Author Archives: Ephemeral Pleasures

FIJI and Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy

Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy Show, by/starring Gwen Coburn, has a little bit of everything. Staged as a standup act with digressions, it includes some very funny original songs about sex and dating, and hints of the performer having PTSD after a sexual assault … with entertaining analogies to some incidents in Greek mythology. Paced like good standup, there was no unbearable lingering, just enough discomfort to land. I had quite a few belly laughs and I could hear that other audience members did too. Sugar Swing Upstairs.

Fiji A lot of the characters I’ve seen Chris Cook portray on stage are earnest, uneducated, uncouth people I end up rooting for and feeling sorry for. His character Sam in Fiji fits mostly into that category – although well-spoken and apparently thoughtful, he’s painfully eager to make a good impression on his host Nic (Vance Avery). The horrific nature of their planned encounter unfolds slowly, in a “is it really? maybe not. oh my god yes” sort of way. Jumps to a series of quiz questions were indicated by a weird loud buzzing noise – at first I thought this might be something more like changes to a different reality, but no, the weekend locked in the apartment progressed relentlessly towards … yeah. I was thinking at the end that if I saw director Lora Brovold or producers Gavin Dyer and Michelle Robb in the lobby afterwards I would say, that is one F-ed up story, but I didn’t. Lively audience with many familiar artist faces for midnight show. I gather that the script was an Edinburgh Fringe find – a few lines were changed to local references (Save-On Foods, Remedy Cafe). Gateway Theatre. Oh! Which was pleasantly cool, with the new air-conditioning system.

Not sure what I’ll see today – I start the afternoon with a shift serving drinks in one of the Fringe’s beer tents, and the show I’m stage managing, i carry your heart with me, doesn’t play until 10:30 pm. It’s raining, but I don’t think that will continue all day.

Fringe is the answer to life, the universe, and everything

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It’s the Eve of Fringe! The ordinary blocks of Old Strathcona where people usually go to the library and the farmers’ market, the restaurants and pubs, the little park where people protest and hang out … is being transformed into the site of one of Edmonton’s best and biggest festivals. Beer tents are up but not stocked. Clean white hoardings have been covered with show posters. A few roads are closed, but there are no crowds around buskers yet, or long queues for green onion cakes and mini doughnuts. Theatre people can be spotted at a higher frequency than in Ordinary Time, as they rush to rehearsals, tech times, and volunteer training sessions. Today while I was carrying posters for i carry your heart with me around to local businesses, I spotted Jamie Cavanagh and Belinda Cornish (performer and director, respectively, for the Bright Young Things production Sea Wall.

The Box Office is open, in the Arts Barns and online. Artist Services is open. And a little under 24 hours from now, the first plays will start.

I’m stage managing i carry your heart with me, Michelle Martin’s solo about her mother, a fiery, funny, French-Canadian. It’s at Sugar Swing Ballroom Upstairs (air conditioned, liquor-licensed, and a short walk from the main grounds). I’m also doing a few shifts in the Beer Tents as usual.

And I haven’t booked any tickets yet, but I’m drafting out my schedule to fit in as much exciting theatre as I can. Some of the productions on my wish list are the following.

Sad Girl Songs: A Comedy
Tiger Lady
Puck Bunnies
Scooby Doosical
Flicker
Forest of Truth
Fiji
Lady Porn
muse: an experiment in life drawing
Lesbihonest
Amor di Cosmos
Bathsheba and the Books
Sweet Jesus:
Old God
Anatomica
Rat Academy
Method Prix
Tree
Talk about Your Death
Lia and Dor
Breaking Bard
Late Night Cabaret

Or maybe I’ll add some more that people are talking about. So, talk!

And rest up, it’s a busy 11 days!

