| We can’t help but notice the behemoths. They have larger stages, larger production values and ultimately, a much higher profile. They’re easier to see, but they’re not the only ones vying for our attention.
This column takes its name from those all-important but invisible lines that keep audiences’ eyes on the stage, rather than on the back of a particularly large head. From community theatre to up-and-coming professional companies, Calgary has more theatre than we know what to do with, or space to cover. The least we can do is keep our eyes open.
CHASING DICK
Tarra Loïs Riley is effervescent. The artistic director and founder of Broad Minds Theatre, a company founded to stage works with roles for women, doesn’t miss a beat, doesn’t lose energy as she giddily explains the absurdity of her company’s latest production and personal directorial challenge: Moby Dick! the Musical.
"The irony of having a woman-focused theatre company putting on a play called Moby Dick! the Musical was too delicious in itself," she explains. "How delicious is it that you have schoolgirls singing a song about chasing dick?"
Written by Hereward Kaye and Robert Longden, the punny British meta-play certainly contains ribald humour. Telling the story of a group of schoolgirls staging a self-produced musical version of Herman Melville’s epic novel at their high school, St. Godley's, the production will see more than 20 female cast members packed into the Pumphouse’s Joyce Doolittle Theatre. With schoolgirl uniforms and a few added accoutrements, schoolgirls will become characters, hockey sticks will become oars, and umbrellas will become flags. A smattering of generically "foreign" accessories like a coconut bra and hula skirt will even transform one girl into Queequeg, Ishmael’s cannibal bunkmate.
It’s a ragtag setup ideally suited for Broad Minds, geared specifically for smaller productions by allowing improvised (and cost-effective) set pieces as well as calling for a dizzying number of female actors, even if they are playing men. In fact, even though its schoolgirl characters are each based on high school clichés, Riley says that she’s been able to find stimulating parallels between St. Godley's and the Pequod.
"We minimize (the characters) to extreme stereotypes, so it was neat to explore them in that way, and then to put them into the archetypes of these men of a men’s story," she says. "It ended up being far more profound in the process than I would have imagined for putting on a show that appears externally to be fun and silly and very two-dimensional."
Recently, Broad Minds was given a new neighbour in Urban Curvz, a theatre company whose women-centred mandate runs very closely to Riley’s own. Indefatigable, ready to mount a musical laden with penis-centred puns and bawdy jokes, Riley views the arrival of new competition with characteristic optimism.
"We love them," she says. "What excited me is that it shows that there is a niche that needs to be filled."
Niche? Filled? Wonderful.
Moby Dick! the Musical runs until December 23 at the Joyce Doolittle Theatre. For tickets and information, call 263-0079 or visit www.broadminds.ca.
TOO YOUNG TO KNOW ANY BETTER
Featuring the talents of 15 actors, all between 10 and 17, Calgary Young People’s Theatre will bring Timothy Mason’s adaptation of one of literature’s number one bad boys to the Vertigo Studio. Better written than Dennis the Menace, longer lived than James Dean, give it up for Mark Twain’s Tom "Jam Guzzling" Sawyer!
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer runs until December 13 at the Vertigo Studio Theatre. For tickets and information, call 221-3708 or visit www.cypt.ca.
CHRISTIAN COLLEGE, SHORTENED SHAKESPEARE
Featuring condensed versions of Romeo and Juliet and Twelfth Night, the Rocky Mountain College Theatre Arts Department trots out a truncated Bard with A Shakespeare Showcase. Directed by Cindy Vanden Enden and Karl Sine, the showcase features students in the Christian college’s acting intensive program.
A Shakespeare Showcase runs until December 15 at the Rocky Mountain College Auditorium. For tickets and information, call 284-5100, extension 228.
OLD SAINT NICK AND HIS CADRE OF VICIOUS WOLVES
Though Rosebud Theatre may have an entire, eponymous hamlet to itself, it’s easy to see it as small when viewing it from a few hundred kilometres away. In addition to good ol’ home cookin’, the Drumheller-adjacent theatre school and company is offering holiday fare including St. Nick's Magical Mystical Mystery Tour, written by Rosebud’s artistic director, Morris Ertman, and The Way of the Wolf, based on the stories of Martin Bell.
St. Nick's Magical Mystical Mystery Tour (running until December 23) and The Way of the Wolf (running until December 16) will keep the Rosebud stage warm until the real Santa Claus comes to sweep the unbelievers away. For tickets and information call 1-800-267-7553, or visit www.rosebudtheatre.com.
SLIMY SKIN AND SIMPLE STORIES
Based on Arnold Lobel’s stories about a pair of amphibious friends, StoryBook Theatre presents Willie and Robert Reale’s A Year With Frog and Toad. Though StoryBook’s Adventure Theatre series may lack the sheer volume of treats that their Cookie Cabarets boast, the recommended age (six plus) also allows the average Fast Forward reader to attend without being escorted out in shame.
A Year With Frog and Toad runs until December 23 at the Easterbrook Theatre. For tickets and information call 216-0808 or visit www.storybooktheatre.org. |
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