Tag Archives: trevor schmidt

Four Plays

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Abby Krushel and Shyanne Duquette as the two Hannah Morgans in Fetch. Photo provided.

It was odd to get several days into Fringe and realize that I hadn’t yet spent time viewing traditional multiple-actor plays, except for Matt & Ben. I missed them, while still enjoying performance art, improv, and solo shows. But now I’ve seen a few more dramas and comedies.

Fetch, by Cat Walsh, was originally a 2018 Fringe production with the playwright and Lora Brovold on stage. I didn’t see that one, The 2026 production, directed by Steven Sobolewski, stars Shyanne Duquette and Abby Krushel. The two actors burst onto the small stage of Acacia Hall in near-identical dresses, carrying identical suitcases, speaking over each other and with each other to each insist “I am Hannah Morgan.” And each begins to narrate the story of her life – one tragic, one less so – but with suspiciously similar details. Each recounts the events of a big family vacation to an amusement park – as the youngest of a big family, six-year-old Hannah resents the vacations she missed out on being born last, and the way that siblings moving out to university and on to extracurricular activities and jobs signify the end of the family-adventures era. Krushel’s Hannah recounts her grievances with the age appropriate self-centredness of a loved youngest child, while Duquette’s character drops hints of bitterness and bereavement. Were there two families in the same reality whose lives had intersected that week? Were these two Hannahs embodying different multiverses, different outcomes? The Hannahs allude to the Schrodinger’s cat paradox – a cat in a box might be either alive or dead, until the box is opened. The weirdness ratcheted up along with the excruciating tension, as horror approached. I was reminded of Walsh’s 2015 Sterling-Award-nominated script The Laws of Thermodynamics . One of my favourite bits was when Duquette’s character is reminding the audience of the required ritual of speaking to a grieving person, the I’m sorry and Thank you shifting into taking the exchange as a given. It’s very well done.

Seanchaí, by young local playwright Gavin Bradley, isn’t marked in the program as New Work – I guess because it had a successful entry at StageStruck! and the provincial one-acts festival last year. But this is its first longer run, and it’s being well received by Varscona Theatre audiences. Susan Sneath, an Edmonton Fringe artist since the festival’s first summer, plays a retired seanchaí (storyteller and oral historian in the Irish tradition), and Mark Guerrero a young person who’s been retelling the traditional stories for TikTok. The grudging respect and growing affection between the two unfold as they tell the stories to each other, correcting and challenging. Its poignant and relatable and also affectionately funny. Knowing bits of Irish language means getting to laugh at a few lines first, but definitely isn’t required to follow the story. Knowing the folklore (Cú Chulainn, Children of Lir, Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Salmon of Knowledge) is also not necessary, as both storytellers provide compelling versions. Amanda Goldberg (recent Sterling Award winner for directing Jessy Ardern’s Cyrano) directed, bringing an understated delicacy and allowing the characters to show their quirks without being stereotypes.

Another small story of a gentle interaction between two isolated characters is Being Norwegian, David Greig’s script directed by Amy De Felice at the Holy Trinity Anglican basement space. The 45-minute play is set in Sean’s (Cody Porter) barely-unpacked apartment, late at night, as he brings home new acquaintance Lisa (Clarice Eckford). Both characters have Scottish accents, but Lisa explains that her name is short for Liselotte and she’s Norwegian. And they’re both awkward. Likeably awkward. The audience is sighing in sympathy as Sean tries to find a bottle of wine and can’t find glasses. His visitor assures him that mugs are better anyway, takes a sip, and manages to communicate to the audience that the wine is terrible without letting Sean see that. Porter and Eckford are both very good at this kind of nuanced portrayal of ordinary people – I’m remembering Eckford as caregiver daughter in The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble and Porter in Angry Alan, Betrayal, and others.

Queens of Romance, by Trevor Schmidt, is sillier than any of the above, and an audience favourite. Three romance writers are on a panel at a convention – the usual moderator is unavailable due to some whispered family scandal, so fan Missy (Schmidt) gamely takes the podium and the clutch of cue cards and tries to carry on. The panelists embody the range of romance-writing styles. Jason Hardwick portrays the Barbara Cartland-type Dame Nausea with smugness and pathos and dignity (but not all at once!) wearing the most over-jewelled caftan I’ve ever seen. Michelle Todd’s Janet writes about contemporary celebrity infidelities with luxurious descriptions – there are probably throbbing members in her stories. And the youngest of the writers, Karen (pronounced Karin), (Jake Tkaczyk), writes erotic suspense, with unapologetic kink and brutal imagery. Each of the writers is critical of the others’ choices, naming some of the problematic issues with women’s agency, racism, classism, transactional sex, and women feeling shame about their desires – all while conducting snappy repartee with each other and the ill-equipped moderator (and possibly with audience members). While I was admiring the pre-set before the show started, I was amused to see Schmidt’s anxious moderator character peeking out from the side curtains looking worried.

Trevor Schmidt, as Missy the moderator, peers out at audience before the show starts.

Request Programme – unique performances of nightly repetition

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Vanessa Sabourin in Request Programme, Northern Light Theatre.