More to see on local stages this weekend and beyond

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First, you have three more chances to see Flop! before it closes Sunday evening May 28th. If you haven’t yet been to a show at Rapid Fire Theatre’s permanent home, Rapid Fire Exchange on 83rd Avenue, this is a great reason to check out the venue. Ron Pederson and Ashley Botting bring an inspired variation on the musical-theatre-improv genre which uses the framing of two performers unexpectedly being stuck without script, lyrics, set, or costumes, just a musician (Erik Mortimer), so they call for audience suggestions and build a musical on the fly. Like skilled stage magicians, they increase the entertainment value of what they’re doing by making it look hard, sometimes stepping out of character between scenes to work out what to do next. I’m accustomed to improv troupes who appear to do impossible things easily – Rapid Fire’s own Off Book: The Musical, Gordon’s Big Bald Head – and I loved the extra layer of entertainment in seeing Pederson and Botting acting being terrible at something they are actually brilliant at. I hadn’t seen Ashley Botting on stage before – except in her recent guest appearance in Die-Nasty’s current improv drama Doctors – and she is delightful. Tickets for Flop! and future Rapid Fire shows are available here.

Boy Trouble, the new two-performer version of Mac Brock’s script, has two more performances in the Studio space at the Fringe Arts Barns, this afternoon at 2 pm, and this evening (which is showing as sold out on line.) I haven’t been able to see this one yet but I loved the solo version of it which inspired this retelling, at NextFest 2019 and then again at Fringe 2019.

Prison Dancer at the Citadel closes tomorrow afternoon. The performance this afternoon (Saturday May 27 at 1:30 pm) is the last audience-masks-required performance of the Citadel season. Tickets are available here.

Several years ago I attended a staged reading at the APN Script Salon of a new play called Anahita’s Republic, about women’s lives in contemporary Iran. Even in a music-stands reading in a plain meeting room, the script grabbed my attention and shook up some of my assumptions, so I was excited to see it fully staged. The company AuTash Productions, and playwriting team Hengameh E. Rice, have had two full productions – a recent one at Toronto’s Factory Theatre directed by Brenley Charkow, and this one directed by Brian Dooley, with a completely different cast and creative team. Roya Yazdanmehr is compelling as the eponymous Anahita, a woman who runs the family business and weathy household according to her own rules. From the first scene, when she strides in after a swim, applying lotion to bare legs, and then responds to her brother/business-partner (Yassine El Fassi El Fihri as Cyrus) who is pleading for money for his children’s activities, she did not fit my assumptions about how women live in that particular regime. But their history, and its effect on them, unfolds more slowly, making it more shocking to imagine this woman as a militant 16yo beside her late mother in a crowd of protesters. The next character who enters is a woman in a chador, Omid (Jennie George), but once again, my first assumptions about her life were wrong. Michael Peng plays Omid’s father, business associate of Cyrus and Anahita. Late in the play, when they are all in a situation with no good solutions, Anahita talks about different kinds of freedom and about how nobody is really free. Their situation has a resolution, but it’s not ideal. The play made me want to see more complex stories like this, coming out of a context I don’t know well but not limited by it. Program notes and vocabulary are provided through a QR code, and a large display timeline about event’s relevant to women in Iran on the lobby wall – including both mandatory “unveiling”, with enforcement, and mandatory “veiling”, also with brutal enforcement.

Tickets to Anahita’s Republic, playing until June 4th at the Fringe Backstage, are available here.

In a complete change of mood, last night I attended the opening performance of Elyne Quan’s Listen, Listen! as part of the Teatro Live! season. I giggled so much that another audience member commented to me and my companion about it at intermission.

Farron Timoteo plays a mall bookstore worker passionate about selecting background music, Nadien Chu plays a customer who objects to the music, and Nikki Hulowski and Alex Ariate play a hilarious collection of ensemble characters in the bookstore workplace. The play is set in 1986, which means that the sound designers (director Belinda Cornish and stage manager Frances Bundy) got to use all the catchy tunes of that era, costume designer Leona Brausen, fresh from designing for 10 Funerals, with half its scenes in that era, got to evoke memories of women’s soft-tie business blouses, asymmetrical hairstyles for young people, and leather ties, and the playwright got to stick in lots of dramatic-irony jokes about how people in 1986 expected the future to go.

Like many of Stuart Lemoine’s works performed by Teatro, this play was an affectionate portrayal of quirky characters, plot-driven but with lots of scope for entertaining character business. It was a lot of fun. Tickets are here.

Other theatre events coming up – I may not make it to all of them, but I’m noting them here for you –

Helen, the Euripedes comedy about Helen of Troy directed by Amy de Felice outdoors at the Queen Elizabeth Planetarium, runs to June 4th.

CHUMP, by Sue Goberdhan, is “about growing, grieving, and being Guyanese”. It is being workshopped and will have one public performance at the Fringe Studio June 11.

