A work in progress. The tree from How Do I Love Thee? before it's ready for the stage.

DETAILS

24th Annual Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays presented by ATP
Martha Cohen Theatre
Wednesday, February 3 - Sunday, March 7

More in: Theatre

With February comes one of the most highly anticipated events of Calgary’s theatre season — Alberta Theatre Projects’ (ATP) annual Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays. For theatre lovers, it’s a month-long high of Canadian theatre featuring four premières, as well as play readings and panel discussions.

“There is literally no other festival like playRites in Canada,” says ATP artistic director Vanessa Porteous. “The plays premièred here have a tremendous impact in programming across the country; they win awards; they get published; and, basically, they represent a significant contribution to Canadian theatre.”

Selecting which shows will be in the festival is an ongoing process. Porteous and Vicki Stroich, the festival’s artistic associate, read scripts, attend the Banff Playwrights Colony and as well as workshops and readings year-round looking for those gems to unveil each year at playRites. Stroich reads and sees about 150 new plays a year.

“Out of all that, we just select three plus one of the most exciting, inventive, interesting, new pieces of Canadian theatre,” says Porteous. “We’re looking for variety, but we’re really looking for a unique voice, a fascinating story that takes us on a journey where we don’t expect to go.”

This year, that “three plus one” includes: Larry Tremblay’s Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre; Florence Gibson’s How Do I Love Thee?; Greg MacArthur’s Tyland; and, in association with Ghost River Theatre, The Highest Step in the World. (The “three plus one” refers to the fact that the first three shows take place at the Martha Cohen Theatre, whereas The Highest Step is performed in the Big Secret Theatre.)

HERCULEAN TASK

Once the plays are selected, organizing a month-long festival that features about 50 performances of four fully produced shows — including costumes, lighting and sound designs — is “fairly Herculean,” says Porteous.

Co-ordinating rehearsal times for four plays simultaneously, regularly moving sets in and out of the theatre, and finding room to rehearse are some challenges facing festival organizers. “One of our four productions usually spends some quality time rehearsing in our lobby,” says Porteous.

Head scenic carpenter Riley Miljan is one of the many behind-the-scenes people responsible for building the sets. “I take the set designer’s drawings and figure out how we’re going to build it, what materials can be used, and how it can be taken apart,” he says, adding stages are packed away each night.

Miljan and an assistant started building the sets in December. One of this year’s challenges was to create a large tree, six metres wide by 4.5 metres high (see front cover), for use in How Do I Love Thee?, a tale about the relationship between Victorian poets Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning.

“Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Robert Browning wrote voraciously to each other. It was such a fascinating relationship to her [Gibson], about how love on paper may not be love in real life. She [Gibson] used them as a jumping off point to ask questions,” explains Stroich.

The Barrett Browning actor, Jan Alexandra Smith, climbs the tree to sit in it, so it must be sturdy.

“A tree has roots, so it won’t tip over, but our tree doesn’t have roots,” says Miljan. “The challenge is to figure out how to make it work.”

Set designer Scott Reid built a small model of the tree, then Miljan converted it into a full-scale version, which he constructed out of steel tubing. Steel gussets reinforce the branches where Smith sits, and a narrow ladder is built into the trunk so that she can climb it.

Once Miljan assembled the tree’s steel skeleton, the structure was coated with spray foam, then a designer painstakingly carved the foam to resemble bark.

Another of Miljan’s set challenges this year involved assembling a large Plexiglas disc, 4.5 metres in diameter, for Tyland. The play tells the story of two pregnant women sent by the government to a remote northern island, part of a campaign to strengthen a national claim to the North by populating it with women and children.

Directed by Porteous, Tyland, has elements of a political satire, but it’s also a psychological thriller à la Alfred Hitchcock.

“We’ve never done a floor that was Plexiglas before, so we had to experiment with different thicknesses,” says Miljan, who also had to light the disc from within using 60 light bulbs to evoke icy whiteness.

EAST MEETS WEST

The third show on the Martha Cohen stage, by Quebec playwright Larry Tremblay, is called Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre. The festival is premièring Chantal Bilodeau’s English translation with former ATP artistic director Bob White in the director’s chair.

