DELIVERING SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Fabulist Theatre's first show ramps up diversity of already diverse material
For its first show, Fabulist Theatre is presenting Songs for a New World.
A song cycle by Tony Awardwinning composer Jason Robert Brown, the show was originally produced off-Broadway in 1995 and has become a favourite of students and theatre groups since. For its version, Fabulist Theatre is expanding the fourmember cast to 16, with performers ranging in age from 11 to 62 and with varying degrees of theatre experience. We talked to Fabulist Theatre co-founder (and co-director of Songs for a New World) Mary Littlejohn.
Q Why Songs for a New World for Fabulist Theatre’s first show?
A We (Littlejohn and co-founder Damon Jang) talked about a few different ideas. For this one we felt that, if we could only do one, then this would be it. It really spoke to both of us. We’ve both done it before in different iterations. We knew the show well enough that we felt that we could put it on and know what we’re doing. And we thought the way we were doing it is so relevant to today’s issues.
Q How are you doing it differently?
A A good chunk of the numbers are focusing on immigrants and refugees. The main themes of the show are escaping your old life, that pivotal moment where things shift. We just found that so many of them could be applied to what’s going on in the world today.
Q What about casting?
A That was really exciting. We had these new concepts for the songs that would still remain true to the way they were written. But we thought we would try to be as open in the casting process as possible and see who would come out and cast accordingly. Off of that we made some really exciting choices. We have a lot of women in the cast. We always knew we would because there’s so many more women in musical theatre in general. But the diversity is really exciting. What we’ve managed to do with some of the numbers wouldn’t have happened if certain people hadn’t come out to audition for us.
Q What’s an example?
A There’s one song called Just One Step that’s usually done by a sort of over-the-top, older Jewish lady. We had a few options to cast it traditionally. But the best person for the part turned out to be this woman named Charity Principe. She’s Canadian with Filipino ancestry. We got to ask, Why can’t this character be Filipino? There’s no reason. That number in particular is a new way of doing it.
Q Why start Fabulist Theatre?
A Our main goal was that we wanted to create opportunities for diverse casts, to give roles to actors who might not get a chance to perform, and give opportunities to new performers as well. The thing I like about this particular production is Vancouver has a large Filipino community, and there are a lot of actors with Filipino ancestry in the Vancouver theatre company. In this production they’re actually playing people from the Philippines. You don’t see that much. That being said, I feel there has been a shift in Vancouver theatre, where colour-blind casting is much more of a thing than it used to be, and we’re starting to see more diverse and imaginative casting choices onstage. We wanted to be part of that as well.