes.” In Black Alberta, we meet a young Black kid in Alberta, who journeys through space and time with the helpful alien Cosmo, of Galaxy fame. “A child’s imagination” is the starting point, says Mohamed. “And the reason the play kicks off is that they learn a bit about Black history in Alberta and they want to learn more…. Cosmo is the tour guide.” And in the course of their cosmic adventures, they swap roles.

Yes, you do learn of activists like railway porter Charles Daniels and Lulu Anderson, teacher Ruhamah Utendale, and Ted King, who have striking roles in Alberta’s Black history. Their stories are dramatic, to say the least, and the history is real. When the kid and Cosmo encounter ‘officials’, “all the words they’re saying are taken from actual speeches,” says Mohamed, with the exception of the Ku Klux Klan scenes. But the real heart of the play is “what these stories mean for a young Black kid in Alberta … a legacy that persists.”

That kid, says Mohamed, is a version of him, inspired by his own childhood, growing up in social housing in north end Edmonton. “For me, space and stars were an escape,” he says of a passion for astronomy and star-gazing that continues to this day.

Black Alberta isn’t Mohamed’s first play. That debut, Balance Board, was at the Fringe in 2019. The instigator was David Cheoros, a former Fringe director, who encouraged him to venture into theatre by turning an article he’d written into a play. “It was smaller; this feels more real,” Mohamed says, a smile in his voice.

Mohamed, who’s written extensively about Black history in Alberta for such projects as the CBC’s Black on the Prairies collection, is intrigued by the possibilities of theatre. Intrigued enough to consider writing about his experiences in the navy (“military service is a surreal experience, all interesting,” he says).

Toluwalase Ayo-Farinloye

Paul-Ford Manguelle

Meanwhile, with Black History at Nextfest, “it’ll be interesting to see how it’s received,” he says. ‘I’ve been definitely hands off…. You do your bit and trust people to run with it.

Angie’s production stars Paul-Ford Manguelle and Toluwalase Ayo-Farinloye. It has a performance Thursday at 9 p.m., on the Roxy mainstage. Tickets and further information: nextfest.ca.

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‘Entirely true made-up stories’: Andrew MacDonald-Smith’s cabaret My First Hundred Years, at Edmonton Opera

Posted on June 7, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Andrew MacDonald-Smith with Irving Berin, My First Hundred Years. Image by Ryan Parker

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

That Andrew MacDonald-Smith sure gets around.

Crazy, the people he’s known! Those great times in New York with Irving Berlin and the Gershwin brothers. The fun of Berlin in the ‘20s, yes, he happened to be there too, hanging out with Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya. Uncanny how often he happens to be in the right place at the right time.

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In My First Hundred Years, a new “biographical cabaret retrospective” he and playwright Stewart Lemoine have created for Edmonton Opera, MacDonald-Smith shares stories and sings songs from a century of great connections, from the 20s to the ‘70s of Dolly Parton.

The idea of “a musical event” outside the Edmonton Opera’s usual programming came from the company’s enterprising new artistic director Joel Ivany. He was keen to reach out to different audiences in different venues, with smaller-scale shows. And he approached Teatro Live! co-artistic director MacDonald-Smith, who told him “the way I’d enjoy that most is with my best friend as a collaborator.” That would be Teatro resident playwright Stewart Lemoine, opera fan extraordinaire who often includes classical music in the fabric and storytelling of his plays.

And as Lemoine points out, it’s not as if instances of opera stars devising cabarets to demonstrate their versatility beyond the usual repertoire — “and show they can sing Leaving On A Jet Plane” — are not unknown.

The inspiration for the show, topening Thursday in the Citadel’s Rice Theatre, isn’t opera, though. It comes from the basic structure of cabarets, explains MacDonald-Smith. What is a cabaret, after all, but “someone singing a selection of songs and tying them together with stories from their life….?”

“Wouldn’t it be fun if my life could be anything we want it to be since we’re making it all up?” beams MacDonald-Smith. “Wouldn’t be fun if you could get the historical context of songs from someone who was there, as opposed to facts from Wikipedia?” says Lemoine.

Was MacDonald-Smith a player in these events, or did he just happen to be there as a witness? “A bit of both!” declare the collaborators together. “Observation and experience!” grins MacDonald-Smith, who plays … himself, Andrew MacDonald-Smith, a veritable Zelig of a guy, in the show. In Edmonton Opera’s resident pianist Frances Thielmann — “she’s a wonder!” says Lemoine emphatically — they acquired a third collaborator.

“We started with the title,” he says. Which gave them a century of music to choose from, starting with the Jazz Age, and moving right through the ‘30s and ‘40s and onward. Most of the 15 numbers in My First Hundred Years aren’t from musical theatre, a repertoire in which MacDonald-Smith excels and has a long and stellar resumé. Most, says Lemoine, are stand-alone — cabaret, vaudeville, parlour songs, pop songs. “Only two songs of the whole night I’ve sung before,” says MacDonald-Smith. “Which is fun!”

What has particularly intrigued Lemoine, he says, is to revisit songs that everyone has heard, and rediscover “the tempo and the tone with which they were originally conceived … to know what a song was before Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald got hold of it.” Ah, or in the case of Mack The Knife from Threepenny Opera, the pop ministrations of Bobby Darrin who yanked it out of its context and took it to the mainstream as a jaunty lounge-y ditty. “Suddenly you listen to the words, and you realize, hey, this is actually an interesting, violent song,” says MacDonald. “You get to think again what the song is, and was originally intended to be about.”

An inspiring source has been the cabaret oeuvre of the American composer/pianist William Bolcam, who wrote for and recorded with his cabaret singer wife Joan Morris. Their Vaudeville compilation from the mid-‘70s, which Lemoine has had since he was a teenager, is a compilation that includes such novelty ditties as The Bird on Nellie’s Hat. “After that they did Blue Skies, an all-Irving Berlin album, a Jerome Kern album, a Leiber and Stoller album. In Morris’s performance of Is That All There Is? on the latter, “you get to hear it with the Peggy Lee totally taken out of it,” as Lemoine puts it.

Since MacDonald-Smith, most recently in the Citadel’s Jersey Boys (“well, I did know Frankie Valli!” he laughs), is a time-traveller in his cabaret retrospective, you’ll be returned to songs you think you know, back in their original form. With Jay Gorney and Yip Harburg’s  Depression era hit Brother Can You Spare A Dime?, as he points out, most people know the beginning and the chorus. But “it’s a very different song when you hear all the lyrics” in the verses, including the telling “they used to tell me I was building a dream.”

