>>PREVIEW
TAKING FLIGHT – A FESTIVAL OF STUDENT WORK
Runs until April 8
Reeve Theatre (University of Calgary)
The end of the school term arrives like a brick wall on the Autobahn –unavoidable and all too soon. Exams, papers and final projects all loom with seemingly no time to spare. Faced with this recurring issue, the University of Calgary drama department has adopted a novel solution for the second year in a row, alleviating the roadblock with their Taking Flight Festival.
"(The festival offers a) much longer rehearsal period for the students and allows the department to bring all the faculty support to bear on this festival," explains artistic director Valerie Campbell. "The students now have the benefit of a full production team, technical manager, prop shop, costume shop, and the actual instructors can devote their whole last half of the term to supporting the festival."
Where the department’s final projects previously fell during the last week of the term, the current festival combines the work from a variety of graduate and undergraduate classes into a two-week showcase that begins well over two weeks before the last day of classes. Including directors, designers, stage managers and playwrights, the festival encompasses a variety of performances ranging from single-act plays like Harold Pinter’s The Lover, to staged readings, to a sketch comedy program created by the department’s playwriting students. Providing students with support staff and even a "flight manual" to help them prepare for the logistical challenges of the festival, it’s an opportunity that allows students to experience a more complete development process.
"They have budgets, props and costumes, attending production meetings every week," says Campbell. "Students really see the big picture, rather than their small piece."
Master of fine arts degree student Aron de Casmaker is no stranger to the process of staging work. A graduate of the University of Ottawa, de Casmaker has been a member of Ottawa-based Theatrophy since 2000, performing physical theatre with a particular emphasis on clown, bouffon and Commedia dell’Arte – a traditional form of improvisational theatre still commonly performed in Italy. His contribution to the festival, an original work titled Moribund that focuses on one of Commedia dell’Arte’s archetypal characters, Pulcinella, represents the culmination of a collaborative process with instructor Brian Smith and John Turner (Smoot of Mump and Smoot fame).
For de Casmaker, the university’s program was an ideal fit for his personal development, representing a unique and essential flexibility.
"This is the only program in Canada that sort of allows me to tailor my own curriculum. I’ve been specializing my work and my career as much toward physical theatre and physical comedy as much as possible," he says. "This is a way to bring my experience to the academic world, because there’s not really very much written about clown, bouffon and Commedia dell’Arte. There’s a lot more leeway than a conservatory-style MFA in performance would allow me."
Now, with his first term’s work culminating in his festival staging, de Casmaker is taking advantage of the support offered by the department, which is so essential to its continuing value. More than the familiar roadblocks of course work and finals, the business of the department remains, after all, the creation of viable theatre professionals capable of mounting new work and moving beyond the end of the term.
"I’ve been getting a lot of support on my design requirements for the show, and in some ways it’s relieving because when I produce a show on my own, my company is ultimately responsible for all the production as well," he says. "Even though we may have, occasionally, money to hire other people, we still have to do a lot of that work ourselves, so it’s nice to have other people with expertise in these things to come in and do their work and show me.
"I’m learning from them as well," he adds. "This will help me in the long run to create independent theatre again. If not the show itself, then a lot of the ideas from it that I could definitely take into the professional realm." |
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