Request Programme, originally written in German in the 1970s by Franz Xaver Kroetz and translated by Katharena Hehn, takes its title from a radio show, the kind of show where a host responds to song requests sent in by audience members by playing the songs, but also by responding in compassionate, almost-intimate ways to the glimpses of regret, sadness, hope, loneliness, and humour she gets in the letters and texts. It felt very familiar, like shows I’ve heard on CBC radio, or European selections played overnight on NPR on long drives, or Join the Conversation on Now! radio. It’s a structure that supports a different show every night.

I think that Request Programme, the current Northern Light Theatre production directed by Trevor Schmidt, must have a similar blend of an underpinning routine with specifics that vary each night, making it worth watching more than once during the run. I’ve only seen it once so far – I saw it on opening night, with Vanessa Sabourin as the sole performer on stage. Each performance has a different on-stage performer, all local female actors who have worked on previous Northern Light Theatre productions. The voice of the radio host is also significant to the story but isn’t explicitly identified in the credits – I’m pretty sure the voice I heard, warm and grounded, was Nadien Chu. And the playlist of artists in the radio programme is ten Edmonton singer/songwriters, all women, each with one recent original song.

The character on stage does not speak at all. But as in many effective movement-based performances, I could tell enough about what was going on and why that I was engaged in the character’s journey, and cared about their outcome. I’ve had similar experiences with wordless or near-wordless clown and physical theatre (such as 7 Ways to Die: A Love Story, by Keltie Brown Forsyth and Alex Forsyth, or Lost ‘n’ Lost Department, by Elaine Weryshko, Jed Tomlinson, and Kristin Eveleigh, with dance (Black Hair, Blue Eyes, a piece at Expanse Festival 2014 with Ainsley Hillyard, Mat Simpson, and Liam Cody, many of the Ballet Edmonton works, or Betroffenheit (Jonathon Young, Crystal Pite), and with theatre (Small Mouth Sounds, the Jim Guedo-directed play about people at a silent yoga retreat).

A woman comes home late in the evening to a small tidy apartment in a city. The apartment reminded me of one of the self-contained apartment setups in the IKEA store – set design by Schmidt – full enough that it felt like she actually lived there, but without much that was revealing or personal. Not enough kitchen for someone who enjoys cooking or eating, no photos except for possibly one on the kitchen table that we couldn’t see, the small clothes-rack of someone who has recently started over. I thought she was probably coming home from work, because she was wearing dress shoes and clothes more formal than the ones she changes into, but her totebag also contained a few basic groceries. As she passes the evening, I had the sense that she was struggling to settle to anything – whether eating the sandwich she makes, finding something to watch on TV, making tea, reading a book, or doing a jigsaw puzzle. She didn’t seem to have any inclination to human contact either – no letters in the mail, no landline or cell phone, no computer, no waving out the window. She was going through the motions.

But she turns on the radio just in time for the nightly Request Programme, and listens to the whole thing. I could see that some of the host’s commentary and request letters landed with her, and some of the song lyrics too. In “In a While” Cayley Thomas sang of losing a brother before his 25th birthday. Lindsay Walker’s “I Won’t Give Up” is an fiercely inspiring anthem to carrying on, and Alex Dawkins’ “Pretty Girls” evoked passion and regret. A couple of times I wondered if the listener whose note the host was responding to might have been Sabourin’s character – but I thought probably she wasn’t sufficiently engaged with even that version of community. The people who were writing to the radio programme wanted someone to hear their pain, their loss, their fears – and I don’t think the woman on stage saw any point in that.

I didn’t know the details of why Sabourin’s character was so alone, so restless, so numb. But I worried about her, to the point of barely breathing near the end of the show. I grasped at hints of the character planning for the next day such as putting the leftovers in the fridge and rinsing out her knee-high stockings, but maybe those were autopilot actions. The ending did not feel inevitable but it was not a shock and was not overdrawn. I want to see another actor’s version. I don’t know how detailed the play script is – how much of a movement score or blocking is provided – but I understand that each performer had limited preparation time and possibly did not get to hear the radio show music and narration beforehand. Request Programme is fascinating and disturbing, an evocation of the spectrum between alone and lonely, between self-disciplined routine and dissociation, between surviving and … not.

Request Programme continues at the Fringe Arts Barns Studio until May 16th. Tickets are here.

“it’s not practice, it’s REHEARSAL”

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There’s a new Trevor Schmidt play, How Patty & Joanne Won High Gold at the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition. It’s opening simultaneously at Northern Light Theatre in Edmonton, directed by Schmidt, and at Lunchbox Theatre in Calgary, directed by Bronwyn Steinberg.

I saw the Northern Light production. And it left me a little teary, in a contented, some-things-right-in-the-world way.

Jenny McKillop and Kendra Connor play Patty and Joanne, two students in an Adult Beginner Tap class at the Free Body Dance Station. You will probably recognize both performers from amusing shows with Teatro Live! or Fringe or other local companies, but they’re both new to Northern Light. And they have really great chemistry together – both characters mean well, but they start off awkward, not understanding each other and not comfortable together.

As the play starts, they’ve just gotten the message that their dance teacher, Miss Amber, won’t be back to keep teaching them. And the class, which started out full, has dwindled until – are they the only ones who still want to dance? they aren’t sure. Joanne and Patty take turns narrating the story to the audience and interacting with each other in the studio. Rae McCallum’s lighting design makes it clear to us when there’s a shift. The simple set design (Schmidt) makes clever use of the dance mirrors usually hidden behind curtains in the Fringe Studio Theatre.

