The Uncommons

IN DEVELOPMENT— PENDING FUNDING

This series will answer the question Canadians insist on asking Calgarians when they travel east and west: How can such a burgeoning— nay— mushrooming arts scene be sustained in such a redneck town?!

Our answer? Zombies! Fully 73 per cent of our artist population is made up of actual zombies! This means 73 per cent of artists don’t need to buy groceries because what they eat is people’s faces. They don’t need housing ( except to hide in and lurch out of) so they have no crazy heating bills, and the undead don’t require entertainment or lamp light ( they’re basically blind) so there’s no

electricity to pay for either. How can you tell an artist zombie from a real artist? Well, in rehearsal for a play, zombie actors will have more trouble with motivation because they’re dead inside. They might look very similar side- by- side sketching skaters at Olympic Plaza, but when they’re done, it’s the zombie artist who will eat a skater’s face. And then there are the tattoos. “But all Calgary artists have tattoos!” the unsophisticated Easterner might say. Yes, but the zombie artists have way more of them because they have no sensation in their flesh, so they don’t know when to stop. Coast to coast, our nation has been mystified for years, and the recent rebranding of the Arts Commons makes it all the more confounding: no oil money and still they make the art???

Yes. At long last, our dark secret is coming to light, and shooting begins this summer ( pending funding). And the leather- panted Nalgene- bottle- sucking directors, television writers and costume designers with thick- rimmed statement glasses, texting on Jack Singer’s steps or drifting along the mall, won’t give a dang if their cables and trucks are in your way because mostly they have ice for blood and lizard brains and 73 per cent of them could eat your whole head.