Nextfest, the annual festival of and for emerging artists, runs June 1-11.

The Sterling Awards nominations will be announced at 5 pm on June 5th at the Arts Barns, and winners will be celebrated at a more affordable event than the pre-pandemic Mayfield galas, also at the Arts Barns on Monday June 26th.

Walterdale Theatre’s 2023-2024 season launch event will also be held June 5th – doors at 7 pm, event at 8 pm.

And … in August it will be Fringe! Fringe 42: The Answer. (Do you know where your towel is?)

Subscribe or Like – real people in the online world

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Set for Subscribe or Like, design Stephanie Bahniuk.

The last event in Workshop West’s season is the world premiere production of Liam Salmon’s Subscribe or Like, directed by Kate Ryan.

On entering the Gateway Theatre’s auditorium, the audience sees a simple box set presenting a room in a small basement apartment. But it’s set on an angle, and there is no drapery backing it or surrounding it. One can’t forget that this room is on a stage – and when the lights dimmed and the play was about to start, we could see each actor entering the backstage space from the lobby, before entering the apartment’s front door as the characters. This cannot be an accident (Stephanie Bahniuk, set and costume design).

The characters living in this apartment were a young couple, Rachel (Gabby Bernard) and Miles (Geoffrey Simon Brown). He’s unemployed, trying to find work commensurate with his marketing degree instead of joining her at the coffee shop where she’s a part-time barista, and he has a toothache. Their socioeconomic situation is tacitly illustrated by the fact that the dialogue never considers taking the toothache to a dentist – he treats it with a salt-water rinse and she doesn’t comment. Miles likes to make and share “prank” videos, often involving scaring or surprising his girlfriend. She doesn’t seem to enjoy this. It’s clear that both are unhappy with their lives – it’s less clear whether they are still happy with each other.

Miles continues posting his videos on a YouTube channel, and talks about reaching enough subscribers to make money with it. Rachel co-operates – they talk about whether the stunts work better when scripted or when she is truly surprised – and then she starts adding some of her own content to the channel. They start adding viewers, likes, subscribers. They seem – if not happier, then at least more engaged – and they focus more on how to attract and keep the viewers, making some more extreme choices (including one or two that I could hardly bear to watch).

Another feature of the show’s design was the extensive use of video (Ian Jackson, multimedia design) to show or evoke online content. I think there were nine large LCD screens suspended outside the room, and sometimes the content was also projected across the walls and floor of the apartment. So “the set” is clearly not just the room in their apartment, but also … the internet? The video isn’t just clips from their YouTube channel, but some of the comments.

And this is important, because the comments affect the characters. In one disturbing but credible exchange, Miles explains to Rachel that the trope of misogynistic commenting generating more interest in the channel is a common phenomenon and a good thing for the channel.

When they talk about whether stopping the posts might be a good next step for them as people and as a couple, Miles protests that the channel matters to the viewers. “But they’re not real!“, protests Rachel.

It is very odd to be writing a blog post about this play, wondering if people will read it, and wondering if reading this post will influence them to go see the play. (See it! It’s good! It’s entertaining, it’s horrifying, and it made us stand in the parking lot for ages talking about the issues raised.) While YouTube is not my medium, I know that online communities are real. This … I was going to say corner of the blogosphere, but spheres shouldn’t have corners? … isn’t particularly interactive, but I know it’s still contributing to community. And just as I notice how many people viewed my blog post or Instagram story, liked my Facebook post, or clicked Agree on my Ravelry forum comment, I know that a playwright is a content creator too. Other artistic contributors like actors and designers are also engaged in presenting the work to the audiences in the auditorium. Part of why I blog is that I want the theatre artists to know they have moved me and made me think. And the Subscribe or Like playwright and team did.

Subscribe or Like is playing at the Gateway Theatre (formerly Roxy on Gateway, formerly C103) until June 11th. Tickets are available here.

A Grand Weekend for Singing!

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A Grand Night for Singing ensemble, in evening dress. Photo Nanc Price Photography.