Both women are middle-aged and have comfortable-enough secure lives, but we see that each of them is lonely and left out, wanting something more, something just for herself. Patty describes coming home from class to see her husband (Peter) and five children (Parker, Patrick, Petra, Poppy, and Emma) decorating cookies together in the kitchen, and they all run to greet her as she drops her dance bag by the kitchen door – and then immediately disperse to other parts of the house leaving her to do all the dishes. I found that bit one of the most poignant things Schmidt has ever written. And the measurement-for-costumes business was hilarious and relatable.

Joanne talks about how she came to love music and dance and especially musical theatre and movie musicals, with memories of being taken on a special movie outing with her parents, wearing a dark red velvet dress with white lace just like her mother’s. “She was beautiful. And on that day, I was a little bit beautiful.” Throughout the play, Joanne bombards Patty with musical theatre history facts and cultural tidbits. She corrects Patty, a sports parent, saying that for dance “it’s not practice, it’s rehearsal”. Their rehearsal outfits are consistent with their different backgrounds/expectations (costumes by Logan Stefura). Joanne is wearing a ballet-pink leotard and tights under a wrap skirt and cut-off CATS t-shirt, while Patty’s outfit includes cutoff grey sweatpants and a football jersey.

In the first scene they rehearse the tap routine that Miss Amber had been teaching them, to “All the Single Ladies”. (Apparently the women in the class would have been dressed as reindeer, with the man as Santa.) The moves are familiar to anyone who’s watched beginner tap classes. They aren’t very good. They keep running that routine periodically as the story progresses, and they get more in sync. Then they change to a piece better suited to entering “musical theatre duet” instead of the “adult group tap” competition class – Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas is You”. Their performance gradually improves, and their homemade costumes are both credible and fairytale-delightful. Jason Hardwick’s choreography works well to make the easy moves look hard and then have the dancers gradually master them. The soundscape (Lindsay Walker) evokes tap-dance performances and pop-music fun, right from the pre-show selections.

Like many of Trevor Schmidt’s scripts, I started out amused and then became engaged with the likeable but very distinct characters and their situation, realizing afterwards in conversation with my theatregoing companions that there were also some profound messages in the narrative. About the difficulty and awkwardness and necessity of making new friends in mid-life. About wanting “something just for me.” About how anything worth doing is worth doing badly. All of which are good reminders, especially before Christmas.

Running time is about an hour, with no intermission – which is just right for this quiet delightful two-hander.

Tickets to How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold at the Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition are available here. Performances run until Saturday December 13th. If you’re in Calgary, or if you loved this script so much that you want to road trip, the Lunchbox Theatre production runs at the Vertigo Theatre in Calgary until December 18th.

Northern Light’s The Pink Unicorn: hopeful and loving

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Patricia Zentilli as Trisha Lee in The Pink Unicorn. Images Brianne Jang BB Photographic. Set and costume Trevor Schmidt, lighting Larissa Poho.

The first production in Northern Light Theatre’s 50th-anniversary season is The Pink Unicorn, by Elise Forier Edie, directed and designed by Trevor Schmidt. I meant to tell you about it last week, but for some reason my blog host wasn’t letting me post pictures. So I waited, since I love the promo photos of Trisha telling her story.

And it’s so good! Patricia Zentilli plays small-town Texas mom Trisha Lee. Trisha’s been raising her only child Jolene alone since her husband Earl died when Jolene was six. Various details show that she’s always been proud of her daughter and supported her in being her unique creative self. So when Jolene tells her mom that she’s going to start high school as an agender and pansexual person, named Jo, Trisha responds as well as she can manage – helping to shop for a leather jacket, and looking up the unfamiliar terms on the internet at work. She worries a bit about whether the other kids will mistreat Jo, but reassures herself and the audience that Jo looks “real cute” in her buzzed hair and black boots. By this point I realize that it’s not just me – that the whole audience is clearly on Trisha’s side here. We might feel superior from our 2025 perspective, already knowing the vocabulary – but Trisha Lee is so easy to relate to, a loving parent trying to support and protect her kid, who’s living a life Trisha doesn’t understand.

You might remember that Northern Light produced this solo play in 2015, with Louise Lambert performing, and with Trevor Schmidt directing and designing. I think the current production brings us a more nuanced portrayal of Trisha. I was struck by her bravery, in the way she did uncomfortable things because she needed to – from her history of getting a job and carrying on as a single parent after her husband died, to her steps into activism on Jo’s behalf.

Trisha also tells the audience parts of the story that don’t reflect well on her, acknowledging that some of the thoughts are things you aren’t supposed to say. But the comments she makes without apologizing help to remind the audience that she’s still part of that particular culture, where “Latino, Hispanic, and Chicano” are all still used, and in the inner monologue we’re privy to, she always refers to Jo as “she”, not as Jo’s requested pronoun of “they”. That particular point reminded me that maybe I’m making judgements based on superficialities too. Trisha is doing so much to support her daughter and the rest of the unofficial GSA, why do I even notice the pronouns detail?

