>>PREVIEW
ADVENTURES OF THE TRICK-RIDERS
Sheri-D Wilson
High Performance Rodeo
Runs January 25 and 26
Big Secret Theatre (Epcor Centre)
"It doesn’t feel like 20 years," says poet-performer Sheri-D Wilson. She’s referring to Dying to be Famous, the show she performed with actor Laura Parken at the first High Performance Rodeo – then known as the Secret Elevator Experimental Performance Festival – in 1985. Her new work, Adventures of the Trick-Riders: During the Apocalypse While Thinking of Jesus, sees her reteaming with Parken again after two decades.
The Rodeo’s 20th anniversary was the perfect opportunity for the two to reunite. "I’ve been at many Rodeos in the past, this isn’t the first time," says Wilson. "I thought, ‘What could I do that’s special?’ I wanted to create a piece for us, still doing it after all this time."
Trick-Riders traces the history of outlaw twins and Black Diamond natives Laurie and Lu-Ann Murphy. After they hold up a bar in the late 1970s, Lu-Ann takes off to New York to become a journalist, while Laurie stays behind, becoming an amazing trick-rider who ends up in the cowgirl hall of fame. After 25 years, Lu-Ann returns home, and the two ex-bandits join each other for one more adventure.
The inspiration for Trick-Riders came from a novel that Wilson had been working on, as well as her and Parken’s physical resemblance to one another.
"I remember, at the Betty Mitchell Awards one year, we were putting on lipstick in the bathroom and screamed," says Wilson. "We look like twins, so I wrote us as twin sisters. As the story develops, it becomes more twisted, which is good, in my mind."
The show also features original music by Russell Broom, video and slides by Mike Roberts, and a "living set" by artist Martin Guderna (who was also part of the original Rodeo). Audiences will watch as the set and visuals are created during the performance, an improvisational element that Wilson feels at home with.
"It’s about (Laurie and LuAnn’s) history, but it’s important to stay in the now," she says. "It’s a completely raw show."
The creative freedom that artists like Wilson find with the High Performance Rodeo is the key to its continued success, she says. "I think that Michael (Green, the curator) has a really great eye for what will fly in Calgary," she says. "He’s stayed true to the original Rodeo, and also experiments – people can try things for the sake of trying them. I know in my work it’s important – trust and a huge amount of play, never in the middle of the road. The Rodeo goes everywhere and in between." |
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