Terry and Dean? Nope, it's William and Luther, but they're still shooting shotguns

DETAILS

The Western! with Dave Lawrence and Paul Spence
Loose Moose Theatre
Loose Moose Theatre
Loose Moose Theatre
Loose Moose Theatre
Friday, May 15 - Friday, May 15 Saturday, May 16 - Saturday, May 16 Friday, May 22 - Friday, May 22 Saturday, May 23 - Saturday, May 23

More in: Comedy

Albertans don’t need a mislabelled shot of Northumberland to tell us we’re a province that has trouble keeping its story straight. Between increased urban populations, tailings ponds, growing arts communities and wheat fields, Alberta is constantly trying to prove it’s something, anything, more than Canada’s Texas. Now Fubar co-stars Dave Lawrence and Paul Spence are set to bring a homegrown western to Loose Moose’s stage with a comedy called, efficiently enough, The Western.

Together, Lawrence, Spence and director Mike Douse are responsible for one of Alberta’s most recognizable films, forbidden cowboy romance notwithstanding. For better or worse, the image of headbangers shotgunning Pilsner in the bush is an instantly recognizable Alberta export. So it’s only appropriate that when Lawrence and Spence wanted to produce a western of their own, they looked no further than their historical backyard.

“[The western] is definitely ingrained in our culture, but I don’t know how accurate it is in terms of where we came from,” says Lawrence. “A lot of it is influenced by American western history, and it’s also sort of overshadowed by the stereotypes created by Hollywood and spaghetti westerns. Once I started looking into Alberta’s history, I found it’s definitely a unique place and very different from most westerns that have been produced.”

Set in 1880, 25 years before Alberta became a province, The Western follows a pair of reunited half-brothers on the run from a drunken buffalo monopolist, played by director Dennis Cahill. Escaping what Lawrence slyly calls a “Three’s Company kind of misunderstanding,” his white, bigoted character, William, has to follow Luther (Spence), his more spiritual Métis brother, through an 80-minute gauntlet of prairie justice, a German filmmaker and an unexpected revelation about pomade. It’s a buddy comedy with a spiritual dimension that’s grounded in history, without grounding its energy.

“[Luther] doesn’t listen to rock music because it hasn’t been invented yet, but he might, for the sake of argument,” says Spence. “These are characters people haven’t seen before, and I think that’ll be a very unique aspect of the show.”

Accompanied by country musician Matt Masters as a wandering troubadour and including Loose Moose regulars Ken Gardner, Lee Lancaster and Immanuela Lawrence, the show will also be an eight-performance workshop of a screenplay that Lawrence and Spence hope to produce with Telefilm support. Just as Loose Moose’s Terry and His Buddy Dean provided Fubar with its main characters, the upcoming production is a step toward another life for The Western’s William and Luther.

Infused with Loose Moose founder Keith Johnstone’s improv techniques, the script’s creation, rehearsal and, now, performance, are all part of finding comedy that runs deeper than slapstick, even if punches fly.

“People thought Fubar was so funny because they identified with the characters so readily,” says Spence, noting that a set of characters from 1880 offers a particular challenge for a 21st century audience. “It’s not a ham-fisted comedy like Airplane, but at the same time it acts on comedy. I don’t think you could confuse it as anything but.”

“We [Lawrence and Spence] see comedy in the same light: You create a very realistic character and you put them in a situation where they have to react in a way they haven’t before, rather than creating these impossible characters and putting them into situations you’ve already seen. I wouldn’t call it Canadian comedy, but it’s certainly not the same as American comedy, where you have two 40-year-old stepbrothers living together.”

Nineteenth century road trips aren’t the only adventures Lawrence and Spence have planned. Filming for a Fubar sequel is set to begin in November, taking Terry and Dean to Fort McMurray, where the pair hope to hit it big. Like Fubar, the film will be improvised on site with Lawrence and Spence’s script treatment guiding each scene. The team has already begun scouting locations.

For Lawrence, who has returned to Alberta after four years in Montreal, one of the best arguments for the province is in its geography. In The Western, the mountains, badlands and prairies that background its heroes’ escape are signposts for the pair’s victories and losses, literal highs and lows. In scouting Fort McMurray, Lawrence found the setting just as striking. “The factories and refineries, you can’t even believe it,” says Lawrence. “It seems like something out of science fiction.”

Alberta is still trying to tell its stories, and characters like Terry, Dean, William and Luther are going to be part of them. Lawrence and Spence are trying to excavate something uniquely, truthfully Albertan, which also happens to be pretty damn funny. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s always pretty.

“[Fort McMurray’s] not the most exciting place,” says Lawrence, but adds in its defence: “They have Earls.”