Theatre Calgary readies for world premieres
Theatre Calgary prepares to celebrate its five decades with fresh shows and choreography
The newly minted artistic director of Theatre Calgary hails its upcoming lineup as a season of new beginnings.
“For me, it is definitely a beginning. This is the first time I’ve ever programmed a season of plays because I’ve never been an artistic director of a company before,” says Stafford Arima, who has been working internationally as a freelance director for more than 20 years.
His first season, 2018-19, will be Theatre Calgary’s 51st.
“Our current season is a celebration of Theatre Calgary’s first 50 years. With it, we are looking back at what the company has achieved in those 50 years. Now we must look ahead at what we can and must achieve.”
When Arima arrived last spring to take over the company, he immediately immersed himself in everything TC was doing and that meant attending readings of the Fuse workshops of plays in progress, one of which was Tara Beagan’s Honour Beat.
“Tara Beagan is one of the leading Indigenous writers in Canada so I was excited that she was bringing her newest play to Theatre Calgary and that was before I even heard a word of it,” recalls Arima, who adds he was moved to laughter and tears at the reading.
“It was a bare-bones script in development, but it was truly compelling.
“Tara has written four really rich Indigenous characters, but the beauty of the play is that you don’t need to be Indigenous to connect with this story and with these emotions. It may be a very specific family, but the family issues she is dealing with are so universal.
“It will be so exciting to have this new work premiere on our Calgary stage.”
When he entered that rehearsal room at TC, Arima was also excited to see Canadian actor and activist Michelle Thrush there.
“I know Michelle’s incredible work in film and television. I figured she was one of the actors for Honour Beat, but she introduced herself as the director.
“If anyone can properly honour the voices of these Indigenous characters in Tara’s play, it’s Michelle. She is a great visionary and a great collaborator.”
Honour Beat, the story of a pair of sisters who face off over the deathbed of their mother, will run at TC Sept. 2-29.
The second of TC’s three world premieres in the upcoming season is Mary and Max: A New Musical, which will run Oct. 14 to Nov. 10.
Based on the 2009 Australian short Claymation film, Mary and Max is the story of two unlikely pen pals. Mary is a lonely, 10-yearold Australian girl who strikes up a correspondence with Max, a 44-year-old New Yorker with Asperger’s syndrome.
Arima says the story and its characters are “quirky, engaging and exciting.
“I’ve been working on this musical for almost five years with its creators, Bobby Cronin and Crystal Skillman. Bobby’s score ... is magical and Crystal’s book tickles the funny bone while it tugs at the heartstrings.
“Bobby and Crystal came to Calgary to be part of the casting for the show and agreed that the talent that came through the door was extraordinary. We are all excited about the creative process that lies ahead for us,” says Arima, who will be directing Mary and Max: A New Musical.
He readily admits “musicals are my passion and to be able to give life to a new work is always a special experience.”
Theatre Calgary’s holiday show will be the seventh running of former artistic director Dennis Garnhum’s stage adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. It will run Nov. 29 to Dec. 23.
“This might have been the year to try a new version of A Christmas Carol because we will be celebrating Stephen Hair’s 25th anniversary as Scrooge. We could have given him something new, but I saw the production and loved it.
“It did extremely well box-officewise, which means Calgarians love it, too. Stephen likes it so we can look at changes in the future, but not this year.”
From Jan. 13 to Feb. 9, TC will present its third world premiere with Boom X, written, directed and produced by Rick Miller. It’s a sequel to Boom, which got its start at the 2015 High Performance Rodeo. It’s since been performed 320 times.
“When I saw Rick Miller’s production of Boom, which was an enormous hit at Theatre Calgary, I told him he’d given all the Baby Boomers a great piece of nostalgia, but I asked him if he’d ever considered a sequel that would do the same for Generation X, which is my generation and his generation.
“I was thrilled with his reply. He said absolutely and agreed to begin working on Boom X immediately. He has been keeping us involved and updated.”
For his Feb. 24 to March 23 slot, Arima has scheduled Phyllis Nagy’s stage adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s powerful 1850 novel The Scarlet Letter, whose heroine Hester Prynne is accused of adultery by her Puritan village and forced to wear a red letter proclaiming her perceived sin.
“Phyllis’ version of The Scarlet Letter definitely gives Hester more of a feminist sensibility than Hawthorne did,” says Arima. “Hester is not a victim in this version. She takes ownership of this experience.
“This is not a dusty old story. Given what is happening in the world today, it couldn’t be more relevant. We are still dealing with issues of marginalizing and judging women. It’s going to be a riveting experience given Montreal’s Micheline Chevrier (one of Canada’s leading feminist artists) has agreed to direct it.”
TC’s main stage season at Arts Commons Max Bell Theatre will close April 7 to May 11 with the musical Billy Elliot, directed by Arima and choreographed by Yukichi Hattori, who recently retired as principal dancer with the Alberta Ballet Company.
“Yukichi and I are going to showcase the incredible dancers we have in this city.
“This is not going to be a copy of any Billy Elliot before it. This will be a Calgary Billy Elliot,” insists Arima, who feels personally connected to the story of a boy fighting for his dream despite naysayers around him.
“The message of Billy Elliot is the story of the dreams that exist in all of us. Billy didn’t want to box. He wanted to dance. People told him he shouldn’t and that he couldn’t, but he wouldn’t listen.
“That’s what people told a young Stafford Arima when he said he wanted to direct on Broadway one day. Like Billy, I wouldn’t let people destroy my dream and I know there are countless people out there who have had a similar experience.”
Arima wants Theatre Calgary’s production to be more than just another show; he wants it to be an event.
Theatre Calgary’s Shakespeare by the Bow offering this year will be Two Gentlemen of Verona adapted by Dean Paul Gibson and Jenna Turk. It will be directed by Dean Paul Gibson, whom audiences will remember for his tour de force performances in The Drowsy Chaperone, Major Barbara and Vigil.
Arima says he wanted his first season at TC to be “a diverse season. I want a bit of the old presented in a new way, which is what we will have in The Scarlet Letter and I wanted the new, which we will have in Honour Beat, Boom X and Mary and Max: A New Musical.
“I wanted things to be familiar, which we will have with Stephen Hair as Scrooge and I wanted the unfamiliar, which we will have with our production of Billy Elliot because it will be a new and exciting version of a well-established show.”