PREVIEW
Chinook Series
Feb. 7 to 17
ATB Financial Arts Barns, Backstage Theatre
10330 – 84 Ave.
Tickets: $25 with 25 per cent of seats pay-what-you-will. Festival pass $75. Call 780-409-1919 or online at www.chinookseries.ca or at Arts Barns box office.
When the polar vortex drops temperatures down to -30 C, we Albertans tend to dream of chinooks, warm winds that create a balmy, spring-like feel and a new lease on life.
Look no further. It’s time to shed that iron grip of winter and join the Chinook Series, a live multi-disciplinary festival that embraces six different festivals and organizations.
The third annual Chinook Series, which runs Feb. 7 to 17, in various venues around the ATB Financial Arts Barns, involves Fringe Theatre, Expanse Festival, BAM (Black Arts Matter), Sound Off: A Deaf Theatre Festival and Canoe Festival.
All shows whether theatre, dance, music or puppetry are edgy and deliberately unleash new ideas riding the winds of change. Most importantly they challenge theatregoers to broaden horizons and open discussions.
“It’s like a mall or a carnival. You step inside and see all kinds of different things you can choose,” said Vern Thiessen, artistic director of Workshop West Playwrights’ Theatre and producer of the Canoe Festival.
One of the Canoe Festival’s productions is Gemini, a 50-minute play that enjoyed a sold-out run at the 2017 Edmonton International Fringe Festival and won the Elizabeth Sterling Haynes Award for Outstanding Fringe Work.
Using her experience in the service industry, playwright-actress Louise Casemore (OCD) wrote Gemini as a two-hander with Thiessen as her acting partner.
In Gemini, the former St. Albert actress plays Julie, an irreverent, effervescent bartender popping beers, pouring vodka and dispensing sage advice to Ben, a regular.
He’s a creative type who, over time, has become a barfly swilling too much booze to numb his insecurities. Although they have nothing in common except the bar, Ben and Julie develop an unconventional relationship.
“This production is a brand new production. It’s a new full-length script and a new design. I wanted to more fully develop their past. We’ve added about 30 minutes to the show,” said Casemore.
Part of the motivation for digging deeper into each character was the Harvey Weinstein scandal and the rise of popular sites such as #MeToo, a movement against sexual harassment and sexual assault.
“I wanted to explore where the power lies in a relationship. I wanted to incorporate what’s happening now in contemporary events. And I wanted to explore server liability laws, how a server can be held legally responsible for the bar patron. From an experiential standpoint, I wanted to ask the question of where the comfort line is between the hospitality service professional and patron.”
Unlike most Chinook shows running at the ATB Financial Arts Barns, Gemini plays Feb. 8 to 10 and 15 to 17 at The Almanac Bistro on Whyte.
One of the festival’s largest components is Black Arts Matter with eight powerful showcases that touch on the black experience. In A Chitenge Story, a Canadian college student returns to her Zambian ancestral home to find the man who abused her as a child.
In A Lesson On Justice, another play emphasizing the strength and resourcefulness of women, Nyameama, a blind Ghanaian girl defends the family land from a greedy uncle in precolonial Africa.
Instead, playwright Althea Cunningham’s The System looks at Ritalin, a black youth who’s been in child services most of her life and lacks the necessary skills to survive in mainstream society.
Shifting to a different discipline, Reclaiming Black Dance brings together poetry, hip hop, Afrobeats and soca whereas Slow Dance is a collaborative poetry and movement experience that specifically centres on Black Queer Femmes.
“NAZRA curates the collaborative poetry and the movement choreographer is Shanel Edwards. It’s going to be a new, interesting piece that explores black, queer women and I’m excited about it,” noted Thiessen.
In the much-anticipated Sound Off: A Deaf Theatre Festival, another eight shows hit the circuit. The opener, Songs My Mother Never Sung Me, is an opera for families about a deaf mother and her hearing son. Performed in English and ASL, it stars St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumnus Luc Tellier.
Tales from the East Coast, a series of interactive poems and stories by deaf writers, regales its audience with both ASL and MSL (Maritime Sign Language) while Apple Time takes a magical journey using oral speech, signing and puppetry.
Hong Kong Exile sets in motion Room 2084, an Azimuth Theatre collaboration with Mile Zero Dance, that creates a dream machine of movement, light and smoke.
NIUBOI reworks Glass Washrooms, an account of a shy young girl transforming into a strong, powerful androgyne. The work blends storytelling, theatre and dance to facilitate a narrative that encourages audiences to think of trans people as relatable and human.
For Thiessen, the series is all-encompassing.
“It’s a festival dedicated to bring the community and performers together. At the Chinook, you will see all kinds of things you would never see together.”
