Ian Martens

From Die Mrs. Veenstra, Because You Are Old

At new talent festivals, what succeeds isn’t half as interesting as what doesn’t, as the problems that emerging artists encounter force a reassessment of critical standards. At Sage Theatre’s Ignite! festival, for every solid show with one or two languid elements, there was an inferior one with a handful of redeeming qualities. The inexperience showed in some proportion on every production, but emerging talent festivals are less about what is and more about what could be. In this way, Ignite! is not just about showing promise, but displaying it, and the effect — for four years in a row now — has been universally optimistic. Let the record show that Ignite! is an excellent emerging artists festival, and an absolutely essential cornerstone of a developing dramatic arts community like Calgary’s.

In the god of ordinary things, writer John Chapman built a universe rich with detail and offbeat comedy that was unfortunately undersold by extremely conservative design and a somewhat flat performance from the lead (Mat Mailandt). Though simplicity is definitely the side to err on when budget considerations are as tight as they are at Ignite!, a stronger emphasis on the esthetic would definitely go a long way for Chapman’s scripts in the future. Erin Weir’s performance as Mrs. Veenstra in Die Mrs. Veenstra, Because You Are Old (written by Jeff Kubik), though not deficient of emotional range like Mailandt’s, suffered from her apparent determination to play the character as a villain — albeit a complex one.

Though the charisma required to hold an audience’s attention for an hour without the aid of other actors or more than two props is superhuman, in The Year of Falling Down (written by Meg Braem), Jessica Robertshaw gave an absolutely gosh-wow performance that would embarrass most professionals. Brent Podesky was similarly excellent in Unknown Pleasures (written by Jonathan Seinen), though he didn’t have the benefit of a good script like Braem’s. Rife with clever dialogue, interesting-enough characters and far too many soap opera clichés, Unknown Pleasures was perhaps the most troublesome script at the festival, oscillating between witty and eye-rolling, great and merely average.

Relative to the rest of the festival, the problems encountered in the double-bill show weren’t handled quite as gracefully. In Molly (written by Andrea Boyd), performers Mallory Minerson and Cliff Kelly managed to keep a melodramatic story about a couple coping with a miscarriage alive with their ability and chemistry, but the script, while competently written, simply didn’t have enough space to tell the whole story. In a piece as short as Molly, it would be exceptionally difficult to write in enough of a concise backstory to justify all of the “big emotions” that boom like thunder across the mountaintop on which it’s set.

Conversely, The Truth About Fairytales (written by Kristy Lannan) didn’t have quite enough story to fill out even its short runtime. Stories about writers necessarily place a good deal of importance on the nature of storytelling, which is an extremely difficult topic to say anything original about. Paradoxically, many new writers will often write such a story under the misguided assumption they are writing what they know. Whether or not this is true of writer-performer Lannan, the show displayed all of the symptoms: the revelations on the craft were pure bubblegum, and her overenthusiastic delivery further damaged the story’s coherence and verisimilitude.

Despite these obligatory criticisms, if Ignite! represents a proportionate glimpse at the city’s emerging talent, then Calgary theatre has an auspicious future. In most cases, even the shortcomings of Ignite!’s performances served to illustrate another kind of strength, which is, as shortcomings go, a pretty good one to have. If the Ignite! festival is what Calgary’s talent is capable of when it’s emerging, then its future endeavours will be remarkable.