FFWD Weekly
Copyright © 2000. All Rights Reserved

On Stage by Lori Montgomery Ground Zero Theatre has always been proud of its mandate, which includes giving a hand-up to emerging local artists. "It’s that extra step between not getting paid and getting paid well," says Ground Zero’s Ian Kelly. "There was never any middle ground before. You just had to either fight your way in or go to Toronto and come back or something like that." But it seems they realized that in bringing ground-breaking international hits like Mark Ravenhill’s Shopping and F***ing or Tracy Letts’s Killer Joe to Calgary and giving younger artists a shot at them, they left out one key player in the theatre world – new playwrights. The writers are the focus of Aftershock, Ground Zero’s new festival of original one-act plays. Kelly explains that once Ground Zero chose the five plays from the submitted options, they left the rest to the artists. "It was styled very much on the principals that a lot of fringe festivals are founded on," he explains. "We supply the venue, and we supply some technicians, but you do your own show." In choosing the plays, Kelly says he was looking mainly for well-written work that was created with a view to staging it in a small space, with a reasonably small budget. "We went through the scripts and found the ones that did not require ridiculous amounts of explosions, or elephants coming on stage, or things like that," he points out. Then the writers were sent off to put together their own impromptu theatre companies. "This is your chance to learn how to put a show together," Kelly told them. "Find a director, or direct it yourself, and then go and find yourself a cast of your friends, your family – anyone you know who wants to be an actor, or wants to be on stage, or wants to be a star. "So these people went out and just went through their own little phone books." One of the playwrights, Cory Wilson, had some connections through her husband, who works at ATP. Her play A Fine Line features actors Kyla Anderson and Lindsay Burns. Fifteen-year-old St. Francis High School student Crystal Knoll managed to snag Loose Moose favourite Ryan Gladstone to direct her play, Transit Authority. Danijel Margetic is a graduate student from the University of Calgary whose 5 Men in a Tub features the talents of several fellow students, as does Victims of Frankness by U of C undergrad Ethan Cole. MRC student Graham Clark’s Salt and After was originally designed as a film script, which he has adapted for the stage. Each of the playwrights were given the run of the Pumphouse’s Victor Mitchell Theatre to hone their craft. "The idea was to give almost a teaching environment for young playwrights and young companies, or young would-be companies, and give them a chance to figure out some of what they need to figure out," Kelly says. The shows run until May 20 at the Pumphouse Theatres, with two or three shows a night until Saturday, when all of the plays will run starting at 2:30 p.m. **** If you’re looking for a little more poetry in your fringe theatre, The Shakespeare Company presents its third annual Inspired Shakespeare Shorts the very next week. With plays from Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg and the U.S., the festival is an international affair. "It’s exciting this year to have that kind of scope," says James Wilson, producer of this year’s event. The five short plays, 15 to 20 minutes each in length, feature a broad range of topics despite their specific theme. "They had to be about or inspired in some way by Shakespeare," Wilson explains. From a "missing" balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet to a thoroughly modern exploration of superstition, the work covers a lot of ground. That variety is what the festival is all about, Wilson says of the event which has premiered 17 new plays in its short history. "It’s an extension of the normal perception of Shakespeare," he points out. "It’s a great way to enjoy his basic themes. Lust, greed, revenge – they’re pretty basic, pretty fundamental to an interesting story." These short musings on the Bard highlight a facet of the classics that might escape a casual viewer, he suggests. "It pushes your mind a little more," Wilson says. "People will know Romeo and Juliet or The Taming of the Shrew.... But this is a thought-provoking exercise that makes people think about them a little more." The show runs nightly May 23 to 27 at the Pumphouse Theatres. **** Now that you’re in the mood for Shakespeare, you have one night only to catch a whirlwind production of Macbeth, with five performers and a running time of 80 minutes. Theatre Calgary is presenting a version of "the Scottish play" by England’s theatre nomad, as a lead-in to a two-week workshop between the two companies at The Banff Centre. The workshop will provide an opportunity for the London-based company to exchange approaches, techniques and methods of performance with Theatre Calgary and local performers Caroline Cave, Kevin Kruchkywich, Ryan Luhning and Esther Purves-Smith, who have all appeared frequently on major local stages, including Theatre Calgary’s Max Bell. The British company specializes in collaborations with international artists, "working in a variety of theatrical traditions to reinterpret classic texts and create new theatre for new audiences and new situations," as they put it. They tour extensively, performing and teaching in South Africa, Hong Kong and Denmark, as well as various venues across North America and Europe. The single performance of Macbeth takes place May 19 at 8 p.m. in the Engineered Air Theatre. Pay-what-you-can tickets are available at the door only, and the box office opens at 7 p.m.

| Back To This Issue Table of Contents | Back To Main Index |