Preview
RANDOM ACTS
Theatre Junction
Runs March 2 to 5
Dancers’ Studio West
Every year, Theatre Junction puts out a call seeking new work from Calgary artists. The work doesn’t have to be complete or polished, but if chosen, it will be performed as a part of their four-day festival called Random Acts.
The festival showcases both emerging and established artists who have written or conceived a piece that they would like to share with an audience. Co-producers Shauna Baird and Andrea Bradley share the responsibility of soliciting and selecting new work that has Random Act potential, and creating different nightly programs out of the selected submissions.
"We read all of the pieces, but we’re not editorializing," says Baird. "We just choose a sampling of lengths of pieces and genres so that we can expose our audience to as much different stuff as possible within the time frame of a 90-minute presentation."
Most of the pieces run between five and 15 minutes, but there are a few works-in-progress that hit the 30-minute mark, providing a spectrum of creativity.
"A lot of people don’t have a chance to put something in front of an audience until it’s been through several levels of play reading and trying out with different people," says Baird. "This is a chance for something fairly raw to be put in front of an audience so (there isn’t) the need to have it perfected."
Random Acts is now in its third year and Theatre Junction is enjoying the fact that artists find the festival helpful in the creative process, and that many of them resubmit from year to year. "It’s like dropping a pebble in the pond, the ripples go outwards, and every year we get more applications – playwrights trying acting, actors trying to be playwrights, a lot of movement pieces," says Baird. "Our audience has built slowly, but I would say it’s built largely from that community of artists who want to see what everybody’s doing."
That community may be small, but there are always new members to the club, with various amounts of skill and experience. Baird describes the festival as being a risky venture for many of the performers involved. "Whether you’re in high school and you are putting something up for the first time, or you’re a seasoned artist and you’re putting yourself in front of an audience in a genre you’re not known for, there’s a big risk component and I think there’s tremendous communion in seeing fellow artists take that risk, no matter what level of their career they’re at."
Baird says a common theme running through many of this year’s pieces concerns the separateness of the individual and the battle that comes with differentiating between togetherness and physical or emotional isolation. Actor-singer Doug McKeag has written a piece called Her I Buried, Him I Burnt, based on George Michelson's memoir Burning Oliver, about a couple whose lives are destroyed following the death of their son. Other projects that sound promising include Dough: The Politics of Martha Stewart by actor-playwright Lindsay Burns; Neil Fleming's Tug, about a young man’s experiences at a fertility clinic; Michaela Jeffrey’s See Jane Run, in which two women reflect on life experiences; and Stinky's New Friend, a piece set in a mental institution, written, choreographed and performed by Anita Miotti.
This season, Theatre Junction decided to move Random Acts from its December spot to the first week of March, putting it hot on the heels of another new-works festival, Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites. Big changes are afoot at Theatre Junction these days, as the company prepares to move into its new, flexible Grand Culturehouse next season. Baird says the future of Random Acts after that is undetermined.
"I don’t know that Random Acts will go forward in this form, but I know we have a commitment to developing work within the community," she says. "That’s how we stay alive and real and connected to both the creators and the audience who wants to be challenged." |
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