Patricia Zentilli as Trisha Lee in The Pink Unicorn. Images Brianne Jang BB Photographic. Set and costume Trevor Schmidt, lighting Larissa Poho.

The set design (Schmidt) creates the sense of a feminine living-room – even a jug of pink lemonade on the coffee table – in front of a fascinating background with dainty pink wallpaper torn open to reveal a sculptured rural landscape. Lighting (Larissa Poho) and sound (Darrin Hagen) enhance the shifts in storytelling tone and location, through a church service, a downmarket bar, and a protest in the rain. Trisha’s outfit includes boots and a silver-medallions belt over a pink patterned dress and large hair, but it feels contextual rather than caricaturistic (I’m doing a rewatch of the small-town-Texas TV show Friday Night Lights, and she’d fit in there if she wanted to).

Also – parts of it are hilarious! Zentilli is great at delivering funny lines that the character doesn’t see as funny, or doesn’t stop to enjoy. This is no surprise to anyone who’s seen her in various big-stage musicals at the Citadel or the Mayfield,

The Pink Unicorn is both provocative and hopeful. In the author interview in the show program, Forier Edie says that if she were writing it today, she might write a “scarier” version. But I loved the reminder that people’s minds can be changed, one at a time, by really listening to the people they care about. And I appreciated the call-to-action at the end, where Trisha points out to us that doing the hard thing isn’t just for people who are already good at it. I know there are lots of Jos around here, and lots of Elijah Breakenridges. And I know that not all of them have a Trisha in their corner. But Trisha’s story shows that you don’t have to be an experienced advocate to start doing the right thing for someone you care about – just do it.

The Pink Unicorn is playing at the ATB Arts Barns Studio Theatre until October 11th. Tickets are here.

The 50th season of Northern Light!

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Northern Light Theatre announces their 50th-anniversary season!

Next year will be the 50th season of Northern Light Theatre, an independent company whose mandate includes bringing challenging, thought-provoking, unfamiliar, and entertaining work to Edmonton audiences, with particular attention to stories of women. Artistic Director Trevor Schmidt has a particular gift for play selection, so that a Northern Light season typically includes at least one playwright I’d never heard of, but whose work captivates me and might be relatable or disturbing or both. Schmidt is also a playwright himself, with ventures into the poignant, the macabre, and the screamingly funny.

Last year’s NLT season was themed “Making a Monster”. Schmidt’s own Monstress started the season with a disturbing gothic Frankenstein-esque tale that left me thinking I wasn’t sure who the monster was. Angry Alan, by Penelope Skinner, starred Cody Porter as an ordinary guy who gets sucked in by “men’s-rights” rhetoric, with horrible consequences. And Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin showed a different kind of monstrousness, but was hilarious at the same time. It was one of the most thematically-effective seasons I’ve ever seen.

This coming year is called “The F Word”, as a play on the age of fifty being unspeakable. And the three plays each have some call-back to aspects of Northern Light’s history. The first one is a remount of the award winning The Pink Unicorn, by Elise Forier Edie, which was an award-winner in the 2014-2015 season. Trevor Schmidt told me that this production will use an updated version of the script, which is shorter and more cohesive. Patricia Zentilli will play Trisha, and Schmidt promises an all-new design, with a twinkle in his eye. If you’re not familiar with The Pink Unicorn, it’s the solo narrative of Trisha, a small-town Texas woman whose daughter begins to identify as agender, genderqueer and pansexual. Trisha loves her daughter, but struggles with her community’s intolerance, in a fight she didn’t choose. In 2015, I thought it was topical and ahead of its time — in 2025, I imagine I will find it even more topical, and definitely not dated!

Before Christmas is another Trevor Schmidt original, How Patty and Joanne Won High Gold At The Grand Christmas Cup Winter Dance Competition. The excerpts read at the season-launch included Jenny McKillop as a frazzled mum looking for an activity of her own, and Leona Brausen reading as another middle-aged-tap-dancer character. It seems like it will be very funny, but also an effective reminder of community and of loneliness.

The exploration of loneliness will come to the fore in the last play of the season, Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Request Programme. Instead of presenting an excerpt from this play, the teaser given at the season-launch was a performance by singer-songwriter-guitarist Cayley Thomas (a U of A BFA Acting grad), a wistful and moving song about missing her late brother. Schmidt explained that for each performance of this play, one actor from NLT’s long roster of talented female-presenting performers will perform a character’s solitary life routine without dialogue, while a soundtrack of a radio “request programme” plays in the background. The music on the request programmme will all be from local female artists, including Cayley Thomas. Some of the actors have already been identified – Linda Grass, Holly Turner, Nadien Chu, Michelle Todd, Pat Darbasie, Sylvia Wong, Davina Stewart, Kristin Johnston, Cheryl Jameson, Melissa Thingelstad – and with a few more still to be confirmed.

Early in 2026, the NLT Board will also be hosting some kind of gala 50th-anniversary celebration, details to follow. But the F-Word season seems commemorative and celebratory enough in itself. VIP season subscriptions are currently available here at an early-bird price until July 2nd.

