From Cowtown
Living near a convenience store downtown, where lots of drug deals went down, inspired the latest work of Calgary playwright Simon Mallett.
Premièring at Rogues Theatre, Cowtown explores “the dark side of the boom” in Calgary and those who live on “the wrong side of the C-train tracks.”
“Most people think of Calgary as a clean, safe city, with the Rocky Mountains and the big blue sky, but there is a darker underbelly to the city, too. Simon has tried to shed light on that,” says Cowtown director Joe-Norman Shaw. “He integrates some of the real-life concerns people have into a plotline that is very much Calgary, right now.”
Shaw points to people who come from out East and have trouble finding work, the skyrocketing cost of housing, environmental concerns associated with Calgary’s oil-based economy and the seeming rise in violence and street drug deals as examples. “The play isn't really a social commentary though,” Shaw quickly clarifies. “It’s a thriller that uses Calgary and the dark side of the boom as a backdrop to give the play immediate context.”
The plot involves a young man who works at an oil company and discovers a document that could harm the company’s reputation. So he steals it, and all hell breaks loose. A C-train driver, haunted by the death of someone who runs in front of his train, also makes his way into the story. Add to this a series of other characters, some that are struggling with addiction and are affected by this death in some way. “The play takes place at more than 30 different locations around town,” says Shaw. “It’s fast-paced and filmic. The structure is meant to capture how we've sped up our lives here in Calgary in the past 10 years,” he adds.
A soundscape using sounds taken right off of Calgary’s streets adds to the play’s sense of place. “It’s rare to get a play set in this city,” says Shaw. “It’s time to write our own stories about our own place.”
Cowtown runs from March 26 to April 5 in the Joyce Doolittle Theatre (Pumphouse Theatre).
ABRIDGED HISTORY
When looking at cultural venues that define the city, Lunchbox Theatre comes to mind. Since 1975, it has occupied a space in Bow Valley Square, in Calgary’s downtown core. Now, Lunchbox founders Margaret and Bartley Bard have whipped up more than three decades of the theatre’s performance history into one work, The Complete Works of Lunchbox Theatre.
“It’s a pastiche of work we’ve done over the years,” says Margaret. “If you’ve ever seen The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), you’ll know what to expect.”
Over the course of 45 minutes, the 300 plays Lunchbox Theatre has staged in its 33-year history are identified in the show some way, either through a song, dialogue, or a clip from a movie that was based on an original Lunchbox show. (Several plays that premièred at Lunchbox went on to be made into films, including The Wild Guys and The Parallax Garden.) “It’s fast, so you’ve got to work to keep up with it,” says Margaret.
As this is Lunchbox Theatre’s final season in Bow Valley Square, they felt it was fitting to have a special farewell performance. “There’s something about leaving the space that’s been our home for the past 33 years,” says Margaret. “We have to celebrate it in a special way. We started Lunchbox when we were barely out of theatre school, so it’s interesting for us to watch the chronology of our marriage and our careers play out in this show.”
Fittingly, the cast includes two actors who got their start at Lunchbox, Barbara Gates-Wilson and Grant Linneberg. David LeReaney, a Lunchbox veteran with more than 40 of its shows on his resume, also appears.
Next season, Lunchbox Theatre will have a new home in the Tower Centre across from Vertigo Mystery Theatre. The theatre holds the title of the “world’s longest-running lunchtime theatre,” so, to what new heights can it ascend?
“We’d like to take Lunchbox in the direction of a development theatre for film and television projects. That’s our dream,” says Margaret.
The Complete Works of Lunchbox Theatre runs until April 5 at Bow Valley Square.
GREAT GOOFINESS
For something completely different, Calgary’s St. Mary’s University College is staging The Dada Play. It examines the origins of the Dada movement in Zurich, Switzerland in 1916.
Playwright Mieko Ouchi, whose works The Red Priest and The Blue Light have made appearances at Alberta Theatre Projects’ playRites Festival, wrote her first draft of The Dada Play when she was a Grade 11 student at Western Canada High School.
“The Dada movement was a revolutionary state of mind against established values,” says director Marilyn Potts. “Dadaists thought art should no longer be an interpretation of reality,” she adds, noting that the creation of the movement was intimately connected to a reaction against some of the horrors of the First World War.
The play looks at some of the early characters involved with the Dada movement, including one of its founders, Hugo Ball, and his partner, Emmy Hennings. At the centre of the plot is their love affair and Ball’s descent into a mental asylum. Add to this mix the father of the Russian revolution, Vladimir Lenin, who mingles with the Dadaists in the play. “The play will give you a definite flavour of Dada,” says Potts.
The Dada Play runs April 2 to 4 in the Joan MacLeod Theatre at Bishop Grandin High School.
