Living The Cowboy Code
Matt Masters and Terrance Houle create a Calgary epic in Don Coyote
By Anthony Charron
Photo by Jeffry Craig
A delusion Western obsessed shut-in hits the streets of Calgary's Beltline to uphold the "Cowboy Code" dressed in a poncho styled from a hunk of carpet with water pistols as armament.
This is the story of Don Coyote, playing June 25 to 28 as part of Sled Island and the duration of Stampede (July 4 to 12) at the Conoco Phillips Theatre in the Glenbow Museum.
Penned by local country and western singer Matt Masters, Don Coyote also features visuals by nationally renowned aboriginal multi-media artist Terrance Houle.
While ostensibly a Cervantes inspired tale about madness and the importance of honour, it also touches on contemporary Calgary issues including crime, racism, and modern reliance on technology. With events centred around the Stampede, it is a tale that could only be told with Calgary as the setting. Using photographs from the Glenbow archives that show Stampedes and the Calgary of yester year in the visual projections adds a historical touch that contrast wild, rollicking scenes of bank managers mistaken for outlaws and the difficult choices one must make between doing what is easy, and doing what is right.
Masters weaves the well-written and well-delivered story in amongst a number of country songs backed by a full band, while Houle adds intersesting bits of film and takes on the role of Coyote's sidekick.
Fans of spaghetti westerns will enjoy the reverb soaked guitar strains, fiddle and pedal steel licks of the band and the numerous references to seminal western films.
Directed by well-know Calgary theatre personality Vanessa Porteous, Don Coyote is a tongue-in-cheek, but still meaningful, look at the city we live in, and what we can all do to make it better.
With tickets priced at a very affordable $7 it is a new, original and entertaining work worth seeing.
For more information visit the Sled Island site or the Glenbow Museum online.
