| The team that spearheaded the drive to build the impressive new Vertigo theatres in Tower Centre is calling it quits.
John Paul Fischbach and Tracey Read, the artistic director and general manager, respectively, of Vertigo Mystery Theatre, will be leaving the company at the end of this season.
He’s heading to Bali and she’s going back to the Stampede.
"I’ve been thinking about this since Christmas," says Fischbach, who handed in his resignation last week. Fischbach, who has run Vertigo for nine years (seven of those when it was the Pleiades Mystery Theatre), says the push to get the new venues funded and built has left him exhausted. "It takes a huge toll on your body and mind and emotions," he says, adding that he’ll be taking off for some R and R on the Indonesian island after he finishes directing the final show of the season, the new vampire thriller Innocent Blood.
Read’s simultaneous resignation is coincidental, says Fischbach. She has accepted a job with the Calgary Exhibition and Stampede, her former employer, to plan its Alberta centennial celebrations for next year.
Fischbach says he and Read are leaving Vertigo debt-free. The theatre’s recently completed capital campaign raised $7.1 million to pay for the $6.8-million dual theatres, built on the site of the old Palliser Square Cinemas, and provide the company with a reserve fund.
Lawyer John Phillips, chairman of the Vertigo board of directors, says a national search will be launched shortly for a new artistic director. Suzanne Mott, the company’s facility producer, has stepped in to serve as interim general manager. "I would think she’ll stay on board until the end of next season, at least," says Phillips. "We’ll see how things go over the next year."
Phillips says the double resignation was "a little bit of a surprise" to the board. "But they’re leaving on a positive note," he adds. "I’m told it’s not unusual for this to happen in the theatre industry after the opening of big facilities like this."
Vertigo’s first season in its new digs took off with a bang last fall with the première of Agatha Christie’s lost thriller Chimneys, which garnered international attention. Its revival of The Mystery of Irma Vep was also a success and will be remounted at Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre next season. But there have also been start-up pains – particularly with the new Y-Stage children’s series – and some disgruntlement among little theatre companies that feel the rent of the smaller Studio theatre is unaffordable.
However, Fischbach claims the Studio has been "booked solid" and Y-Stage attendance is up. "It’s finding its feet now – it took a while to build an audience for it," he says.
Fischbach is leaving Calgary at the end of May and has no definite future plans. He’s been asked to return to direct a show at Vertigo next season and will remount Irma Vep at the Citadel in April of 2005. He’s already put together the Vertigo programming for 2004 - 2005, which will be announced on April 20. |
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