Radiant Vermin, hilarious and uncomfortable

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Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk as Jill and Ollie, and Holly Turner as Miss Dee, in Radiant Vermin. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Northern Light Theatre’s theme for their 2024-2025 season was Making a Monster. The first two plays were Trevor Schmidt’s Monstress (a gothic horror in which a Frankenstein-like scientist attempts to reanimate a dead girl but gradually appears to be more monstrous herself) and Penelope Skinner’s Angry Alan, a disturbingly-realistic portrayal of a lonely man drawn into the “men’s rights” misogynistic culture with horrifying consequences.

I was apprehensive but intrigued, to find out how the third play in the season, Philip Ridley’s Radiant Vermin, would fit into this theme. I had some guesses, but they were all wrong. And I loved being surprised. What surprised me most was that it was funny. Very funny.

An exceedingly wholesome-looking young couple, Jill and Ollie (Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk), address the audience with their baby, to explain about how they got their dream home and what happened there. When Jill was pregnant, they were living in a dingy flat in a crime-ridden neighbourhood, dreaming of better things for themselves and their little one. Until they get a mysterious letter and an even more mysterious visitor, Miss Dee (Holly Turner), who tells them they’ve been selected by a government department to get a free house. It’s a fixer-upper, but by renovating it they’ll start turning things around for the whole neighbourhood, and everyone will benefit. They see the house and ask about details, and a mythologically-long contract tumbles out of Miss Dee’s handbag. Everything about this screams BAD IDEA to me, from the twinkle in Miss Dee’s eye to the long golden scroll of clauses on the contract, but as soon as they sign, movers are dispatched to their old home and they move in, even before the electricity or hot water are working.

Ollie starts out confident that he can DIY the necessary renovations, but heavily-pregnant Jill is impatient. They’re both unsettled by living in an un-gentrified area. If they can see campfires of homeless people from their bare windows, can the homeless people see their vulnerable candles? Jill explains to us that she has experience of helping her mother provide charity to homeless people – that she and Ollie are good people. But they are still fearful of being targets in their good fortune. Her othering language is a little disturbing, but very familiar. But when an accident happens to a vagrant on their property, they benefit in an unexpected way. And they begin to justify it – their gain helps the neighbourhood, and nobody who mattered was hurt. By this time the characters are fully drawn – Jill’s earnestness and obliviousness, Ollie’s awkwardness and willingness to please his wife – and I felt almost complicit as they wonder about what else they could benefit from. The script builds this complicity in some direct address to the audience on benign topics, such as inviting input on whether to renovate the bathroom or the garage first.

Rain Matkin and Eli Yaschuk as Jill and Ollie, reading the letter offering them a house. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

Jill and Ollie’s house gradually gets renovated, according to the wish-list that Jill collects from magazines and catalogues. Upwardly-mobile neighbours gradually move in to the cul-de-sac, and we hear that ground’s been broken for the Never-Enough shopping mall nearby. Once all the houses are occupied, Jill and Ollie throw a garden party to mark their little son’s first birthday, with all the neighbours in attendance – and their facade of contentment and competence begins to fray, in a hilarious recounting.

I was thinking, this can’t end well. But I didn’t predict how!

The empty set (Schmidt) has a nearly-flat backdrop of a white-on-white house outline, with some harshly-shadowing sidelights. Its cleverness isn’t apparent until the show lighting (Larissa Poho) and projections (Matt Schuurman) begin to enhance it. I was fascinated about how the simple “porch” framing was used, along with shifts in light and soundscape (Chris Scott), to represent stepping from an upstairs bedroom into a staircase leading to potential danger.

The script of Radiant Vermin does have some important messages/themes, about envy and about buying in to materialistic wanting-more and about dehumanizing the have-nots, but the messages land with bouffon-esque discomfort at our own complicity. Schmidt’s production is perfectly cast. Holly Turner, most memorable as the eponymous Mary in The Testament of Mary, is hypnotically fascinating here, as the character Miss Dee needs to be, and Matkin and Yaschuk are well-matched, allowing some outrageous events to be natural character choices.

This was one of Northern Light Theatre’s most successful thematic season groupings in my memory, partly because the plays were so different. Each illuminated some facet of the question of how ordinary humans can do evil things. Each left me uncomfortable and wanting to discuss my experience with others. And each made me grateful for the community of theatregoers with whom I can share, both the roomful of audience members laughing and sighing and gasping in the moment, and the ongoing conversations like this.

Before today’s matinee, Trevor Schmidt is hosting a Director’s Circle at 1 pm. At these events, he typically discusses the motivation for choosing the play and some of the design challenges, without giving away anything about the ending. And on Thursday there’s a moderated talkback after the show – more opportunities to join in the conversation.

Trevor Schmidt and Holly Turner in a candid moment at the opening-night reception for Radiant Vermin.

Radiant Vermin continues at the Arts Barns Studio until May 3, with tickets here. Be disturbed and be delighted!

The world of Angry Alan

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

The posters for Angry Alan, the new production at Northern Light Theatre, portray an angry man. The character on the poster seems to be mid-rant, gesturing towards an audience with his laptop open and his mouth open. So I expected that. But when the actor in this solo show, Cody Porter, first appears frozen at the dark vom entrance to the theatre, looking at the audience apprehensively, and then walks cautiously towards the stage as an unfamiliar space, I didn’t see anger. Even as he starts to tell his story, his distracted demeanour and circumlocutions convey that he’s telling a story he doesn’t want to tell.

Roger, currently a junior manager at a Safeway store, starts with a self-deprecating anecdote he knows his listeners will relate to – checking his phone before going for a run and getting sucked into hours of clicking links and watching videos. In one of those links, he finds a video “about history”, by a man whose seductive analysis of society reassures him that life has not been fair to him, because he is a man.

I was drawn in despite myself, to Trevor Schmidt’s production of Penelope Skinner’s 2018 script Angry Alan. I expected to be frightened for myself and others, and enraged, and frustrated. But this naive guy talking about how the messages he found online were new to him and how they gave him comfort – I kind of liked him.

Roger tells us he keeps reading, and keeps watching, and signs up for mailing lists. He notices things in his own life that fit the patterns he’s told about by “Angry Alan.” At work, he’s expected to suppress his own feelings and let customers (female customers, it seems), not only express their feelings but manipulate the employees with them. This fits what Alan’s group is saying – that society expects men to pay attention to women’s feelings but not their own. Once he’s watching for this pattern, he observes that a male bagger gets fired because a female customer cries about broken eggs. Maybe he could intervene, and protest?

He tells us he has a son he doesn’t talk to often, because of divorce and custody arrangements. And, parroting the arguments of Angry Alan and other men’s-rights activists, he extrapolates that this shows a system biased in favour of women and mothers, and that feminism has “gone too far”.

In both cases, I was gripped by the apparently-logical steps from the character’s real problems to erroneous and dangerous conclusions. I found myself wanting to make noises and gestures of disgust, and I was disturbed that some in the opening-night audience were laughing. It was outrageous, but it was not ridiculous. Maybe it was a laughter of shock and discomfort.

By the time Roger is ready to talk about his discoveries to anyone else in his life, he has gone far enough into the us-vs-them world that nobody can talk him back. Roger uses the metaphor of having a Red Pill Moment, calling back to the film The Matrix where choosing to take a red pill means choosing uncomfortable revelation. He sees any challenges or disagreements as more evidence that men are oppressed. He texts his son a link to Angry Alan, sure that it will help them connect. His son responds LOL, which Roger misinterprets.

The production makes good use of projections (Amelia Chan) in showing some of the online interactions that influence Roger’s choices. We see text-message screens, emails, some real video clips of people in that culture, and the website where Roger decides to sign up for a Men’s Rights conference and then is presented with a request to donate to the cause, slickly presenting it as an opportunity to be an “insider” in the movement.

Partway through, I realized that nobody was laughing any more. The narrative was incredibly unsettling, and the portrayal was effective. Roger is so full of hope, believing that being part of this movement will bring him happiness – and the audience can see so much wrong that he’s not noticing.

After the play, over delicious snacks of the opening night reception, we talked about how people who do not feel included and understood are vulnerable to recruitment by gangs, by cults, by populist political movements, by radical extremists of all kinds. And how the groups and their recruiters use those tools intentionally. I suddenly remembered the offstage “mob” behind the doxxing and harassment of Kristin Johnston’s character in Workshop West’s production of Mob last year. It was easy to see how that lonely and struggling young man, portrayed by Graham Mothersill, would have grasped at the chance to impress other men by doing something mean.

Cody Porter, as Roger, is enraged by video clips. Photo by Brianne Jang of BB Collective Photography.

This production is a nuanced and disturbing exploration of some societal trends that I mostly try not to think about. I guess I’d like things to be black-and-white too, but they are not. Trevor Schmidt, Cody Porter, and the rest of the team have done some brilliant work to make me understand this character, and other men like him. And maybe I need to understand them, in order to help build a world that is better for everyone. I’m glad I saw it and I’m not done thinking about it.

Angry Alan is playing at the Studio in the Fringe Arts Barns, until January 23rd. Tickets are available here.

Trevor Schmidt’s Monstress

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Preset for Monstress

I’ve seen so much good performance in the last couple of weeks – it’s like Fringe, without the green onion cakes. I’m behind on writing it all up, and next I’m going to Pirates of Penzance.

I didn’t post about Monstress right away because it’s harder to describe than some of the other productions on local stages this month. Monstress, the first show in Northern Light Theatre’s season, left me unsettled. And I’m pretty sure it’s supposed to be unsettling. It’s a premiere written, directed, and with set and costume design by Trevor Schmidt. Lights are by Larissa Poho and sound by Dave Clarke.

Performers are Sydney Williams (The Doctor) and Julia van Dam (The Body). That gruesome and impersonal credit is consistent with what we see early on. The Doctor tells us that despite her expulsion from the school of dissection and medicine, she has been able to continue her work in understanding human life to the extent that she can bring it back after death. She is dressed and/or lit in a bottle-green colour, reminiscent of some earlier era (steampunk? Victorian? it’s not specific). At first, her monologue about whether she is actually a monster herself does not seem to apply literally – it feels atmospheric, like some type of poetic overstatement.

Then she explains that a Colonel sent her the body of his daughter Lydia Chartreuse, recently dead from a riding accident. Actor Van Dam lies immobile on a lab in the basement lab (like the eponymous Rocky of Rocky Horror, but really not). Lighting makes her skin and her bodysuit into some flat chill colour between alabaster and pale green. The Doctor then uses her knowledge and additional equipment funded by the Colonel in attempts to re-invigorate the body.

These attempts appear to be successful, in a way. The Body can move, but it/she seems to have lost adult understanding, so the Doctor must teach her, must, in a way, raise her like a child or train her like a pet. Van Dam’s slack-jawed clumsiness and naive questioning conveyed a childlike tabula rasa,

After the two of them move out of the city to rehab at the Colonel’s private country estate, Van Dam also plays the housekeeper, poised and veiled and apparently in possession of even more information than the Doctor. It seemed to me that the Body/Lydia had information about her death and her previous life, that the Doctor did not. As an audience member trying to piece together the backstory, I wanted the Doctor to ask the right questions – and she didn’t.

The situation reminded me a bit of the 2018 Northern Light production by Bryony Lavery, Origin of The Species, in which an anthropologist (Holly Turner) discovers a live prehistoric woman (Kristin Johnston) and tries to accustom her to modern life, and a bit of the NLT’s 2016 production of Wish (adapted from a Peter Goldsworthy novel by Humphrey Bower), in which a young man (Christopher Schultz) develops a relationship with a sign-language-communicating primate, Ainsley Hillyard. Many NLT productions make me ask questions about what it actually means to be human, and to be humane, by considering edge cases. Provocative and unsettling edge cases.

I began to think that the Doctor didn’t want to know more about Lydia’s past, or about what was likely to lie ahead for her. Since I could make some horrifying guesses about both, I flashed back to the Doctor’s top-of-show musings about whether she was the real monster. Because … maybe she was. Like the scientists of Jurassic Park, she was so preoccupied with whether she could, she didn’t stop to think if she should. Because she didn’t care. And by the time the play ended, my worries about Lydia were modern-day realistic horrors. My feelings about the Doctor were mixed up with far too many true stories about people who don’t have the best interests of vulnerable people at heart – are they actively evil or oblivious and negligent, and does intent even matter?

Monstress is playing at the Arts Barns Studio until November 23rd. Tickets are available here. The theme of their season is Making a Monster – and I am starting to see why.

Day Three – local artists, new stories

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It’s hard to find a connecting theme for the four productions I saw today, except that they were all done by familiar local artists.

Dick Piston Hotel Detective in Prague-Nosis was, as the title suggested, a classic noir tale with a hardboiled detective narrator (Lucas Anders), an assortment of suspicious characters (Mélissa Masse, Sarah Gibson, Dan Fessenden, Dave MacKay), and an atmospheric setting cleverly suggested by description, lighting, and a few set pieces moved around to suggest different locations in the seedy Lakeview Hotel. The published script, by American playwright/television writer Jeff Goode, offers scope for over-the-top humorous character portrayals but seems to have the consistent intricate plotting of a classic noir detective story. Director John Anderson has gathered a cast of clever character actors and talented crew, familiar from Walterdale Theatre productions. ASM Adorra Sergios displays title cards before each scene, in a series of increasingly strange hats. Playing in the Sugar Swing Ballroom (main floor) space, venue .

Rob and Chris / Bobby & Tina is an adaptation of one of my favourite plays ever, Collin Doyle’s Let the Light of Day Through. The playwright adapted it to a 60-minute musical format, along with composer/music-director Matt Graham. The original 2013 production of the play, with Jesse Gervais and Lora Brovold, portrayed the awkward affection and determination of a couple who experience an awful tragedy and … not get over it, but go on. The play is partly recollective, but they act out the stories to tell them to the audience, and it is very funny except when it’s awful. Part of the power of the original experience, for me, was not knowing what they were avoiding telling, until they told it. When I heard that Kate Ryan of Plain Janes would be directing a musical adaptation for the Fringe, I was excited, but also apprehensive. What if it wasn’t as good as I remembered the play? What if the experience depended on not knowing the outcome? But it is very good. It landed differently for me because I was watching for clues, but it was still powerful. The couple (Bobby + Tina when they meet as teenagers, Rob and Chris later) are played by Garett Ross and Jenny McKillop. They do just as well showing the awkward disconnects of a new relationship and a long-term one as they do showing the way that the couple develops a shorthand of shared understandings – the scene of trying to have a role-play fantasy when each of them thinks the other wants something else was hilarious, and the ways they imitate each other’s parents to amuse each other show clearly how they’ve been allied against both sets of parents for years. Graham’s music is suitably poignant and funny and affectionate, as called for, and the simple Fringe-appropriate set design (Trent Crosby) worked. Matt Graham plays the piano live. Venue 11, Varscona Theatre.

