SOLOSNIPPETS
One Yellow Rabbit Performance Theatre and Solocentric Theatre and Dance
January 17 to 19
JJ Young Room (CPA)
High Performance Rodeo
For the audience, solo performance is theatre stripped to its essentials. For the performer, it’s the ultimate challenge. You’re alone onstage with no one to lean on, no net to catch you if you fall and no one to blame if you crash and burn.
But if you succeed, the applause is all yours.
It’s an exciting challenge dear to the hearts of David Friese and Jenny Repond of Calgary’s Solocentric Theatre and Dance.
"It’s raw," says Friese. "It’s just you and the audience."
"It’s basic," adds Repond. "It’s storytelling. We tell stories so often in our everyday life. At work. At the grocery store. It’s so personal. It’s intimate."
Repond, Friese and Katie Sanders are co-directors of the upcoming mini-fest Solosnippets, part of One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo. For three nights, a selection of short solo works by local emerging theatre and dance artists will be performed. Building on last year’s success, the company is using the High Performance Rodeo to test the waters and give audiences a taste of the Solocentric Festival that will take over the Big Secret Theatre in March.
"Solosnippets is sort of the baby for our bigger festival," says Repond.
At the Solocentric Festival, performances will range from 30 minutes to more than an hour. Solosnippets are quick and dirty – limited to seven to 15 minutes, the performers are forced to pack as much as possible into a short stage experience.
"The work is really fresh and really unique," says Repond. "It’s emerging artists. It’s the next crop of artists coming up."
Solosnippets and the Solocentric Festival grew out of One Yellow Rabbit’s Summer Lab Intensive program. As with other participants, the experience inspired Repond, Sanders and Friese to create new work, but faced with the problem of finding a venue in which to perform, they formed Solocentric.
"So many people we know had little bits and pieces of things they wanted to perform or develop and had no venue for them," explains Repond. "When you’re doing a solo show, it’s hard. To write, direct, perform and then produce and then try to get people out to it and pay for the theatre – it’s so much to do. By having the festival we’re pulling a lot of those people together for something that’s professionally produced in a great venue with lots of variety." |