Continuing my festive week of attending performances, tonight I went to opening night of Foote in the Door’s production of the Rogers and Hammerstein musical celebration A Grand Night For Singing. Ten familiar musical-theatre performers, along with an orchestra of seven, presented about 35 songs from the mid-20th-century writing/composing team. The simple staging and costumes allowed the focus to remain on the singing, and the singing was great. From solos like “Love, Look Away”, sung by Brendan Smith, or “It’s Me” sung by Christina O’Dell, to playful group numbers like “Honey Bun” and beautiful group harmonies in “Some Enchanted Evening” and “Everything’s Up to Date in Kansas City”, all the singers used the music to tell stories and evoke emotions.

The songs in Grand Night For Singing, which was first performed on Broadway in 1993, come from about eleven different stage or screen musicals. Oddly, the only one I’ve seen live is Carousel – in the Foote in the Door production and as done by Opera Nuova. There is one song from The Sound of Music (as well as a few familiar riffs in the overture), which I’ve seen on television. Despite this, I recognized a lot of the songs! And even the ones I didn’t recognize were fun to listen to and watch.

The performance felt shorter than the 2-hour estimate in the program, with very smooth shifts between songs and performers (director/choreographer Katie Hayes). The Foote in the Door ensemble is made up of Jason Duiker, Kathryn Kroeker, Melanie Lafleur, Christina O’Dell, Aaron Schaan, Brendan Smith, David Son, and Kelsey Volker, along with company principals Russ Farmer and Ruth Wong-Miller.

A Grand Night for Singing has a short run, May 11-14 with 7:30 evening shows and Saturday/Sunday matinees at 2 pm, at La Cité Francophone.

The Penelopiad, one of Walterdale’s best.

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Alora Bowness (Penelope), Stephanie Swensrude (Telemachus), Monica Stewart, Karla Martinez, Sarah Spicer, and Katie Corrigan, in The Penelopiad. Photo Credit: Scott Henderson, Henderson Images

The lights come up on a simple set – a bed on a platform, white hanging panels lit to effect – and a young woman walks toward the audience. Now that I’m dead, I know everything, she says. After this intriguing statement, she goes on to explain that it’s not quite true – like everything else, it’s been simplified in the version we know.

Alora Bowness is Penelope In Walterdale Theatre’s current production of The Penelopiad. She caught my interest from these first lines, and continued throughout the performance, telling and illustrating her story with humility, determination, wry humour, and willingness to acknowledge the consequences of her choices.

But The Penelopiad, adapted by Margaret Atwood from her novella in 2007, doesn’t just examine the story of Penelope, but also of her enslaved maids. The narrative unfolds in short scenes, switching between Penelope telling the story, to ensemble members acting the story, to choral/choric recitation and dance by the maids, or sailors, or even at one point a flock of ducks. The story moves smoothly and with compelling pace, as directed by Kristen M. Finlay, from Penelope’s birth to a naiad mother (Mandy Stewart) and mercurial King Icarius of Sparta (Angela James-Findlay), through her childhood, her marriage to Odysseus (Katy Yachimec-Farries), move to Ithaca, and then what happens to her through the timeframe of Odysseus long journey to Troy and then home, as first told in Homer’s Odyssey.

I had seen the Citadel production of this play in 2013, using 13 talented young artists in that year’s Citadel/Banff Centre Professional Program. The Walterdale production is funnier than I remembered, and in the intimate Walterdale space I felt more engaged with the dangers and challenges of Penelope’s situation. I loved the costumes of the current production (Alodie Larochelle design) – all the maids wearing the same fabrics in grey and black, but in silhouettes that were different for each individual, with braided rope belts in different colours. The songs and poems of Atwood’s script were set to original music, lively or lyrical or haunting as appropriate (Gibson Finlay and Kristen Finlay, composition, Sally Hunt musical director).

Three things about the plot/theme struck me hard this time around. I’ve been thinking about them for days, and I’m planning to return this week for a second viewing, after which I will think about them some more.

