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There’s something intrinsically ironic about watching One Yellow Rabbit turn silver. With the Rabbits’ 25th anniversary season set to premiere, “silver” seems like such a positively posh concept for a company whose Big Secret Theatre is named as an allusion to early shows like those of co-artistic director Michael Green’s former company, Ikarus — squatting in a house and providing directions by way of avoiding unnecessary attention. Even the company’s defining annual festival, The High Performance Rodeo, began with space that the company had secretly appropriated.
By 1986, the One Yellow Rabbit ensemble had gained its second, and most enduring space — then called simply the “Secret Theatre.” The High Performance Rodeo now attracts excellent talent from around the world, and the company’s Summer Lab Intensive produces a palpable stream of new work that finds its way into local festivals and even mainstages. Yet, even if any doubts of its place as a permanent Calgary institution have long since been erased, the company’s silver anniversary’s glint is bright enough to illuminate 25 years of wild theatre, contrasting a now-established company with its beginnings as upstart punks.
Returning to the collective creation that has come to define One Yellow Rabbit, the season’s first show is Sylvia Plath Must Not Die, a tentative title whose allusion to the infamous American poet is also a call to realize how little most know of her — more a byword for “suicidal poet” than anything deeper. Also focusing on poet Anne Sexton, whose style shared the confessional traits of Plath’s own, the production will return ensemble members to the mainstage, after last season’s one-man (albeit accompanied by silent dancers) Down With Up With People. Though originally slated to premiere in Toronto’s Young Centre, Sylvia Plath Must Not Die will now make its premiere in Calgary.
Proving that even a permanent space hasn’t been able to fence them, the Rabbits’ considerable footprint will be found throughout city venues in January with the 22nd annual High Performance Rodeo. While the festival’s lineup won’t be announced until later in the season, its blend of the theatrical and a range of acts unified only under the aegis of performance have made it a consistent draw for Calgary audiences. From premiering co-operative work like last year’s Five Hole Stories, a full ensemble piece created in conjunction with the Rheostatics, to the attraction of world-renowned performers like performance art pioneer Laurie Anderson, past Rodeo attractions have set lofty precedents for engaging work outside the mainstream.
It is in the company’s past that its 2007-08 season finds perhaps its most easily appealing entry. Though One Yellow Rabbit has long built its reputation on work whose original character makes safe bets all but impossible, a remount of the company’s infamous Ilsa: Queen of the Nazi Love Camp is a certain must-see for audiences that missed any of the satirical musical’s original incarnations.
With its stiletto-clad, eponymous sexpot originated by puppeteer Ronnie Burkett (the role now defined by ensemble member Denise Clarke), the play’s hyperbolic title belies its roots. While sexuality, or at least procreation, are essential elements of the production, it is its focus on high school teacher Jim Keegstra, a Holocaust denier, that truly defined the piece. The definition stuck, if not because of Andy Curtis’s portrayal, then certainly because of the legal troubles that surrounded the play. With playwright Blake Brooker eventually taking the stand in a libel case pursued by Keegstra himself, the legacy of the production is tied inextricably to controversy, raising the kind of rabble that has kept Calgary audiences intrigued with the company for years.
Finally, beyond the company’s mainstage and festival productions, the season also features the Rabbits’ annual Wine Stage and the addition of workshops and readings for two works-in-progress — an adaptation of Aristophanes’s Lysistrata to be produced with Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre and a look at the original epic — Gilgamesh.
It’s a season of characteristic ambition and even a hint of nostalgia, remembering a play that literally landed one of the Rabbits in court, albeit as a witness. If silver means becoming an institution, at least One Yellow Rabbit has had the grace to remind Calgary that chutzpah doesn’t have to fade.