The hardest song to pull off, he thinks, is Bolcom’s Black Max, “a satisfyingly difficult song to sing.” Says Lemoine, “it’s unexpected, a challenge because it never settles….” And there’s this plus: “even the most seasoned musical ear will not know it!”

There are two Gershwin songs in the show. “One of them, Ask Me Again, is rarely performed,” says Lemoine. “And we explain why.” He’s undoubtedly the first on his block to discover it by listening to the Berlin Philharmonic’s streaming service during their 2003 New Year’s Concert. The Broadway star Audra McDonald sang it on that occasion, tucked between two better known Gershwin songs.

Ah, and perhaps unexpectedly in a cabaret devised by theatre company collaborators for an opera company, there’s Dolly. MacDonald-Smith appeared in the Citadel production of her musical 9 to 5 a season ago. Says Lemoine “her world view is interesting and positive.” The song they picked was her catchy, bouncy 1978 hit Here You Come Again, “an interesting little monologue about being preoccupied with a person, not miserably but in a singular, positive way …. Someone comes into your life, and you should not engage but you do.”

It is entirely typical of the trio of collaborators that when they experimented with taking out the pop-y bounce of Dolly’s accompaniment, they made a discovery. “It sounds like Schubert,” says Lemoine. “Specifically, Schubert’s Im Furling (In Spring),” in which, lo and behold, the same thought as Dolly’s emerges.

Says Lemoine, “the singer is remembering the person they used to be in love with.”  Thielmann wondered “should I incorporate some Schubert into Dolly?” Lemoine laughs. “You can imagine what I said!”

PREVIEW

My First Hundred Years

Theatre: Edmonton Opera

Created by: Andrew MacDonald-Smith and Stewart Lemoine, in collaboration with Frances Thielmann

Starring: Andrew MacDonald-Smith

Where: Citadel Rice Theatre

Running: Thursday through Sunday

Tickets: edmontonopera.com

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African mythology and the immigrant experience: meet the creator of Hyena’s Trail at Nextfest

Posted on June 6, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Hyena’s Trail, Nextfest 2023. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

For every hyena in the world there’s a witch.

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It’s a uneasy pairing that powers a new play premiering at Nextfest 2023. At the centre of Hyena’s Trail, by actor-turned-playwright Kijo Gatama, are dark, powerful, mischievous creatures — secret scavengers who thread their way through African mythologies and folklore  “eating things they’re not supposed to eat, sucking spiritual power….”

The more she read the more fascinated she was, says Gatama, a U of A acting grad who tapped the cultural richness of her immigrant Kenyan family in the course of creating this her first play. In fact, her mom is the “cultural consultant” to Lebogang Disele-Pitso’s production. “I can picture my aunties, my own family members, in there as characters,” Gatama says.“And myself too! Which is kind of vulnerable.”

actor/playwright Kijo Gatama, Hyena’s Trail at Nextfest. Photo supplied.

In following the trail of the hyena, Gatama’s first play, as mentored by African theatre researcher Mūkonzi Mūsyoki, explores “the source of our fears, our own sense of being selfish, our own worries about getting around the game, making our own choices in life that don’t involve our parents.” It’s coming-of-age, heightened by being in an immigrant family.

“A disobedient child of immigrants, wanting to be sexually liberated as a Black woman, feeling like you’re failing in Western academia” … these are tensions that speak to the immigrant experience and to Gatama personally, she explains, of a story of a mother and her daughters, one of whom who’s returned home from studying in Canada.

“In the souls of our parents’ dreams our lives begin,” she says, quoting her character in the play. “It’s a big cultural motif in the African immigrant experience.”

“It started as a witch hunt,” Gatama says of the seeds of the play. And her inspirations have included Caryl Churchill’s Vinegar Tom, which explores the 17th witchcraft trials through a contemporary lens, and movies like Rungano Nyoni’s I Am Not A Witch. Mūsyoki, says Gatama of her mentor, “is a veritable bible of African literature and writers…. I had a lot of work cut out for me, a lot of digging deep and being curious.”

“In the storytelling a lot of the scene locations are signifiers,” she says of community life and information-sharing. The marketplace is one; the kitchen is another. And as for the bedroom, that private place is prime for intrusion any time. “The hyena pulls it all together.”

Gatama arrived here from Montreal as “a junior high kid, with no friends.” She was lucky, though, as she says, to have African parents “who constantly affirmed my creativity.” Theatre seems to have been an inevitability.” I was the entertaining child my mom would put in a circle and I’d come up with something,” she laughs.

“My mom has seen me do the weirdest stuff,” she says cheerfully of roles that have included a Yiddish grandmother (in the musical Onions and Garlic), a little kid, the last Black vampire on earth looking for love….” And now, a year since she graduated from the U of A, a year of gathering experience in producing and community-building, she’s made her debut as a playwright. “It’s like Yay!. And Eek!” she says laughing.

Hyena’s Trail, Nextfest 2023. Photo supplied.

Hyena’s Trail has the most culturally diverse cast at Nextfest, with accents to match as the playwright describes. She herself adopts the contemporary Kenyan accent, “mixed with U.K. and regional sounds…. It has a resonance to it, on the tip of your tongue, so melodic.” As well we’ll hear accents from Jamaica, Ghana, Zimbabwe: “a cultural mosaic,” from actors playing multiple characters.

Gatama has loved the rehearsal process led by director Disele-Pitso. “She’s so driven by community; you always feel you’ve been pushed gently and held, a lovely balance…. The people of the African and Caribbean diasporas are very blunt people; we don’t mince words,” Gatama says. “But I’ve never felt so brave to be that vulnerable…. Everybody in the room had experiences that led and fostered great changes in the writing.”

Hyena’s Trail runs Wednesday at 8 p.m. and Saturday at 5 p.m. Further details and tickets: nextfest.ca.

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The year in Edmonton theatre: the Sterling Award nominations led by The Royale

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Austin Eckert in The Royale, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A vintage boxing story with a stinging right hook proved the top choices of jurors, as the the 35th annual Sterling Award nominations were announced Monday at Fringe Theatre headquarters.

The Royale, Marco Ramirez’s highly theatrical drama set in the 1905 boxing circuit, happens at the battering conjunction of ambition, celebrity and racial hatred. The Citadel production gathered nominations in nine of the 26 Sterling categories, including outstanding production and director, André Sills. As well there were juror nominations for the star performance of Austin Eckert, the supporting performances of Jameela McNeil and Mohamed Ahmed, Shakeil Rollock’s choreography, Dave Clarke’s sound design, Rachel Forbes’ costumes and Steve Lucas’s lighting.

Prison Dancer, with Julio Fuentes, Josh Capulong, Daren Dyhengco, Renell Doneza, Pierre Angelo Bayuga, Byron Flores, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

A new Canadian musical inspired by a YouTube sensation and a homegrown musical comedy satire, the one from Edmonton’s largest theatre and the other from one of its smaller companies, each received eight nominations from the Sterling jury. Prison Dancer, inspired by a 2007 video of 1,500 inmates at a maximum security Filipino prison dancing to Michael Jackson’s Thriller, premiered in an all-Filipino production at the Citadel. Its nominations include outstanding musical and ensemble (the latter a new category this year). In addition to a leading role nod to Julio Fuentes, also nominated in the choreography and fight direction category, there are Sterling nominations for Diana Del Rosario’s supporting performance, for Joyce Padua’s costumes, Romeo Candido’s score, and Kierscey Rand’s musical direction.

Abby Vandenberghe and Donovan Workun in Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer, Grindstone Theatre. Photo by Darla Woodley, Red Socks Photography

With Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer, Grindstone Theatre joins the ranks of the Sterling-nominated for the first time, a contender in both the outstanding musical production and new play categories. As well it scooped up nods for Byron Martin and Simon Abbott’s original score, the latter’s musical direction, Donovan Workun’s lead performance as the infamous former Alberta premier, and supporting performances by Malachi Wilkins as both Trudeaus (father and son), Abby Vandenberghe as Kenney’s compliant chief medical officer Deena Hinshaw, and the ensemble.

Named after a theatre visionary in these parts, Elizabeth Sterling Haynes (that’s Mrs. Haynes to you), the awards celebrate excellence on Edmonton stages during the past season. And the Sterling nominations return to the gender-neutral landscape established in 2019, as per theatre awards elsewhere (with the notable exception of the Tonys).

The other top Sterling nomination draws are Northern Light Theatre’s A Hundred Words For Snow and the Plain Janes’ production of Sweeney Todd, with seven each.

Dayna Lea Hoffmann, A Hundred Words For Snow, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

A Hundred Words For Snow drew a Sterling nomination as an ‘outstanding production of a play’ contender. And it  garnered a leading role nomination for director Trevor Schmidt and solo star Dayna Lee Hoffmann, as well as nods for Alison Yanota’s evocative floating iceberg set and her lighting, Matt Schuurman’s multi-media design, and Daniela Fernandez’s ice-cracking soundscape.

The Janes’ ingenious chamber (eight-actor/ one pianist) account of  Sweeney Todd, Sondheim’s macabre and innovative masterwork of 1979, drew seven Sterling nominations. Kate Ryan’s production joins the quintet of nominees for outstanding musical production that  hail from theatres large, mid-sized, and small: the Citadel’s Prison Dancer and Jersey Boys, Theatre Network’s collaboration with the indie Wildside Productions on Joni Mitchell’s Songs of a Prairie Girl, and Grindstone’s Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer.

Sheldon Elter as Sweeney Todd, Plain Jane Theatre Company, Photo by Mat Simpson

Sweeney Todd’s seven nominations include nods for director Ryan and musical director Shannon Hiebert, as well as both  leads — Sheldon Elter as the vengeful barber and Kristi Hansen as Mrs. Lovett — with a supporting role nod to Vance Avery as Judge Turpin. Additionally, the production garnered a nomination in the Sterlings’ new ensemble category.

Five of Shadow Theatre’s seven nominations were for the company’s production of the edgy Karen Hines satire All The Little Animals I Have Eaten: for outstanding production, Alexandra Dawkins’ direction, Dayna Lee Hoffmann’s “supporting” performance (curiously, in the lead role), Ainsley’s Hillyard’s choreography, and the ensemble work of the cast.

Two notable productions presented by Common Ground Art Society — which hosts and facilitates RISER Edmonton, a national initiative to support indie theatre in partnership with Toronto’s Why Not Theatre — gathered four Sterling nominations. Both Even Gilchrist’s Re:Construct and Carly Neis’s In My Own Little Corner are nominated in the outstanding new play category (along with Darrin Hagen’s 10 Funerals and Lianna Makuch’s Alina). And both RISER shows have nominations in the independent production category too.

Geoffrey Simon Brown and Émanuel Dubbeldam in Re:Construct, RISER 2022. Photo by Brianne Jang

In the end, the Citadel comes away with 32 Sterling nominations, overwhelmingly the most of any theatre company. Three Citadel productions — The Royale, Network, and Pride and Prejudice — are up for outstanding production, along with Northern Light’s A Hundred Words for Snow and Shadow’s All The Little Animals I Have Eaten. And Edmonton’s largest theatre has a two-production presence (Prison Dancer and Jersey Boys) as well in the outstanding musical category.

Dayna Lea Hoffman, centre, Elena Porter, Noori Gill, Coralie Cairns, Sophie May Healey in All The Little Animals I Have Eaten, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson.

Unusually, all five costume design nominations are for Citadel productions: Prison Dancer, Jersey Boys, Pride and Prejudice, The Royale, and Trouble in Mind. And of the supporting performance (in a play) nominees, four were in two Citadel productions: Jameela McNeil and Mohamed Ahmed in The Royale, Ben Elliott and Nadien Chu in Pride and Prejudice.

After that, the nomination dispersal lands on Edmonton’s array of smaller theatres: Northern Light Theatre with 10; Grindstone Theatre with eight; Leave It To Jane and Shadow Theatres with seven each. The indie production category, particularly competitive, introduces a new company, AuTash Productions, whose calling card production, Anahita’s Republic, an exploration of the struggle for women’s rights in Iran, garnered as well nominations for Roya Yazdanmehr’s leading performance and Farhad Khosravi’s score.

Nathan Cuckow and Doug Mertz in 10 Funerals, Shadow Theatre. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

Darrin Hagen is in an exclusive Sterling subset reserved for the extremely versatile. His 10 Funerals has an outstanding new play nomination. In a year when score and sound design have for the first time been deemed separate categories, he’s nominated for his Unsung: Tales From The Front Line score at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. And he’s competing against himself in sound design for that company’s Subscribe or Like and (with Morag Northey) for the Theatre Network premiere of Eugene Strickland’s The Innocence of Trees.

The Theatre for Young Audience categories are dominated by Jana O’Connor’s CTL-ALT-DEL at Concrete Theatre and Alberta Musical Theatre’s Jack and the Beanstalk. 