“We have a history of bringing Quebec playwrights to our audiences, and I’m really proud of that,” says Porteous.

Although the set is minimal, it presents an interesting challenge for another one of the backstage folks, makeup artist Whitney Huget-Penner.

Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre is a comedy about a director who hires two actors to re-enact the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, in a Laurel-and-Hardy style. The director assumes the role of Lincoln’s wax figure, and it’s up to Penner to make him look real.

“It’s an interesting challenge, because I have to make someone who really is alive, look life-like,” she says.

Adding to the challenge is that Lincoln’s wax figure is neither speechless, nor motionless.

“It’s a bit of a challenge for the actor, because he uses his face to communicate, and I’m adding a layer in-between,” says Penner.

Penner coats the actor’s face with nose and scar wax — also called mortician’s wax — but not before she tested it for durability using her husband as a guinea pig.

“My biggest concern initially was the wax coming off. So my husband wore it for a couple of hours chasing after our one-year-old son, and it stayed put,” says Penner.

Besides making the actor look waxen, Penner transforms him into a Lincoln look-alike by enhancing aspects of the actor’s face that are already similar, such as the cheekbones.

A MAD LEAP

The final show in this year’s festival, The Highest Step in the World, is the answer to last year’s innovative play, NiX, which took place in the ice-and-snow-covered Olympic Plaza. Like NiX, The Highest Step in the World promises spectacle, but one of the show’s creators, Ghost River co-artistic director Eric Rose, says he’s hoping to find that “difficult balance” between technical wonder and story.

The show is inspired by the story of Joseph Kittinger, who, in 1960, leapt from a weather balloon at more than 31,100 metres with only a parachute. To this day, he holds records for the highest parachute jump and the fastest speed by a human through the atmosphere.

“Kittinger was the start, but we started to look at it as thematic: What is it about us that compels us to take risks, even the risk in simple things, like falling in love?,” says Rose. “It became an interesting discussion for us.”

“Based upon these physical events, the metaphor in the show is quite apparent. People can explore risk in their own lives,” says Rose.

The Highest Step in the World makes use of projected images, motion graphics, film, lighting, sound and aerial choreography to take the audience on a journey to the stratosphere with Kittinger, and then fall back to Earth. And that’s where aerial choreographer and all-around “action professional” Adrian Young comes in.

“Flying from the front to the back of the theatre, from wall to wall, roof to ceiling, that was the initial wish list, and we’ve gotten pretty close,” says Young.

Unlike the ground-based system used for aerial choreography in Theatre Calgary’s production of Skydive and ATP’s Peter Pan, this show uses wires and cables to lift the performer — van Belle — from the stage. Since he’s not connected to the ground in any way, Young says this allows him greater freedom of movement.

A person needs to develop muscular control when doing wirework, so Young and David van Belle, the main character and co-artistic director of Ghost River, spent two days perfecting a single move.

Even though half of the script consists of stage directions, Rose wants audiences to see these visual sequences as part of the story, not merely as spectacle.

“We started to write with technology in mind, as opposed to a play being written and then technology pasted on it,” he explains.

At the end of the day, however, Porteous says the artistic circle remains incomplete until one key ingredient is added — the audience.

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Also playing:

The four plays that première at playRites are the central attractions, but the festival doesn’t stop there.

Audiences can check out free readings of works-in-progress from Mieko Ouchi, ATP playwright-in-residence Karen Hines, and Trina Davies. And for a taste of young talent, Fresh Prints will showcase the work of ATP’s student writers during an evening of readings.

Throughout the run of the festival, multidisciplinary artists Mia Rushton and Eric Moschopedis’s new project, Each Other, will be set up in the lobby of the Martha Cohen Theatre. The “storefront” offers free handmade supplies — such as dice with directions to help you get lost — designed to send you off on an activity that will help you engage with the city and your fellow citizens. It’s performative art where you get to be the participant, and it’s not as scary as it sounds.

Rounding out the festivities, Celebrity Hors D’oeuvres pairs local celebrities with fine restaurants in a competition to see who can sell the most tasty treats. For $48.75, you eat delicious food and take in a presentation of Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre.