STEPHEN HUNT
Why one Calgary playwright loves her Lunchbox
Playwrights long to find a theatrical home. For Calgary playwright Caroline Russell-King, whose comedy Second Chance, First Love opens there on Monday, there’s never been any doubt about the address of hers: it’s the Lunchbox Theatre.
“I genuinely love Lunchbox,” she says. “I was literary manager here for three years, and I’ve been a dramaturge and commissioned by Lunchbox Theatre (a number of times in the past).
“This is my fourth production, I think, so it feels like home.”
That passion for Lunchbox isn’t restricted to Russell-King, by any means. It’s simply a reflection of the theatre’s willingness to nurture new plays through its annual Suncor Energy Stage One Festival.
Every June, the theatre spends a week workshopping a select number of plays, providing a hands-on menu of dramaturgy, direction and input from professional actors, who put scripts up on their feet, frequently giving playwrights their first opportunity to see and hear the story that, up to that point, existed only in their heads.
“Lunchbox has always had a firm commitment to developing new plays, new talent,” says Russell-King. “It’s part of the esthetic of this theatre company, and part of the passion of the artistic director (Pam Halstead). It’s also by necessity — because not everybody’s writing one-acts. And one of the things, quite frankly, I wanted to do was have secondary productions, and you can’t have secondary productions on a oneact so this is why I have the Palliser Suite.”
That’s Russell-King’s term for a trilogy of comedies she’s written (she’s working on the third one now) all set in the Palliser Hotel.
It’s her very own homage to Neil Simon, who also wrote a hotel trilogy (Plaza Suite, California Suite and London Suite).
Second Chance, First Love is the second instalment in Russell-King’s trilogy, following 2010’s Mr. Fixit. It tells the story of Zelda and Stanley, two old lovers who reunite many years later at the Palliser Hotel.
And while the characters Russell-King writes about are all in transitions of a sort, she doesn’t feel setting a play in a hotel limits the stories she can tell.
“There’s a parameter to work within (setting a play in a hotel), but I don’t find that constraining,” she says. “It’s just like a canvas — I can still paint the picture, but I know where the canvas ends. Does that make sense? That sounds really artsy fartsy. Oh my God!”
Second Chances features Val Pearson, Adam Beauchesne and Wes Tritter, a veteran of many Calgary stages, who’s performed, according to Russell-King, in everything from Mel Gibson’s Bird on a Wire, to different productions at Stage West, Alberta Theatre Projects and Theatre Calgary.
“He came out of retirement (in Victoria) for my play!” she says. “I’m so honoured.”
Russell-King may have lived with her characters on the page, but seeing experienced comedy hands like Pearson and Tritter turn them into flesh and blood does produce surprises, she says.
“They do (surprise me),” she says. “I have two old pros and they come up with stuff.”
In fact, the day she talks to the Herald, she is just back from sitting through a rehearsal. It turns out that, despite the fact that the show is pretty much nailed down and her work done, Russell-King still likes to make it to every one.
“I don’t have to (go to every rehearsal), but I like going, because it’s fun,” she says. “There’s really no place I’d rather be on earth than in a rehearsal hall where they’re doing my play. Are you kidding?”
ON THE HORIZON
There once was a time when magazines featured illustrations, not photographs on their covers. This made a household name out of Norman Rockwell in the U.S., and a highly celebrated — and busy one — out of Oscar Cahen. He was a Canadian abstract painter and illustrator who drew numerous covers and illustrations for Maclean’s, Reader’s Digest, Chatelaine and others back in the 1950s.
Thursday the Museum of Contemporary Art opens the first Canadian solo exhibition of Cahen’s work ever with Oscar Cahen: Canada’s Groundbreaking Illustrator.
“He was our (Canadian) version of Norman Rockwell,” says MOCA’s Jeffrey Spalding. “His work dominated all of the magazines, and all of the covers — he defined the Mad Men era for us, moving from rural to urban sophistication.” The show features a number of original illustrations by Cahen, who died at the age of 40, in a 1956 car accident.
Also opening Thursday at MOCA is Marcel van Eeden: The Lone Lake Murders. The show presents 40 drawings by Van Eeden, a Dutch artist whose work has been exhibited at many of the world’s leading art museums, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The MOCA exhibit will be van Eeden’s first solo exhibition in North America.
Overall, says Spalding, “To our minds, (these are) the most important set of exhibitions we’ve ever done.”
If the NFL really isn’t your bag, there’s a competition that’s more verbal than physical this Sunday at Shelf Life Books. The Calgary Spoken Word Society will host a Youth Poetry Slam Sunday afternoon at Shelf Life, at 2 p.m. It’s located at the corner of 4th St and 13th Ave S.W.
If you long for a little romance in your life, I can’t help you. But maybe the free concert Oct. 9 at the University of Calgary will rekindle the romantic in your soul. That’s where Spanish guitarist Pedro Navarro will be performing, at 7:30 p.m. in the Eckhardt-Gramatte Concert Hall in the Rozsa Centre.
It’s all part of a celebration of the reopening of the Aula Cervantes at the U of C, which is part of the Instito Cervantes, a global network of centres that promote Spanish language and culture. For more about Aula Cervantes and Pedro Navarro, go to www.arts.ucalgary.ca.