The relationship between Penelope and Odysseus is shown as nuanced and mostly positive. Classic tropes/assumptions of a girl married off to an older warrior do not hold. It is refreshing to see Odysseus gentle with his new bride and wooing her with stories, and their reunion after the many years of voyaging is equally gentle and consensual. He’s still the product of that particular patriarchal society and family, though.
If one focuses on Penelope, it’s a relatively happy story – she overcomes early mortal danger, learns from many mentors and supports, manages the kingdom in Odysseus’ absence, and develops a famous ruse to protect herself from impatient suitors. But Atwood’s script and Finlay’s direction keep reminding the viewer that the story of the maids is just as important. Penelope’s monologue recounting life as an unappreciated girl-child of a royal mixed-marriage is followed immediately by a chorus of maids speaking bluntly to the audience. “We too were children. We too were born to the wrong parents. Poor parents, slave parents, peasant parents, and serf parents; parents who sold us, parents from whom we were stolen.” And the story of the maids is a tragedy. They do what Penelope asks of them – and it has terrible results for them.
Those terrible results are due to some of Penelope’s strategies and choices. She acknowledges her mistakes in monologues from her afterlife. But they are also directly due to the customs and expectations of that patriarchal culture. Odysseus acts to punish them using limited information and an offensive set of assumptions. But he gets that information from his son Telemachus, a young man by then, and from his old nursemaid Eurycleia. Both actors in the Walterdale production were compelling, Stephanie Swensrude as the spoiled boy turned resentful young man and Vivien Bosley as the nurse/governess who petted and encouraged young Odysseus and then spoiled his son, turning him against his mother Penelope. I was reminded of how important it is for any society to raise boys to be compassionate and justice-seeking, and how wrong things can go when this does not happen. Unfortunately, this continues to be a timely and critical reminder. And as we move closer to Mother’s Day, I’m thinking about how the responsibility of setting the next generation on a better path should not just be placed on mothers, but on all of us.

Alora Bowness as Penelope, Katy Yachimec-Ferries as Odysseus, Vivien Bosley as Eurycleia. Photo credit Scott Henderson, Henderson Images.

Thank you, cast and team of The Penelopiad, for making me think. The Penelopiad continues at Walterdale Theatre tonight through Saturday night, with an 8 pm curtain. Tonight, Wednesday, is pay what you can night; tomorrow, Thursday May 11, is limited capacity night, for patrons who would prefer more elbow room for better air quality. Masks are recommended but not required at all performances. Advance tickets are available here; some seats will be available at the door an hour before showtime.

A gay community and an era and two lives, through ten funerals

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Jake Tkaczyk and Josh Travnik, as Younger Jack and Young Maurice, in 10 Funerals. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

Occasionally I am watching some fictional characters on stage (or on screen, or in a novel), wondering what’s going to happen to them next. And suddenly I’m astonished to realize that these characters do not even exist outside of the scenes that I am seeing. That happened to me tonight, partway through the performance of 10 Funerals, Darrin Hagen’s new play directed by John Hudson for Shadow Theatre. I wondered about some things between the scenes, and about what was going to happen after the final scenes had played out, and I had totally forgotten that these characters were not real outside of this script – because they felt so real, so believable, so irritating and stubborn, so consistently themselves throughout the 35+ years spanned by the storyline. Which is particularly impressive, because each character is played by two actors alternating. Young Maurice is played by Josh Travnik and Older Maurice is Doug Mertz, and Jake Tkaczyk and Nathan Cuckow play younger and older Jack, respectively.

One fascinating thing about watching this production is working out which young character grows into being which older one, and learning about why. Some mannerisms continue, and some of the couple’s habits and rituals and petty arguments recur. I won’t point them out, because it’s more fun to notice them.

And at the same time we are watching this particular couple through the years of their life together and the various funerals they attend together, we’re seeing the personal effects of various aspects of gay men’s lives through the last 40 years. Not just the community funerals of the early years of the AIDS crisis, but the experiences of leaving small judgemental towns for cities with their own dangers, the various relationships with families-of-origin, the issue of not having a good word to describe what they are to each other, or the legal recognition of their relationship – and also the bars, hookups, drugs, drag queens, music, and style. Oh, the style! – costume designer Leona Brausen has done an amazing job of capturing the changing fashions in clothing, hair, and facial hair over the periods, and illustrating the differences between the characters, even in the understated situations of dressing for funerals.

Parts of this play are sad. Parts of it are horrifyingly illustrative of how the injustices of our lifetime have not all gone away, but we’ve become accustomed to them. But some of the dialogue and physicality is absolutely hilarious. 10 Funerals is playing at the Varscona Theatre until May 14th – including Pay what you can, Two for one, and Safe Sunday performances. Tickets here or at the door.

