Review
playRites Festival
Alberta Theatre Projects
The "hottest six weeks of winter" – a.k.a Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites Festival – wrapped up nicely March 2 with its annual Blitz weekend, one of the year’s few momentous occasions to take a bite out of theatre and connect with visiting theatre artists from across the country.
Attending Blitz weekend is like lining up at a buffet table to sample the goods. Audiences were treated with many of the items on ATP’s menu during the last six weeks, condensed into two days of activity. The weekend included all four mainstage performances; a staged reading of a production being considered for next year's mainstage, called a Platform Play; short play excerpts in the Brave New Works series; and new work by members of ATP’s Student Writer’s Group. On top of that, ATP managed to squeeze in a Sunday breakfast, hand out some awards and launch several publications in its lobby.
The Blitz is also a networking opportunity for members of the theatre community who are seeking future productions. Veterans of Canada’s play development scene, such as Mary Vingoe, Elsa Bolam, Ken Gass and Jackie Maxwell, "blitzed" along with several theatre associations, publishers, literary agents and representatives from festivals like Shaw and Stratford.
This year, playRites mainstage productions and the added attractions were something to be proud of, and the staff and artists were still abuzz during Blitz weekend. Last year’s financial success made things seemingly more comfortable for all, and visitors took advantage of the chance to attend other local performances like One Yellow Rabbit’s Dream Machine and Theatre Junction’s The Good Life.
One great addition to this year's festival was the spoken word After Hours POETaster, featuring artists such as Sheri Wilson, Blake Brooker, Eugene Stickland and Greg Scofield. With any luck, next year will see spoken word events continue as a welcome addition to ATP’s annual schedule.
The artists involved in the mainstage productions, meanwhile, wrote diaries capturing the spirit and behind-the-scenes reality of the experience, which were included in the programmes for each production. Creating several successful simultaneous productions is no small task, and Sunday’s closing was proof of that – some actors looked like sailors docking on land after a long journey.
Most importantly, however, two festival mainstage shows have already been picked up by other Canadian companies – The Red Priest by Edmonton's Workshop West, and Strawberries in January by London, Ontario's The Grand Theatre – fulfilling the fundamental reason for the existence of playRites and play development in general. It is difficult to assess how many of the plays ATP presents will leap into mass production in the coming years, but it's reassuring to know that Western Canada is, more than ever, a vital arena for the development of new work.
Hats off to playRites – see ya next year. |
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