Mass Debating was also a musical and also at the Varscona. Trevor Schmidt wrote it and cast frequent collaborators Jason Hardwick, Cheryl Jamieson, Kristin Johnston, Michelle Todd, and Jake Tkaczyk, along with himself, to play junior-high-school debate team competitors. The universality and familiarity of the junior-high-aged themes (an early song focuses on each character’s worries of “Can they tell by looking?” ) were portrayed in a setting of mid-1970s Catholic schools, so the injustices were more overt and seemingly unchangeable than a contemporary context. Although the audiences know that things will get better, the characters really don’t. This dramatic irony provides not just humour but poignant compassion. Many of the unfairnesses focus on the institutional sexism of the society and that Church, and the way that both the boys (played by Jameson, Johnston, and Todd) and the girls (played by Tkaczyk, Hardwick, and Schmidt) express them in their interactions and behaviour. The thoughtless racism of the time was also shown in the segment where Ralph Washington, the Black competitor (Michelle Todd) was required to debate the Against side, on a resolution that racial integration has hurt Catholic education. Unlike Schmidt’s recent successful contemporary story about junior high school girls, Robot Girls, this one does not tie up the plot threads with happy endings. And it shouldn’t. That left me thinking. The music was written by Mason Snelgrove, and the accompaniment is recorded. Some of the announcer’s voice-overs were hard for me to hear clearly – not quite the Charlie-Brown-teacher “wah-wah-wah” but probably funnier than I knew about.

The drag comedy troupe Guys in Disguise have a new comedy, written by Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt, called Microwave Coven. It’s also set in the 1970s, in a suburb, and it starts off with three neighbourhood women in fabulous caftans (Darrin Hagen, Jake Tkaczyk, Trevor Schmidt) preparing for a visit from neighbourhood newcomer Jason Hardwick. Hardwick is adorable as naive newlywed Mary Rose, in crinoline and blonde flip. The premise of this story is less realistic than the troupe’s recent productions like Crack in the Mirror and Puck Bunnies, but the characters are just as much fun. It’s also at the Varscona.

Two actors portraying youth in goth clothing, one male one female.

Candy and the Beast

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Jake Tkaczyk, as Kenny, and Jayce Mackenzie, as Candy, in Candy and the Beast. Photo Brianne Jang, BB Collective Photography.

One of my Facebook correspondents called Candy and the Beast “this weird little play”. And he’s not wrong.

Trevor Schmidt’s latest original script on stage at Northern Light Theatre is disturbing and kind of delightful, both. I was thinking that it’s not quite like any of his other work that I’ve seen, but it takes advantage of a lot of things the writer/director/designer is good at. He’s good at poignant; he’s good at macabre; he’s clever at creating designs that enhance the mood and message of a production. He’s very good at the humour and dramatic-irony of naive child narrators, as we saw in Shadow Theatre’s recent production of Schmidt’s Robot Girls, about junior high school students in a science club making sense of families and friendship and growing up.

Candy and the Beast demonstrates all these strengths, in a performance a little over an hour long. The audience enters the Arts Barns Studio space in the fog and gloom, to be seated on low risers along one of the long walls and wonder what the menacing lumps on poles are, upstage. One of my neighbours, opening night, said that the lights were gradually coming up as showtime approached – but they weren’t coming up very much.

The play starts with two characters staring out at the world together through Hallowe’en masks and layers of goth-teen armour: Candy Reese (Jayce Mackenzie) is the main narrator, observing her little town and protecting her younger brother Kenny (Jake Tkaczyk). Younger, but not smaller – she prods Kenny to explain that he has a condition known as central precocious puberty, meaning that his body’s grown up while he’s still a little kid. So they call him The Beast. He says he doesn’t mind. She says he does.

And the town has some issues – not just the classism against trailer-park residents like Candy and Kenny and their parents, and general mistreatment of outsiders and weirdos, but a pack of howling animals in the nearby woods, and a serial killer at large – a killer picking off young blonde women, especially ones the town doesn’t care about. The story and mood reminded me a bit of Twin Peaks.

The sibling relationship between Candy and Kenny was one of the most compelling things about this play. The little boy adopts his tough big sister’s fashions, beliefs, and interests – his big sister beats up his bullies, helps him get to sleep, and reassures him that he’s not too old to trick-or-treat. As an oldest sibling, I found her mix of impatience and kindness easy to connect with. Their parents sound benign, but aren’t significant in the story. The play also says some important things about outsiders in a community.

Other characters brought to life in various scenes include self-absorbed real-estate agent Donna Crass shopping at the ice cream stand where Candy works, Sheriff Sherry Lau (“the long arm of the Lau”) updating townspeople about the investigation and search, a grandmotherly librarian helping Kenny research werewolves, and others. Tkaczyk, a member of the Guys in Disguise theatre-drag troupe, embodies some of these characters with distinctive voices and mannerisms.

The production is enhanced by Schmidt’s set and costume choices, dim and harsh lighting from Alison Yanota, and sound design and original music by Dave Clarke. The menacing lumps seen pre-show turn out to be a row of creepy heads on pikes, with the wall behind showing some graffiti left on the wall of Candy and Kenny’s trailer.

The performance includes several songs by Kenny (Tkaczyk), representing his thoughts, fears, and imaginings. They vary from eerie foreshadowing to a melodic ballad with a few songs reminding me of David Bowie’s 1980s repertoire, with effective use of recorded guitar track and echoey microphone.

I won’t reveal the plot events or provide any explanations of the mysteries, but I found some satisfaction at the end in a shift in the relationship between Candy and Kenny, as they become more honest with each other and give each other more comfort. I don’t know what will happen to these characters next, but I think it’s going to be okay. (And if you don’t think so, don’t tell me, because I really like both of them!)

Candy and the Beast is continuing at the Arts Barns Studio Theatre until next Saturday night, April 20th. Run time is about 65 minutes. Tickets are available here and at the door. (Tuesday Apr 16 is 2-for-1).