David Cooper

Kyle Cameron in Cranked at Vertigo

Cranked

Part of the Y Stage series at Vertigo Theatre, which focuses on youth issues, Cranked follows the life of Stan (Kyle Cameron), a promising freestyle MC who messes it all up with crystal meth.

The play uses monologues, spoken word and hip hop to tell Stan’s story. Leading up to a freestyle competition, he attempts to take the stage free of the drug that controls his life.

Cameron, an actor who is not a freestyler, plays seven different characters throughout the play. He says the company, Vanouver’s Green Thumbs Theatre, was fully aware of the challenges in mounting a youth-oriented hip hop play. “You see all this stuff in the media that’s companies trying to access the youth market by using hip hop, and it’s almost exclusively, to use an archaic word, square white people.”

After a recent successful run off-Broadway, performing for kids from New York — the birthplace of hip hop — it seems the play has transcended those awkward white-boy concerns.

Written by Michael P. Northey, directed by Patrick MacDonald and produced by Green Thumbs Theatre, Cranked runs March 6 and 7 at Vertigo Theatre.

Tree Hugger

Political activism can be tough, particularly if no one pays you any attention. That’s the conundrum faced by Angela, the latte- and McDonald’s-loving character in Tree Hugger, the latest instalment of Urban Curvz’s Heroines Series.

Written and performed by Ayla Stephen, this one-woman show features a lonely girl up in a tree as a memorial to her recently deceased girlfriend, and protesting Calgary’s rapid development.

Directed by Jamie Dundson and featuring music by Dan Perry, Tree Hugger runs until March 14 at Birds & Stone Theatre.

Glass Menagerie

Theatre Encounter is taking on the 1944 Tennessee Williams classic, The Glass Menagerie. The production is directed by co-artistic director Michael Fenton.

Theatre Encounter is a contemporary theatre performance company that pushes the limits, so this isn’t Williams as your grandmother remembers. Fenton says he wanted to find a way to express the emotions contained in German expressionist paintings, which he sees linked to Williams’s work, and says he’s attempting to portray the feel of thick brush strokes through the collision of tone, tempo and volume. I’m not entirely sure what that means, but the combination of contemporary creativity and classic playwrighting should be intriguing.

The play tackles loss, abandonment and the dichotomy between reality and illusion. It runs until March 14 at Dancers’ Studio West.

Tornado Magnet

The trailer park really does get a bum rap, particularly with the crew of Trailer Park Boys playing on our small screens. Playwright Darin Hagen takes a more compassionate view of the park in his one-woman production Tornado Magnet, featuring Dotty (Karen Johnson-Diamond), an eccentric booster of trailer park living.

Directed by Kate Newby, Tornado Magnet runs until March 21 at Lunchbox Theatre.