FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 1998 All Rights Reserved.
| THEATRE Wyrd Sisters Most of the people behind the new Gas & Light Productions are veterans of community theatre. Jeremy MacKenzie, Rob Fulton, Glennis Cox and Jeff Burnell have devoted their skills to companies like Morpheus Theatre, Workshop Theatre and the Cappucino Singers for a number of years, and recently decided that it was time to strike out on their own. MacKenzie, who directed The Mikado for Morpheus last year, is also directing Gas & Light's first show, Wyrd Sisters, and is careful to note that there is nothing lacking in the companies for which he has spent almost 50 years performing. "We just thought we'd like to try some things on our own, rather than being part of somebody else's group," he says. "What we wanted to do was have the freedom to choose for ourselves what we wanted to do." While the group hasn't made plans beyond their debut production yet, MacKenzie speculates that their work won't be strikingly different from many similar companies. Where he hopes for a major difference is behind the scenes. "We wanted to try out some ideas about how you could promote community theatre a bit differently, and maybe how you could finance it a bit differently, too," he explains. While most community theatre groups fund their activities through grant monies or revenues from casinos, MacKenzie hopes that Gas & Light will put considerable effort into attracting corporate and private support. "(We're looking for) some small sponsors - small in the sense of not putting up great chunks of money," he notes, "because we don't need a great deal of money. It's not that expensive to put on a show of this kind... I guess what we're trying to do is see whether it's possible to run a community theatre company as a business." Accordingly, the new company will also devote more effort to promotion. "You can have the best actors that you can find anywhere, but if you can't get people in the audience to watch them, then it's all a bit of a waste of time," MacKenzie says. "We felt that community theatre does tend to concentrate more on what goes on onstage, and perhaps falls down because it doesn't always get the people out to see the thing. There's so much good community theatre in Calgary, and people don't know it's there." Another of the challenges facing small performing groups in Calgary is finding a home - a technically suitable performing space that holds the right number of people. The only game in town, until recently, has been the Pumphouse Theatres, which offers two options - one a little too small and one a little too large for most small companies. MacKenzie singles out what he considers perhaps the most exciting part of the new venture - a "new" local theatre venue that's just right. "The Cappucino Singers have put forward some money that they got through casino revenue to upgrade the theatre at Fort Calgary," he explains. The renovations included a new lighting system and a larger stage in the 100-seat theatre, which will add a new option for many local groups. "We see it as a joint attempt, not only to put on community theatre in there, but also to promote Fort Calgary. Most people don't know that there's a really nice theatre there." The first show to draw audiences into the newly renovated Fort Calgary is Wyrd Sisters, based on a book by fantasy author Terry Pratchett. It's a comic reimagining of a classic. "It's based, very, very loosely, on Shakespeare's Macbeth," MacKenzie explains, "in that there is a duke who has murdered his cousin, the king, and he's been put up to it by his wife, a very ruthless woman.... There are three witches - in fact the play opens with the opening line from Shakespeare's Macbeth, but from there on it degenerates rapidly," he laughs. |