| The interior of the Grand Theatre is largely finished, even if the floor still needs to be swept clean of the various detritus that has accumulated over its extensive renovation. Brick remains exposed at points, left as a testament to the theatre’s own history and to the fact that, as Theatre Junction artistic director Mark Lawes insists, the renovation is not a restoration. Rather, the Grand’s new life is intended to be a new beginning, both for the space itself and for Theatre Junction, which began the process of restoring the theatre after the loss of its former home in the Jubilee Auditorium’s Dr. Betty Mitchell Theatre.
National and international contemporary theatre, dance, music and film are the bywords of Theatre Junction’s future, repeated by Lawes like a sort of artistic mantra. His devotion to this vision is understandable, given his dedication to the process of turning the Grand into Theatre Junction’s new, wholly owned space. He estimates he has taken about 10 days off in the last year.
Partnering with disparate entities such as Alberta Ballet, Decidedly Jazz Danceworks and the herland Film and Video Festival, Lawes hopes to use the space to bring together a variety of disciplines, exposing audiences to a wider array of art forms, while simultaneously removing much of the burden that would otherwise be placed on Theatre Junction itself.
"One of the main challenges about how we practice the theatre is that we do too much work," says Lawes. "We do nine plays a season or seven plays a season, or four new plays over 12 weeks. So you don’t really get the chance to develop new work that can actually compete in an international market.
"We need to originate work here that has a unique voice of a certain quality and, therefore, can compete internationally. So, if Theatre Junction is away somewhere, we don’t have the burden of having to do five shows or something in our season because we’ve got these other partners that can complete the program at the Grand."
To support this vision, Theatre Junction will be hiring a permanent "company of artists," composed of 12 individuals from a variety of disciplines. Whereas most Canadian theatre companies hire actors, designers and directors on a project-by-project basis, Theatre Junction plans to use its newfound capital – including an anonymous donation of $760,000 – to engage an ensemble paid to devote its talents exclusively to the company for an entire season. Lawes sees this new approach, and the company’s new space, as an opportunity similar to the emergence of Quebec exports like Cirque du Soleil and Robert Lepage – artists encouraged by funding and artistic freedom to create work that has found an international audience.
"If you’re going to do multidisciplinary work, or if you’re going to start thinking about changing form, it’s advantageous to get people from outside the form of theatre working on your contemporary theatre," says Lawes of his ensemble concept. "If you get an artist like a literary artist who’s a novelist and a poet to think about the theatre, or a visual artist to think about design in the theatre as opposed to a designer, it’s starting to think about the form in new ways. And when you bring artists together from different disciplines, it challenges them about how they do their work and how we’re going to work together to create live performance.
"Production here is important," he adds, "but I think it would be amazing if one of our productions that we created at the Grand went to the Avignon Festival (the largest theatre festival in Europe)."
As Theatre Junction assumes ownership of the Grand, comparisons to Vertigo Mystery Theatre’s new space are inevitable. After moving out of the Pleiades Theatre in the Calgary Science Centre (now the Telus World of Science), that company operated at a financial loss during its inaugural season under artistic director John Paul Fischbach. Opening a truncated season on March 21 with Caryl Churchill’s Far Away, a controversial play seen by many to be a prescient satire of post-9-11 paranoia and polarization, Theatre Junction is banking on its existing audience, as well as those it hopes to attract with its expanded program, to support the company’s new direction.
"I think, unlike Vertigo, Vertigo had a very safe…" says Lawes, pausing. "I mean, it was murder mystery, so there’s a certain kind of person who goes to murder mystery. And Theatre Junction has developed a very curious audience. Even a play like Closer, by Patrick Marber, which was a huge hit both on the West End and New York, no one else (in Calgary) would touch it at the time, but Theatre Junction did it and had a big success. So I think we’ve always developed an audience and attracted an audience that was interested in this new kind of work."
Completing a sort of triumvirate of venues in the heart of Calgary’s downtown, scarcely three blocks from the Epcor Centre and Vertigo, the Grand is poised to play a significant role in what can now certainly be considered Calgary’s theatre district. It’s an exciting opportunity for Theatre Junction, whose work had already made it one of the most acclaimed theatre companies in Calgary, and certainly a major shift from the basement of the Jubilee Auditorium.
"It’s not about fringe work," says Lawes. "This is not in the basement of a larger institution now, this is really taking centre stage, and it allows that kind of work to be put in the centre.
"I think it’s a natural evolution of our company," he says. "My hunch is that people are hungry for this kind of contemporary, challenging, national and international work." |
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