The Forte Musical Theatre Guild makes its debut with: but this IS my day job...

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but this IS my day job... by Forte Musical Theatre Guild
Pumphouse Theatre
Tuesday, April 21 - Saturday, April 25

More in: Theatre

Playing trombone in Grade 10 for a Bishop Grandin production of West Side Story was a career-altering moment for Joe Slabe. “I was backstage watching the piano player and, as they were playing the last notes of the score, the piano player and flautist broke down, weeping, and I thought: ‘This is powerful stuff,’” he says.

“It was everything I was into. It was music, theatre, big emotions. And the technical side of it, too, the lights, the rigging, the set design…. Musical theatre is everything; it’s like every art form.”

Now, a few decades later, and the author of several musicals of his own, Slabe says West Side Story remains one of his favourites. But you won’t be hearing any West Side Story in the inaugural production of Slabe’s new Calgary theatre company. The Forte Musical Theatre Guild is staging a musical revue of songs from lesser-known musicals that have not yet received professional productions in the city.

All of the songs are based on the theme of making a life in the theatre. The revue, titled but this IS my day job…, features Calgary performers Elinor Holt, Lynley Hall and Daniel Mallett, under the direction of Hal Kerbes.

The Forte Musical Theatre Guild, of which Slabe is the artistic director, is dedicated to developing new musicals, exposing Calgary audiences to lesser-known musical works, and, essentially, redefining audience expectations of the musical art form. “It doesn’t have to be huge, and it doesn’t have to be expensive. I think that’s one of the reasons people give for not doing musicals, that they’re too big and too expensive,” says Slabe.

“Of course, I think there’s room for those big shows, but I’m interested in shows that are smaller in scale, more intimate, more real,” he says, noting that the musicals he has written often have casts of four or five.

The lack of new musicals developed in Calgary is one of the main reasons Slabe started up his company. So, what should a musical have? “It should have characters who are passionate about something because that’s what elevates it into the musical realm,” says Slabe. “There’s a saying that when your emotions are too big to be contained by words, you have to sing them, because the music adds another layer of communication.”

Passion, particularly for musical theatre, is something Slabe has in abundance. He’s been working in the discipline since high school. In fact, this 40-something choir teacher at Bishop Carroll already has New York and London productions of his own musicals under his belt.

Slabe started writing music for his high school drama productions under the encouragement of Marilyn Potts, who now teaches at St. Mary’s University College. He even won a scholarship at the annual High School Drama Festival for a score he wrote for Bishop Grandin’s entry. “It was the first time they had ever given a scholarship for composition,” says Slabe. He then went on to study musical education at the University of Calgary.

“What really kept my hand in [musical theatre] was during the summer after my first year of university, the Canmore Opera House offered shows for Heritage Park patrons. They did a show called One For a Man, Two For a Horse. It was a series of sketches about selling medicine to people based upon archival material from the Glenbow. I ended up writing songs in a turn-of-the-century style,” says Slabe.

Upon graduating from university, Slabe taught the very first musical theatre class at St. Francis High School. He continued to write musical theatre pieces for his students and also wrote several 10- to15-minute musicals for Alberta Theatre Projects (ATP).

One career highlight was his 1996 show called Gray’s Anatomy: The Musical for ATP’s playRites festival. And no, it has nothing to do with the TV show. It was a historical musical based on the rivalry between the co-authors of the famous anatomy text, Gray's Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical Theory, first published in 1858.

Theatre impresario David Mirvish even took a look at the musical but, eventually, turned it down because of its dark themes, including such juicy subject matter as grave robbery.

The year 2004 marked a turning point for Slabe. “I just thought, ‘I need to go some place where I can see a lot of musicals, and I need to be in a city where there’s lots going on, and there’s the expertise,’” Slabe recalls. He then took a sabbatical from teaching to study musical theatre composition in London, England.

While there, he wrote his most-produced musical to date, Austentatious, which follows the trials and tribulations of a community theatre group staging a production of Pride and Prejudice. According to Slabe, it actually started “as a lark,” when several students got together to write and perform a short musical for themselves. It went on to several standing-room-only performances at the Philly Fringe and was selected as one of 18 finalists, out of 400 entries, to make it into the 2007 New York Music Theatre Festival. The New York Times even took notice, giving the production a positive review.

Austentatious just completed a run in London, and Slabe says there’s talk it might be transferred to a theatre in the famed West End.

Along with starting up his new musical theatre company, Slabe is also working on a musical called Maria Rasputin Presents, about the daughter of Grigori Rasputin, the infamous Russian monk and mystic to Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra. “History is fascinating to me. History is just the good stories that have survived,” he says.

“Calgary is right on the cusp of being able to accommodate this kind of theatre,” says Slabe. So, what is his ultimate dream for Forte? “I’d like to see this company develop a show that’s done everywhere around the world.”