The Sterlings get divvied up at a June 16 gala, written by April Banigan and Sue Goberdhan and directed by Kate Ryan. Goberdhan, Azimuth Theatre’s co-artistic producer, and Rapid Fire Theatre artistic director Matt Schuurman co-host the event at Fringe Theatre, a new Sterling venue after many years at the Mayfield Dinner Theatre. And, hey, there are new Sterling statuettes, designed by Tessa Stamp.

On gala night, Coralie Cairns will be honoured with the Margaret Mooney Award in administration. Mel Geary will receive the Ross Hill award in production. And the Outstanding Contribution to Edmonton Theatre Sterling, goes, posthumously, to the late great Judy Unwin, long associated with  Walterdale, the Varscona Theatre and the Sterling Awards themselves, who was the very embodiment of public-spirited stand-up support for theatre.

Tickets: tiered pricing in effect with no-cost and pay-what-you-will options are available now at fringetheatre.ca, 780-409-1910, or in person at the Fringe box office. 

The 2022/23 Sterling Award nominations

Outstanding Production of a Play: The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Network (Citadel Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); All the Little Animals I Have Eaten (Shadow Theatre); A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre); Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre)

Timothy Ryan Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical: Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company); Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Jersey Boys (Citadel Theatre); Joni Mitchell’s Songs of a Prairie Girl (Theatre Network/Wildside Productions)

Outstanding Independent Production of a Play: Smoke (Tiny Bear Jaws);
Re:Construct (Common Ground Arts Society); Anahita’s Republic (AuTash Productions); In My Own Little Corner (Common Ground Arts Society); Boy Trouble (Amoris Projects)

Outstanding New Play (Award to Playwright): Carly Neis, In My Own Little Corner (Common Ground Arts Society); Byron Martin and Simon Abbott, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Even Gilchrist, Re:Construct (Common Ground Arts Society); Darrin Hagen, 10 Funerals (Shadow Theatre); Lianna Makuch, Alina (Pyretic Productions)

Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role – Play: Davina Stewart, Squeamish (Northern Light Theatre); Austin Eckert, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Dayna Lea Hoffmann, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre); Roya Yazdanmehr, Anahita’s Republic (AuTash Productions); Kristin Johnston, Enough (Northern Light Theatre); Maralyn Ryan, The Innocence of Trees (Theatre Network)

Outstanding Performance in a Leading Role – Musical: Julio Fuentes, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Sheldon Elter, Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company); Donovan Workun, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Farren Timoteo, Jersey Boys (Citadel Theatre); Kristi Hansen, Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company)

Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role – Play: Jameela McNeil, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Ben Elliott, Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre); Nadien Chu, Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre); Mohamed Ahmed, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Andrea House, The Wrong People Have Money (Shadow Theatre); Dayna Lea Hoffmann, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten (Shadow Theatre)

Outstanding Performance in a Supporting Role – Musical: Etta Fung, Orphée+ (Edmonton Opera); Diana Del Rosario, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Malachi Wilkins, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Abby Vandenberghe, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Vance Avery, Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company)

Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Play or Musical: Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); All the Little Animals I Have Eaten (Shadow Theatre); Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre); Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company)

Outstanding Director: André Sills, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Trevor Schmidt, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre); Alexandra Dawkins, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten (Shadow Theatre); Kate Ryan, Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre Company); Mieko Ouchi, Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre)

Outstanding Set Design: Stephanie Bahniuk, Alina (Pyretic Productions); Lorenzo Savoini, Network (Citadel Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); Beyata Hackborn, Freaky Green Eyes (Screaming Mantis in Association with Punctuate! Theatre and Fringe Theatre); Scott Reid, Clue (Citadel Theatre); Alison Yanota, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre)

Outstanding Costume Design: Joyce Padua, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Leona Brausen, Jersey Boys (Citadel Theatre); Deanna Finnman, Pride and Prejudice (Citadel Theatre); Rachel Forbes, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Sarah Uwadiae, Trouble in Mind (Citadel Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre)

Outstanding Lighting Design: Steve Lucas, The Royale (Citadel Theatre);
Narda McCarroll, Listen, Listen (Teatro Live!); Kat Evans, Freaky Green Eyes (Screaming Mantis in Association with Punctuate! Theatre and Fringe Theatre); Roy Jackson, Enough (Northern Light Theatre); Alison Yanota, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre)

Outstanding Multi-Media Design: Hugh Conacher, Network (Citadel Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre); S Katy Tucker, Orphée+ (Edmonton Opera); Matt Schuurman, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre); T. Erin Gruber with Rebecca Cypher, The Space Between Stars (produced by Small Matters Productions and presented by SkirtsAfire); Ian Jackson, Subscribe or Like (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre)

Outstanding Score of a Play or Musical: Romeo Candido, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.); Hawksley Workman, Almost a Full Moon (Citadel Theatre); Simon Abbott and Byron Martin, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Farhad Khosravi, Anahita’s Republic (AuTash Productions); Darrin Hagen, Unsung: Tales From the Front Line (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre)

Outstanding Sound Design: Aaron Macri, Alina (Pyretic Productions); Dave Clarke, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Daniela Fernandez, A Hundred Words for Snow (Northern Light Theatre); Darrin Hagen, Subscribe or Like (Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre); Darrin Hagen and Morag Northey, The Innocence of Trees (Theatre Network)

Outstanding Musical Director: Shannon Hiebert, Sweeney Todd (Plain Jane Theatre); Chloe Meyers, Stabat Mater (Edmonton Opera); Simon Abbott, Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer (Grindstone Theatre); Steven Greenfield, Jersey Boys (Citadel Theatre); Kierscey Rand, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.)

Outstanding Choreography or Fight Direction: Shakeil Rollock, The Royale (Citadel Theatre); Ainsley Hillyard, All the Little Animals I Have Eaten (Shadow Theatre); Amber Borotsik, Alina (Pyretic Productions); Morgan Yamada, Death Trap (Teatro Live!); Julio Fuentes, Prison Dancer (Citadel Theatre and Prison Dancer Inc.)

Outstanding Individual Achievement in Production: Even Gilchrist (production designer and builder); Kat Evans (production manager); Andrea Handal Rivera (stage manager); Tristan Fair (house technician); Nancy Yuen (stage manager)

Outstanding Production for Young Audiences: CTRL-ALT-DEL (Concrete Theatre); Jack and the Beanstalk (Alberta Musical Theatre Company)

Outstanding Artistic Achievement for Young Audiences: Shrina Patel, choreographer, Jack and the Beanstalk (Alberta Musical Theatre Company); David Anderson, performer, Jack and the Beanstalk (Alberta Musical Theatre Company); Corben Kushneryk, director, CTRL-ALT-DEL (Concrete Theatre); c.m. zuby, set and props design, CTRL-ALT-DEL (Concrete Theatre)

Outstanding Fringe Production: Ride the Cyclone (Uniform Theatre and Scona Alumni Theatre Co); Jesus Teaches Us Things (Dammitammy Productions); Crack in the Mirror (Guys in Disguise); Fags in Space (Low Hanging Fruits); Conjoined (Straight Edge Theatre)

Outstanding Fringe New Work (Award to Playwright): Ellie Heath, Fake n’ Bake (Oh Hello! Productions); Rebecca Merkley, Jesus Teaches Us Things (Dammitammy Productions); Jake Tkaczyk, White Guy on Stage Talking (Innocent Operations); Liam Salmon, Fags in Space (Low Hanging Fruits);
Seth Gilfillan and Stephen Allred, Conjoined (Straight Edge Theatre)

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Individual: Rebecca Merkley, Jesus Teaches Us Things (Dammitammy Productions); Zachary Parsons-Lozinski/Lilith Fair, Pansy Cabaret (Guys in Disguise); Ellie Heath, Fake n’ Bake (Oh Hello! Productions); Andrea House, Salsa Lesson (Stardust Players); Josh Travnik, Conjoined (Straight Edge Theatre)

Outstanding Fringe Performance by an Ensemble: Ride the Cyclone (Uniform Theatre and Scona Alumni Theatre Co); Walter (Pansy Haze Collective); The Erlking (Scona Alumni Theatre Co); Destination Vegas (Whizgiggling Productions); Crack in the Mirror (Guys in Disguise); Fags in Space (Low Hanging Fruits)

Outstanding Fringe Director: Linette J. Smith, Ride the Cyclone (Uniform Theatre and Scona Alumni Theatre Co); Brennan Doucet, Walter (Pansy Craze Productions); Trevor Schmidt, Crack in the Mirror (Guys in Disguise); Kristi Hansen, Fake n’ Bake (Oh Hello! Productions); Carmen Osahor and Jessy Ardern, The Big Sad (The Fox Den Collective)

The Margaret Mooney Award for Outstanding Achievement in Administration: Coralie Cairns

The Ross Hill Award for Outstanding Achievement in Production: Mel Geary

Outstanding Contribution to Theatre in Edmonton: Judy Unwin

 

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How do you change people’s minds? In She/They Nextfest playwright Madi May wants to know

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

She/They at Nextfest. Program image supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The thorny question of how you change people’s minds is at the heart of a new comedy about serious things, premiering on the Nextfest 2023 mainstage.

In She/They, a famed feminist author, cancelled and doxed, and her granddaughter, a gender studies major, find themselves together — and miles apart. “I was really trying to figure out why people think the way they do,” says playwright Madi May, “and how transphobic feminist minds might be changed.”

The inspiration, she says, was the reverb from suddenly discovering that “iconic feminist authors, writers I looked up to growing up, were  revealing themselves to be transphobic…. They have a megaphone online. And they were disagreeing fundamentally with the existence of people I care about.” J.K. Rowling, Germaine Greer, Margaret Atwood … “it was quite shocking, especially Margaret Atwood,” says May. “I felt if only I could pick up the phone and speak with her for an hour, maybe we’d get somewhere….”

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Yes “transphobic is a harsh label,” she says. “But it’s important for conversations to be exact. And I do think it’s possible for people’s minds to change.”

“Originally conceived as a TV show,” She/They is a comedy, which defies audience expectations in a way May likes. “When I’m writing a play I don’t often think it’s going to be a comedy, but it often ends up that way.” And so it went with the play Nextfest and soon Fringe audiences will see. “Moments that are very funny…. With plays in general, I’m trying to find something that’s personal and needs to be explored.”

playwright Madi May. Photo supplied.

“I wanted it to be entertaining,” says May of her comic muse. She immersed herself in feminist literature, heavy-going at the best of times (let’s face it, The Female Eunuch in audio book form isn’t on many road trip playlists). “Where are the laughs?” she says, a smile in her voice. “How do I keep the good times rollin’?”

And when you’re setting out to change people’s minds, there are serious pluses to this comedy manifesto. “Feminism and gender, which I’m very interested in exploring, are also very sensitive things to talk about. People, I think myself included, get a little nervous, a little clamped up, talking about these things…. (Comedy) allows things to breathe.”

The subject at hand is so interesting, “why not make it entertaining? So it’s two good things happening at once.” Just so you know, She/They doesn’t end badly for the characters. “I took the feminist mantra of the personal being political to heart. People’s minds do change when things become personal. I think that’s a fact of life, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing.”   

Nextfest artistic director Ellen Chorley, who’s followed the development of May’s career, was drawn to the originality of her playwriting from the start. “Even very early on, Madi had a distinct voice,” Chorley says. “Definitely someone who really understands comedy and how it works,” by no means a universal insight in theatre artists. She/They “tackles tough topics around feminism, but in a loving and interesting way!”

May has been a writer for a lot of her 21 years.  “I tried writing a novel in Grade 3, and quickly realized it was mostly dialogue”: an early tip-off that theatre would be her destination of choice.  “At 15 I started writing plays, and I’ve been doing that ever since.” And in high school theatre was a  total immersion experience: she explored technical theatre, stage managing shows, doing lighting and sound design. She did the sound design for She/They herself.

May is a veritable poster artist for Nextfest. “It was integral to me cementing a career in theatre,” May says. It was at the festival that “I realized it was something I could do, something I really loved doing…. Getting the whole thing together: I truly felt on top of the world afterward.” She/They is her seventh show at Nextfest. Her first? At 16 she wrote and directed Pas De Deux, “quite the personal piece about two girls in a dance theatre” who gradually realize they’re not attracted to dance, they’re attracted to each other. “Pretty sweet,” she says, recalling with a laugh being a bit taken aback when it was called “angsty.”

Her most recent? Last Nextfest’s Fantomina, a solo show that’s a contemporary re-telling of an 18th century Eliza Haywood proto-feminist novella about a woman who disguises herself as different women to continue sleeping with the same man.

And now, much to her delight, with She/They May has a play that Nextfest will produce at the upcoming Fringe. “I’m thrilled,” she says, “the first time a play I’ve written has gone to the Fringe.” And She/They is a rare chance to see May herself onstage. “I had so much fun writing it. When I write I speak every line… I wanted to own the show,” she says of Daisy Brazil’s production, in which she co-stars with Tessa Yakimchuk. “I really believe in it.”

She/They runs Tuesday at 7 p.m.  and Wednesday at 5 p.m. See nextfest.ca for tickets and further details.

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What is a guilty pleasure anyhow? Is it bad to like popular things? Meet the creators of (Taylor’s Version) at Nextfest

Posted on June 3, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

(Taylor’s Version), Baker Miller Pink. Photo by Samantha Ketsa.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Anyone who’s ever looked a bit furtive while ordering a pumpkin spice latte knows this: you don’t get credit for liking what’s popular or ‘girly’. Au contraire.

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Cayley Wreggit and Samantha Ketsa, the engaging Calgary-based creators and joint directors of (Taylor’s Version), premiering on the Nextfest mainstage, wondered about that. The seed from which the play grew was fan-don, and says Wreggit, the playwright of the pair.

“Both of us are really big fans of Taylor Swift…. On camping trips we bonded,” she says of a partnership forged in Swiftian listening parties. “We both found that was a real comfort during that time when everything felt uncertain to be able to fan-girl about an incredible female artist.”

As Wreggit explains, Ketsa, a dancer/choreographer, “had the idea of a piece that celebrated all things feminine…. There’s a reason things are so popular. And it’s not a bad thing to like them.” There it is, a radical manifesto of sorts.

In a gender studies course, “I’d gone down a bit of a rabbit hole,” says Ketsa. “The aesthetics of subordination, questioning the idea that things labelled ‘for girls’, things associated with the feminine, are inherently ‘lesser than’…. So, questioning that and thinking about our own mutual Swift-y bond, and the value of that,” discounted as it is in the world.

One question led to others. “What is a guilty pleasure? And why does that put shame into what has a greater purpose of catharsis, and healing, and bonding?”

As for ‘why Taylor Swift?’, the answer has something to do with that artist’s well-known advocacy for artists owning their own work and having control over their contracts, says Wreggit. The title (Taylor’s Version) is an homage to Swift’s drive to re-record her masters, as a feisty response to “her whole body of work having been sold out from under her.” Taylor designated her re-recorded songs with that parenthetical annotation, “to note which version of a song you should be listening to, which version is owned by the artist.”

Wreggit and Ketsa met at the University of Calgary, across the ever-shrinking theatre/dance frontier. The former graduated as a playwright/director, “never an actor!” she laughs. “Jokingly I say I didn’t like to be emotionally vulnerable in front of people. More seriously, it’s that I like being a creator, having more creative agency to tell stories. Writing has always been a passion.” Wreggit’s new musical Home For The Holidays (with composer Alixandra Cowman) ran at Calgary’s Lunchbox Theatre this past December. And the structural possibilities in musical theatre have intrigued both Wreggit and Ketsa.

Post-graduation Wreggit has leaned into film and TV, as a co-founder of the indie all-female film company Prairie Kitten Productions, started by U of C arts grads. “We’ve branched out separately now. But it was a great incubator for us as artists to figure out where we wanted to go….”

Playwright Cayley Wreggit and dancer/choreographer Samantha Ketsa, creators of (Taylor’s Version), Baker Miller Pink at Nextfest. Photo by Kate Boyce.

Ketsa, who grew up in Edmonton and went to Victoria, the performing arts high school, emerged from the U of C’s dance program. “By trade I’m a dancer and choreographer, desperate to do theatre and collaborate with other art forms!” Nextfest was a natural, and she has a history with the festival’s dance series, back to 2018 and Just Girly Things.

This year as part of Merge, one of Nextfest dance programs, Ketsa has choreographed (with Lizzie Rajchel) Perennial, “a stage adaptation of a short film I made a year ago.” And in Marvel, her choreography moves Visions of Lillian, with Wreggit in the three-dancer cast.

In (Taylor’s Version), Josie and Callie, both avid Swifties “go down the rabbit hole of their fan experience,” as Ketsa puts it. Abigail, the third of their trio, “gets dragged along with them, reluctantly.” And the play happens “as they’re getting ready for a Taylor Swift dance party in a bar, discussing parallels with Bob Dylan and conspiracy theories about Taylor Swift re-records, the lore of her PR and marketing….”

(Taylor’s Version), Baker Miller Pink at Nextfest. Photo by Samantha Ketsa.

“And through this there’s an undercurrent of their own personal experience and love lives, influenced by the music,” says Wreggit. “That’s what’s so magical about Taylor Swift’s music.” In that enormous canon, “you can, you will, find a song that will apply to you and your life, and will hit you very hard…. And suddenly you’re crying.”

Abigail is the skeptic, as Ketsa describes. She starts from the position that pop music is “superficial, bubblegum, no substance. What she comes to find is that Taylor Swift writes from a place of specificity … to a point that makes the themes (of her songs) universal.”

Collaborating with Ketsa, says Wreggit, “has been wonderful … to have a sounding board, to tell the stories I want to tell and exploring ways of doing that.” And in (Taylor’s Version), that exploration includes a wealth of movement possibilities. For one thing, there’s the dance party setting. For another, one of the characters “tends to go off into a sort of dream space, an imaginary space where she expresses herself and what she’s dealing with through her body and Taylor Swift’s music.”

Ketsa was inspired, she says, by the choreography of Swift’s current tour. “And she’s not a very smooth, technically trained, or even sexy, dancer…. There’s something tongue-in-cheek we played with. It pokes fun at itself.” Another choreographic inspiration was the work of Alyssa Martin of Toronto’s feminist indie dance company Rock Bottom Movement, “often very abstract, leaning into the satirical.”

Wreggit and Ketsa tried the show out in Calgary, “one night only, a year ago, on a much smaller scale.” Nextfest is an opportunity for a more fulsome premiere. “People are so excited; they want to be in something that’s really fun, and not viewed as high art. And isn’t that high art in itself?” says Wreggit.

“There are so few opportunities for indie artists to gather and cross-pollinate,” as Ketsa says. The life of an indie artist “can be so isolating.” The Nextfest experience works against that isolation. It’s an invitation “for the like-minded to gather and cheer each other on.”

(Taylor’s Version) runs at Nextfest June 6 and 8 in the Nancy Power Theatre at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre, 10708 124 St. Tickets and schedule details: nextfest.ca

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Shadow Theatre announces an all-Canadian 30th anniversary season

Posted on June 1, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Larissah Lashey, Jayce McKenzie, Abigail McDougall, Hayley Moorhouse in Robot Girls, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Shadow Theatre will launch its upcoming four-production all-Canadian 30th anniversary season with its first-ever mainstage musical. And it’s homegrown.

