Hobson's Selection: Group firms mounting finish of season reveals

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It’s Could, which suggests Calgary’s skilled theatres are powering down for the summer time, however for a number of group and unbiased firms, it’s very a lot lights on and curtains up. StoryBook and Workshop theatres are ending their present seasons with big-name reveals, whereas DIY and Opposite Acts theatre firms are presenting a pair of solo reveals.

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StoryBook is ending its forty sixth season with Disney’s Newsies, the story of the 1899 New York Metropolis newspaper carriers’ strike towards tycoon Joseph Pulitzer. The musical relies on the 1992 Disney movie Newsies which featured a 17-year-old Christian Bale enjoying Jack Kelly, the chief of the revolt, with Ann-Margaret as vaudeville star Medda Larkin, and Robert Duvall as newspaper tycoon Joseph Pulitzer. In StoryBook’s model, staged by visiting director Aliza Sarian, Alex Flynn Belanger performs Jack, with Samantha Carson-Smith as Medda and Greg Spielman as Pulitzer.

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This musical model opened on Broadway in 2012 and ran for 1,000 performances earlier than starting a sequence of extremely profitable excursions that have been minimize brief by the pandemic. The Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown simply accomplished its run of the musical on April 1 with StoryBook presenting the Western Canadian premiere.

StoryBook’s inventive director JP Thibodeau says Disney’s Newsies is the perfect present to shut this season as a result of “the story of those younger individuals rising up towards Joseph Pulitzer and all the rich elite in 1899 is the final word inspirational story, and I hope it evokes anybody watching to imagine in themselves and of their voices. Even with seemingly all odds towards you, unbelievable issues can occur once you discover one thing you’re obsessed with to imagine in.”

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Disney’s Newsies runs within the Beddington Arts Centre at 375 Bermuda Drive N.W. from Could 12 to June 13 and is already 80 per cent offered out. Guide tickets at tickets.storybooktheatre.org.

WORKSHOP THEATRE IS DUSTING OFF THE TRIVIAL PURSUIT BOARD

Like StoryBook, Workshop Theatre is having fun with a banner season.

Workshop’s vacation manufacturing of Tiny Tim’s Christmas offered out its total run earlier than opening night time, and each Agatha Christie’s A Homicide is Introduced and the Cushion Cabaret’s model of Anne Hodgson’s youngsters’s play Robin Hood loved packed homes. Workshop’s one-act play, Wrestling With Andy Kaufman, written and carried out by AJ Pearce and Safia Elder, swept this 12 months’s Calgary Area One Act Play Competition, successful greatest manufacturing, greatest actress for Elder, greatest actor for Pearce and greatest unique play for Pearce and Elder. Wrestling With Andy Kaufman will symbolize Calgary on the Provincial One Act Play Competition in Lethbridge the weekend of Could 26 and 27.

To shut its 53rd season, Workshop has chosen Neil Simon’s 1985 comedy The Feminine Odd Couple, which is the feminine model of Simon’s 1965 Broadway hit The Odd Couple, the preferred and profitable of his greater than 30 stage performs. The unique Odd Couple instructed the story of longtime buddies Felix Unger and Oscar Madison who transfer in collectively after separating from their wives. The fastidious Felix and the slovenly Oscar are probably the most mismatched of roommates. The identical is true for buddies turned roommates Florence Unger and Olive Madison who, on Broadway, have been performed by Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno.

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For the Feminine Odd Couple, the well-known poker video games from the unique play are changed by Trivial Pursuit nights, and the hilarious date night time with the giddy British Pigeon sisters turns into attainable hook-ups for Florence and Olive with the Spanish Costazuela brothers.

In Workshop Theatre’s The Feminine Odd Couple, directed by Breezy Manning, Florence and Olive are performed by Lori Bachynski and Tracie Risling with Tim Hanna and Marc Motiejunas as Manolo and Jesus Costazuela. Jenn Wudrich, Kelly Misko, Terry Schmidt and Karen Hanna are The Trivial Pursuit gamers.

The Feminine Odd Couple runs within the Pumphouse’s Victor Mitchell Theatre Could 12-14 and Could 16-20 at 7:30 p.m. with 2:30 p.m. matinees on Could 13, Could 14 and Could 20. Advance tickets can be found at workshoptheatre.ca/theoddcouple.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY IN MUSIC AND SONG

DIY Theatre whose previous productions embody A Doll’s Home, A lot Ado About Nothing and Constellations is presenting its first musical, Every & Each Music, from Could 18-21.

Every & Each Music is a collaboration with Canmore-based singer and songwriter Ellen Braun which DIY’s inventive director Shelby Reinitz calls “a particular one-woman present that takes its audiences on a journey by means of a songwriter-turned-playwright’s life. It’s instructed by means of monologues and unique songs.”

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Reinitz who directed Every & Each Music, says the 90-minute present is “half musical, half drama that was impressed by Braun’s journey to rediscover and honour herself, and, how regardless of the whole lot, she continues to raise her songs out of her coronary heart and into the world.”

With songs comparable to Inchoate, Chasing a Hint, Okay and Forbidden Love, Braun established herself on the indie people music scene each as a solo act and together with her band Trundled and Reinitz says “although Ellen isn’t any stranger to acting on stage, Every & Each Music marks her playwriting and appearing debut. In case you are an artist, this present is unquestionably for you. The universality of the script is bound to resonate with anybody who’s needed to struggle for what they love.”

Every & Each Music will probably be introduced in DIY’s dwelling base at Work Nicer Rail Yards (1206 twentieth Ave. S.E.) Could 18-20 at 7:30 p.m. and Could 21 at 2 p.m. Tickets at diytheatre.org.

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM SOME FRIENDS

Like most younger rising artists, Glynna MacKenzie spends a lot of her spare time studying play scripts, imagining herself in sure roles or attempting to attach with the playwright’s themes.

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One thing profound occurred when MacKenzie learn American playwright Cam Torres’s 2019 one-act play Don’t Feed the Bear, which offers with subjects such because the significance of human connections, and what it means to be really weak within the widespread pursuit of life, liberty and happiness.

“Cam’s play made such an impression on me simply studying it that I wished to be concerned in each side with it, and wished to do it in a means that felt in step with my emotional connection to it,” says MacKenzie. “It’s a ardour mission and a problem I might set for myself.”

MacKenzie admits she’s “by no means produced a play earlier than, but additionally by no means encountered a script that wouldn’t let go of me till I did one thing with it.”

Fortuitously for MacKenzie, Rosalind Jackson Roe agreed to direct Don’t Feed the Bear and Nathan Crockett agreed to additionally develop into concerned, however, better of all, they shared her imaginative and prescient of the play. MacKenzie is a graduate of the Firm of Rogues Masterclass Program and has starred in Rogues’ Comedy of Errors, Morpheus Theatre’s No Intercourse Please We’re British and Night time Duck’s Bluebirds.

That is solely the second time Don’t Feed the Bear has been carried out however it should even have a 3rd manufacturing this summer time on the Hollywood Fringe Competition. Don’t Feed the Bear runs Could 19-21 and Could 25-27 at 7:15 p.m. within the Rose Room of the Alexandra Centre at 922 ninth Ave. S.E. Tickets accessible on the door or prematurely at eventbrite.ca/e/616130231107.