A Hundred Words for Snow is lovely

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Dayna Lea Hoffman in A Hundred Words for Snow. Photo by Epic Photography

I’m not sure what adjectives to use to describe the current Northern Light Theatre production. Because I don’t want to diminish its significance and power if I call it charming, satisfying, thoughtful, or delightful. But it is all of those things, too.

Tatty Hennessy’s script is a more realistic narrative than many of the works Northern Light brings us. Its 15yo narrator (Dayna Lea Hoffman) is Rory, a recently-bereaved 15yo Londoner, relating her experiences and observations in a tone both unique and familiar. After her father’s funeral, she notes the problem of her father’s ashes being in an urn on the kitchen table and her mother being disinclined to do anything about this immediately – so she gets the idea of taking the urn on an adventure that the father, a geography teacher and armchair explorer, had daydreamed about with her and fantasy-planned in a notebook. Of course! She will borrow her mother’s credit card and go scatter the ashes at the North Pole – this makes complete sense to her.

As you should expect from a Northern Light show, brilliantly-executed design elements enhance the narrative. Alison Yanota is credited as production designer, taking care of set, costume, and lighting. Matt Schuurman designed projections on the floor, and Daniela Fernandez was sound designer. Trevor Schmidt directed. The performance is done in the round – I picked a side randomly and did not feel like there was any advantage to being on any side.

The script said some things about grief and about growing up that I am still thinking about. In particular, the concept of trying on grief responses to find what felt appropriate. I also really appreciated that the writer didn’t punish the teenage girl for not thinking things through and for trusting the people she met. As I think I’ve mentioned before in this blog, I’m tired of stories where teenage girls (and, by extension, the audience) are “taught a lesson” by having their risk-taking and initiative result in disasters, whether physical, social, sexual, or legal. Rory’s quest didn’t work the way she’d thought it should – but it still worked out.

Northern Light Theatre requires its patrons to wear masks in the Fringe Studio Theatre – and in the performances I’ve attended this season I’ve seen 100% compliance with this. The play runs until Saturday May 6th, and tickets are available here. I recommend it highly.

Calendar full of performance, again

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Before the pandemic started, I would often have so many theatre events on my wishlist that I’d have to iterate with my calendar to fit in everything I wanted to see. Like keeping the Fringe energy year-round.

Three years into a more careful and frugal era, I’m looking at a calendar again and thinking about everything I want to see in the next three weeks. I’d love to fit in everything — but this time, I probably won’t. Still, though, it’s worth sharing the exciting list with you, because maybe you’ll want to see the same things. Or different things. Or at least read about plays that you won’t be able to see.

A Hundred Words for Snow – this afternoon I’m going to the matinee of this Northern Light Theatre production. Trevor Schmidt directed and designed this solo to be performed by Dana Lea Hoffman (recently the principal performer in Shadow Theatre’s production of Karen Hines’ All the Little Animals I Have Eaten.) It was written by Tatty Hennessy of the UK. As usual for a Northern Light show, the teaser glimpses of design elements and character on line are intriguing. Tickets here. Masks are required at all performances.

10 Funerals – Shadow Theatre had programmed this new Darrin Hagen play before the pandemic started, and it’s finally going to meet audiences later this week. It’s the story of a gay couple who meet in the 1980s, told through the funerals they attend together through the years, so it documents the milestones in a relationship and in gay culture. I get the impression it’s going to be funny and poignant. Opens Thursday April 27th. Tickets here. Shadow Theatre has adopted Safe Sundays – the matinee performances are limited to 60% house capacity, masks are required, and vaccination is recommended.

The Penelopiad – Walterdale Theatre is tackling this Margaret Atwood play, adaptation of her novel, feminist adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey from the point of view of Penelope, the wife who stays home. An ensemble of 14 performers portrays Penelope and a chorus of her maids, but also portrays all the other characters in her story – her family and household, her suitors, her son, her husband … In this production directed by Kristen M. Finlay, there is original music, and a set design by Joan Hawkins. Opens Wednesday May 3rd. Tickets here. The second Thursday of the run, May 11th, is reduced-capacity night – with about 65% of the seats for sale, this should allow elbow room comfort and improved air quality for audience members.

A Grand Night for Singing – Foote in the Door‘s season wraps up with a short run of this Rodgers and Hammerstein 2014 musical revue. Opens Thursday May 11th at Théâtre at La Cité Francophone. Tickets here.