Crescendo!, set in a women’s community choir, is by Sandy Paddick, with original music and musical arrangements by Jennifer McMillan. Based on Paddick’s personal experience singing in choirs, it explores the choir dynamic, as Shadow artistic director John Hudson explains. “Who joins, and why? What do they get out of it? The choirmaster’s journey….” And it touches on our human need for music, the urge to sing.

Crescendo!, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied.

The piece got its first try-out in 2019 the Edmonton way, at the Fringe. Kate Ryan of Plain Jane Theatre is back to direct the premiere (Oct. 18 to Nov. 5 at the Varscona Theatre). Her cast includes Michelle Diaz, Jenny McKillop, Kirsten Piehl, and Colleen Tillotson.

The other premiere in the anniversary season is Robot Girls, a new play by Northern Light Theatre artistic director Trevor Schmidt. As both a playwright and a theatre director/producer himself, Schmidt has leaned into writing women characters. Robot Girls dives into a girl community, a quartet of junior high teenagers at Nellie McClung Charter School for Girls. They’re in a science club building a robot for an international competition, negotiating personal conflicts and the stresses of coming-of-age. “Heartfelt,” says Hudson, who directs the Shadow production that runs March 15 to 31, 2024. “Honest and beautifully crafted.” His cast includes Larissa Lashley, Abigail McDougall, Jayce McKenzie, and  Hayley Moorhouse.

Glenn Nelson, Reed McColm in The Drawer
Boys, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied.

The season includes a play that is, as Hudson puts it, “in the pantheon of great Canadian plays.” Michael Healey’s 1999 The Drawer Boy is a back story of sort. It chronicles the adventures of a young actor who’s part of a Toronto company on a foray into the Ontario heartland to research, on location, farm life for the play that would become the landmark The Farm Show.

A true Canadian classic, The Drawer Boy hasn’t been seen in these parts since a touring production arrived at the Citadel in the early 2000’s. “I’ve been hankering to do it for years,” says Hudson, who directs the Shadow revival (Jan. 18 to Feb. 4, 2023) starring Glenn Nelson, Reed McColm, and Paul-Ford Manguelle (recently seen in Grindstone’s The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee).

Michelle Todd in Tiny Beautiful Things, Shadow Theatre. Photo supplied.

Tiny Beautiful Things, the season finale (April 25 to May 12, 2024), is by the Canadian actor/playwright Nia Vardalos, whose big breakthrough in theatre and film internationally was My Big Fat Greek Wedding. At the centre of Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the Cheryl Strayed novel, is an anonymous online advice columnist Sugar, the recipient of every sort of human question, problem, crisis. Michelle Todd stars as Sugar in Hudson’s production; her castmates are Emily Howard, Michael Peng, and Yassire El Fassi El Fihri.

In other news from Shadow, Amanda Goldberg, the company’s artistic director fellow this past season, is having a big finish, with Thursday’s announcement that she will be the new artistic producer at the SkirtsAfire Festival. But first, she will direct Twelfth Night for the Freewill Shakespeare Festival this summer.

Tickets, subscriptions, schedule details: shadowtheatre.org.

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So, what’s new? Come to Nextfest 2023, and find out

Posted on May 31, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Graphic by Psi Lo.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

What’s new? What’s next? What are our up-and-coming artists thinking about anyhow?

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You’re in a position to find out for yourself since the 28th annual edition of Nextfest, the multi-disciplinary 11-day (and night) festival dreamed up at Theatre Network in 1996 is at hand.

Opening Thursday at the Roxy, Nextfest is designed to showcase and celebrate the creative ideas of the generation of emerging artists. And as festival director Ellen Chorley, a multi-faceted artist herself, has said, the answer to what’s new at Nextfest? is, by definition, “everything, every year.” The vibe is young, true. But “emerging” at Nextfest isn’t a matter of age, says Chorley. “It’s being in the first 10 years of your career…. You could be in your 80s writing your first play.”

Featured at Nextfest 2023 is the work (and the work-in-progress) of more than 500 artists as they play across the spectrum of theatre, dance, music, poetry, film, design, comedy, clowning, visual art, drag, permutations of multi-media — in 50-plus events. They meet and collaborate with each other. And they can take creative risks as Chorley explains, because “we give them a little chunk of money to work with, and we present their show.”

Nextfest takes care of the ticketing, the administration, the box office, the technical equipment and expertise, the marketing, the venue. “Their job is to make the art.” And speaking of arts administration, Nextfest has an Emerging Producers program designed to train IBPOC women, non-binary and trans people for this difficult and indispensable part of arts careers. After a six-week course, they’re paid to oversee a project at a festival in town, this year at Found Fest, the Fringe, or Nextfest.

To say that Nextfest “happens” at Theatre Network’s new Roxy doesn’t really tell the story of its full-immersion occupancy. Last year, the festivities returned to live and in-person there, their debut in the first in the beautiful new theatre — and they gloried in it. “We used it all, full to the brim, every inch of it” says Chorley. “It felt so special to be in a building that’s made to create art (in), that’s really thought out….”

There were performances in the mainstage house, the black box studio, the lobby, the bar, the rehearsal room, even on the rooftop. There was Nextfest art on the walls. And no nook or cranny was safe from Nextfest’s signature performance Nite Clubs. They’re back this year in four themed nights. “Going up in the elevator and hearing a solo,” says Chorley, who’s in perpetual brainstorming mode, which undoubtedly makes her an inspiring leader. “Going into the bathroom (admittedly deluxe) and hearing a serenade; the sound is great in there!”

Theatre happens on the mainstage, and in progress showings and “workshop readings” at Nextfest. Chorley says she got “submissions from all over the world” after the later November call. Additionally she’s a fomenter and talent scout: “I go out to talk to artists about their projects and what they’re interested in creating for the festival.”

“And this year we’re trying to move projects through multiple festivals,” she says. Nextfest experimented with the idea in 2022. Amanda Samuelson’s play Pressure happened as a staged reading at the festival, then got a full Nextfest production at the Fringe.

What Was Is All travels that cross-festival route this year. The folk-rock musical by Jacquelin Walters and Michael Watt, got a Nextfest debut last year, in the form of a 45-minute concert/song cycle, then called Host Town. Nextfest produced it as “a partial progress showing” at Theatre Network’s Another F*#@$G Festival in February.“They’ve spent the year writing the book,” says Chorley of the creators. And what is now a full-fledged piece of musical theatre, with a cast of four and a band, is moving forward as a Nextfest “Progress Show” June 11. Nextfest will produce it at the upcoming Fringe.

