Theatre, art team up

Theatre Northwest and Mills Office Productivity are partnering for art.

The downtown arts supply store and the professional theatre company are working together to use TNW’s plays as a conversation and demonstration point for the visual arts.

“Mills and TNW have partnered to further promote both visual and dramatic art in the city,” said Michael Kast, one of the city’s acclaimed multimedia artists and the art department manager at Mills, as well as a crew member for the theatre company. In that way, Kast embodies what the two arts entities are achieving with this collaboration.

“We are doing this by putting out a call for submissions by local visual artists,” Kast explained.

“The submissions will be based on the theme of each show that TNW produces for it’s mainstage season and perhaps beyond.”

The show getting this focus right now is Million Dollar Quartet. The new production runs at TNW from Nov. 22 to Dec. 12.

It tells the story, using fictional imagination, of the real-life jam session that actually occurred with Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. If you could be a fly on the wall in the studio, that night, this play shows what might have happened. It also splatters the audience with some of the best golden-age rock ‘n’ roll ever created. The soundtrack of this quasi-musical drama includes Hound Dog, Blue Suede Shoes, Folsom Prison Blues, Great Balls of Fire and many more.

With that as your guide, said Kast, the artists of the city are called upon to submit new or existing works to form the downtown display that will shine out from the Mills showcase window at the corner of Fourth Avenue and Brunswick Street.

“The submissions will be juried by myself, (TNW general manager) Marnie Hamagami and (TNW production manager) John Reilly,” said Kast.

“Successful submissions will be displayed in the corner window at Mills along with thematic props and of course promotional material.”

Send digital submissions by email to beuverman@mills.ca with Million Dollar Quartet in the subject line. Submissions will be accepted up until Nov. 10 with successful artists notified by Nov. 15.