SCORPIO DIGS INTO PAST FOR NUDGE-WINK PLAY
20th-anniversary comedy full of references to former productions
For its 20th anniversary season, Scorpio Theatre commissioned award-winning Calgary playwright Dan Gibbins to write a backstage comedy.
The Burning Pestle is a story of what happens to the hapless Taranto Theatre company when its major patron sees the dress rehearsal of its latest show and decides it needs a new character, an errant knight named The Burning Pestle, to liven up the simple, romantic tale of star-crossed lovers.
To keep the company from certain bankruptcy, the cast must quickly adjust to the new character, new lines and new blocking but not everyone is eager to embrace the challenge.
Pandemonium erupts backstage as well as on stage.
“Because this is Scorpio’s 20th season, they said they wanted a show that would bring back some familiar characters,” says Gibbins, who embraced the call of duty.
“There are references in The Burning Pestle to every show Scorpio has ever done. Some of the references will be easier to spot than others but there are probably a few people who will get them all.
“The character of playwright Phil Payton goes back to a show I wrote in the late ’90s called Two Guys, a Couch and the Fate of the World and the Taranto Theatre Company has appeared in 2006’s Pride and Premadonnas, 2008’s Dying on Stage and 2010’s Writers’ Circles, so Scorpio audiences know what to expect.”
Having been a mainstay of community theatre of almost three decades, Gibbins has experienced his share of backstage catastrophes.
“For Scorpio’s production of The Three Musketeers, we arrived at the Pumphouse on tech day to discover our set designer had been given the measurements from wall to wall of the theatre instead of curtain to curtain so suddenly four feet of set had to disappear. It was a major redesigning feat.
“Things went well for the threeweek run until the closing performance in which we broke a dagger, a bottle, a sword and a door. The production was literally falling apart around us.
“The Burning Pestle is a show within a show. We get to see the show Taranto is putting on as well as all the backstage mayhem that all the new changes create.”