Similarly, Madi May’s She/They plays first on the Roxy mainstage Friday, Saturday and June 8, then at the Fringe, too in  Nextfest production. Says Chorley, “we’re trying our best to help with the progression of work.” Ah, and the progression of artists, too. “For me, that’s what’s so exciting about Nextfest,” says Chorley of following artists through different stages of their careers, “what they’re interested in talking about and investigating with their art…. You don’t just ‘emerge’ one year. Emerging takes time!” Chorley has followed May’s work since high school; last year her Fantomina was a Progress Reading.

The mainstage lineup is “a balance of folks we’ve invested in,” like May, and folks who are new to the festival,” like Bashir Mohamed whose play Black Alberta gets a mainstage Nextfest premiere Saturday, Sunday, and June 8.

This year Chorley has moved a couple of “showcases” to full three-performance presence  in the Nextfest theatre lineup. Thanks For Coming Out, by and starring Cindy Rivers and billed as a “standalogue” (not quite standup, not quite dramatic monologue), is one. A Fate Worse Than Death, created and performed by spoken word poet Nisha Patel, is another.

“It’s great for emerging artists to learn about consistency in performing more than once,” says Chorley. And it’s a chance to suss out different audience reactions.

Some “showcases” remain in the festival lineup: The iHuman Mixtape on June 8, and a free music showcase including five acts in Helen Nolan Park on 124th St. June 7.

There’s striking variety in the mainstage theatre lineup, including Alexandria Rose Fortier’s Just The Two Of Us, Kijo Gatama’s Hyena’s Trail, Cayley Wreggitt’s (Taylor’s Version), Rat Academy by the clown team of Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner. And there’s even a big-cast drag play The Mys-Queery of the Missing Wig: Deadliest Snatch. “So much fun, great choreography, fantastic costumes! And everyone in it has been doing drag for less than five years,” says Chorley.    

Ah yes, and to return to those four curated Nite Clubs…. Friday night’s Chew On This! is “here for the fear.” Saturday night’s is 2023: A Nextfest Space Popera. F! Is For Filth, the 2023 edition of Nextfest’s annual hot-ticket Smut Nite, is June 9. And Abjection (Pride Night) June 10 “focuses on queer narratives in the horror genre.”

You’ll find music, film, visual art, performance art installations (Good Grief is inspired by quarantine periods in the pandemic). And it goes without saying there are conversations to be had and connections to be made, before and after every performance. (And there’s Duchess right next door, just saying). As the Nextfest mantra goes, “come for the art stay for the party.”

Meanwhile, there’s opening night Thursday. And it’s free. As Chorley explains, there are musicians and a DJ. There’s a magician (Russel Comrie, recently arrived from South Africa). Velocity Complex, a troupe of aerial artists all under 18, will be up in the air. A documentary was shot at Nextfest 2022. And it gets its world premiere screening Thursday. In it you’ll meet Nextfest people, and hear why they love this unique festival. Says Chorley, “I might shed a tear or two.”

Nextfest 2023 runs Thursday through June 11 at Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre (10708 124th St). Ticket and complete schedule: nextfest.ca

 

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Sunday in the park with Greeks: Euripides’ Helen from Trunk Theatre, a review

Posted on May 29, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Euripides’ Helen, Trunk Theatre. Photo by Jerry Aulenbach

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Sometimes you just have to marvel at the adventurous chutzpah of Edmonton indie theatre. You just don’t expect to find yourself in a park on a sunny Sunday afternoon sitting in a lawn chair watching a Greek play happen in front of an planetarium.

That it’s an anti-war comedy by Euripides, as adapted by the Irish playwright Frank McGuinness (Someone Who’ll Watch Over Me),  is another surprise from Trunk Theatre. The premise of Euripides’ Helen is pretty wild: “There is no Helen of Troy,” says Helen, the most beautiful woman in the world. “Paris got a ghost.”

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The Trojan War started, as you may recall from school, when Paris abducted Helen, who was married to Menelaus, and spirited her off to Troy. And the Greeks felt obliged to get her back. It turns out, as per Euripides’ comedy, that Paris only got the phantom version of the world-famous knockout. The real Helen spent the war hanging out in Egypt (a bunch of barbarians and slaves, she feels) and having no fun whatsoever, getting depressed and waiting for her husband to come and rescue her. If he isn’t dead, of course.

“I’ve never set foot in Troy,” she declares feelingly. Which means that a war with a high cost in human life on both sides was fought for an illusion, a cautionary tale. And the virtuous Helen has been blamed, and vilified as a slut. “I am cursed…. I caused the Trojan War,” she says. “I gave birth both to tears and blood.”

The crisis that starts the play is that the pressure is on: the King of Egypt is hot to marry the chaste Helen and he won’t wait forever while she stalls. And lo and behold, when a shipwrecked beggar  arrives on Egyptian shores, seeking assistance, he turns out to be none other than Menelaus himself. The obstacle to a happy ending is how they will escape and get home.

Amy DeFelice directs an all-female cast, led by Linda Grass as Helen, in dazzling white. McGuinness’s adaptation infiltrates the incantatory cadences of Greek with playful modern colloquial turns of phrase. And Grass negotiates these gracefully. “The Greeks believe I did the dirty on him.” Kristin Johnston plays Menelaus with amusing macho swagger. “When a big man hits the skids … one hellhole after another hellhole,” he says of taking the long way home in his post-war career. He doesn’t get a warm reception from Egypt: “no dogs, no Greeks, fuck off foreigner.”

Rebecca Merkley is funny as the brisk but gullible Egyptian king, who struts through his world confidently, punctuating his certainties by knocking on his chest armour.

The arrival of Helen’s brothers Castor and Pollux is a surprise, orchestrated by designers Rory Turner and Even Gilchrist. And the whole production has an agile, improvised feel to it, with an ensemble that veers, with comic touches, between the ritualized and snappy asides in DeFelice’s 90-minute production .

The new and huge Coronation Leisure Centre  in construction next to the planetarium is,  director DeFelice has noted wryly, is a stand-in for the ruins of Troy. The gods, as the odd character in this play observes, screw up from time to time, but they do provide.

REVIEW

Euripides’ Helen

Theatre: Trunk Theatre

Written by: Euripides and adapted by Frank McGuinness

Directed by: Amy DeFelice

Starring: Linda Grass, Kristin Johnston, Julie Golosky, Sophie-May Healey, Rebecca Merkley, Prudence Olenik, Caley Suliak, Jacquelin Walters, Alison Wells

Where: Coronation Park, in front of the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium

Running: through June 4

Tickets: eventbrite.com

  

       

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