From theatre to festivals Calgary is a hot bed of culture.
Love Calgary because this city is a hotbed of theatrical creation
If our theatre scene seems a little pleased with itself, that is because it is. We can’t help it if stage performances written and developed by local talent are better than other offerings out there. And there is no shortage of Calgary theatre companies developing current, compelling and fresh work.
“Almost every company has little development extravaganzas that invite new expression,” says Blake Brooker, co-founder and artistic director of One Yellow Rabbit (OYR), and a pioneer of concocting new creations in Calgary.
Now approaching its third decade, OYR’s penchant for developing its own material is no longer the novelty it once was as other groups are also looking internally for ideas to develop.
Alberta Theatre Projects’ Enbridge playRites Festival in February and Sage Theatre’s Ignite! in June are both dedicated entirely to new work. Downstage and Mob Hit Productions each anchors their seasons with original productions. Groups including the Forte Musical Theatre Guild and Swallow-a-bicycle Performance Co-op have recently cropped up with a mandate for new creation. And The Old Trout Puppet Workshop has consistently created amazing new works and helped to make Calgary a hotbed of puppetry. The Workshop’s latest invention, The Tooth Fairy — a kid-friendly take on magical creatures — is part of Vertigo Theatre’s Y Stage Series (April 9 to 11, vertigothreatre.com).
Established theatre heavyweights are in on the action, too. This season, in addition to its Fuse program to help playwrights develop new works, Theatre Calgary mounts two original productions: a reworking of W.O. Mitchell’s classic prairie tale, Jake and the Kid, and a co-production of Beyond Eden, an original musical depicting a mythical journey into the West Coast’s Haida culture (theatrecalgary.com).
Calgary Opera is also developing its fifth commissioned work in less than 10 years. Its East Coast-inspired musical mystery, The Inventor, will be the centrepiece of the opera’s 2010-2011 season.
As for Brooker, he isn’t cowering at the increasing creative competition. His next project, Kawasaki Exit — a mystery set in Tokyo and performed in both English and Japanese — will make its debut this month at OYR’s High Performance Rodeo, Calgary’s International Festival of the Arts (oyr.org).
Brooker credits audiences with an appetite for the avant-garde as the reason newfangled work thrives in Calgary.
“Calgary is open to whatever is invented, whatever is new, whatever is now,” he says. “At least, that’s what it feels like."
Love Calgary because the Alberta Ballet is creating great new works
Alberta Ballet’s artistic director Jean Grand-Maître has become a celebrity magnet. First working with Joni Mitchell to create the original ballet, The Fiddle and the Drum, now Sir Elton John has come calling. At the request of the legendary musician, Grand-Maître is creating a semi-abstract contemporary ballet chronicling John’s flamboyant, tumultuous and meteoric career, set to the songwriter’s own music. Elton debuts in Calgary May 6 to 8.
Love Calgary because despite what Edmonton says, we are festival city
For a long time, the best way to see copious amounts of live music in the city was to go to the Folk Fest and we kind of sat on our laurels because it was so good. But over the last five years, Calgary has grown its music festival offerings.
On opposite ends of the rock spectrum, we have the one-day, mainstream orgy that is VirginFest and the multi-day, multi-venue, indie-flavoured Sled Island. For niche tastes, the Calgary International Reggae Festival and Calgary International Blues Festival are still young, but growing fast, and there’s the reborn Calgary Jazz Festival, which was briefly cancelled back in 2006.
If you’re looking to get out of the city, Carstairs has hosted the Mountain View Music Fest for the last three years. Add to that the festivals dedicated to theatre, arts, culture, film and food, and you’ve got yourself a cornucopia of entertainment all year long.
Despite all of this, Edmonton still has the nerve to refer to itself as “Festival City,” which is patently wrong and kind of insane once you start crunching the numbers. To whit, Edmonton Economic Development Corporations’ website refers to 30 festivals year round, while Calgary boasts more than 40 festivals between May and August, alone.
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