Die-Nasty – this very-long-form improvised soap-opera is continuing last year’s custom of breaking their season into three shorter shows. I saw the first night of the current one, Doctors, and was intrigued by the possibilities of stories in a hospital struggling with budget cuts (re-washing surgical sponges?) and incompetence (leaving the sponges in the patients?) and an administrator (Stephanie Wolfe) planning to take the hospital private. The story runs every Monday night until May 29th at Varscona Theatre. Tickets here.

First Métis Man of Odesa, Prison Dancer, Collider Festival – the Citadel Theatre season wraps up witth a focus on new works celebrating various cultures. Collider is a new-works festival with some workshops and discussions and staged readings. Citadel tickets are here. Collider information is here. Each Citadel production this season has one masks-required performance.

25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee – Grindstone Theatre’s production of this popular musical is running until at Faculté St-Jean. Tickets here.

Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes – Theatre Network opens this Hannah Moskovich play April 25th, with Gianna Vacirca and John Ullyatt. Tickets here.

So, what are you going to watch?

Sneak peeks at new work

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For most art, audiences don’t get to experience it until it’s “done”. Painters and sculptors don’t usually Instagram their rough sketches or let people wander around their studios. Composers don’t usually play and sing bits of their new works for lucky fans. Sometimes at a fan convention an author might read a chapter of a new book, or there might be a screening of a film trailer, but probably not an unedited reel. But theatre depends on how the text sounds when a group of actors is speaking it, and live theatre also depends on audiences responding to the text. So it’s common in play development to have a reading – maybe a private workshop with actors hired to sit around a table and read from a new script, and then maybe a reading on stage for an audience. No set and costume, no actions, no music and lights – just the voices of the characters, bringing a story to life.

The next chance to hear readings of new scripts in Edmonton is Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre’s Springboards Festival, which runs March 22-26th at the Gateway Theatre (you might remember it as the Roxy on Gateway or C103 or the hottest Fringe venue around…). Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre (as the name suggests) has a mandate of supporting new play development. The schedule of plays for this festival sounds exciting! Not only is there new work by established playwrights Conni Massing (The Aberhart Summer, The Invention of Love) and Stephen Massicotte (Mary’s Wedding), and award winner James Odin Wade, on Wednesday Mar 22 there are five ten-minute scripts selected from the EdmonTEN play competition, and on Sunday Mar 26th there’s a Cabaret-style sampling of work from eleven more writers, from emerging to acclaimed. Heather Inglis and Darrin Hagen are curators and dramaturges for the festival

Jake Tkaczyk, actor, performance creator, and graduate student, will be one of the performers for James Odin Wade’s new work Everyone Is Doing Fine on Thursday Mar 23rd. Jake’s experience with play readings includes working on Bright Burning, (later titled I Hope My Heart Burns First) which Colleen Murphy wrote for his graduating class, and participating in public reading events including Script Salon and Skirts Afire. I asked Jake a few questions about readings and new play development.

“As an actor, how do you benefit from participating in a private workshop reading?”

“If I know I’ll be doing a public performance, I love getting the chance to work on the script, ask the playwright to clarify their motivations, and spend more time than a normal rehearsal process. We get more chances to try things out. ”

“Why do you do staged readings for the public?”

“Play readings are a chance for the writer to really have their work understood. As an actor, I am there to service the playwright. A public reading gives the writer a chance to hear what’s landing, what does the audience find comedic or not find comedic – are there moments when the room goes still. The writer gets to hear it read and hear it heard. And without all the design elements contributing to the experience, the audience is just paying attention to the words. Does the text work in that order? Is the plot making sense? Is there anything that needs to be explained more … or less?”

As an emerging playwright myself, I’ve had the chance to experience what he describes. Earlier this month my short script Book Club 2021 was read as part of Walterdale Theatre’s From Cradle to Stage festival, along with twelve other new plays. Hearing actors read my script, and being surrounded by audience members responding to those actors, made me so grateful that theatre is a collaborative art. We need each other to share stories. _______________________________________________________________________________________

Springboards Festival runs Mar 22-26 at Gateway Theatre with performances at 7:30 every evening. Tickets for each evening are $15 in advance and pay-what-you-wish at the door.