Theatre magician remembered for good cheer
Technical guru brought skill, joy to the job
She could hang theatre lights, or run a lighting board. She could build scenery, and assemble a crew to move it around. Come Fringe time, she could figure out how to transform a school gym, a warehouse, or the backroom of a greasy spoon into a bona fide theatre. More than these elite theatrical skills, though, Kate Bagnall had the rare natural gift — infinitely prized in a labour-intensive, collaborative art form — of spreading laughter and creating collegiality and friendships around her, of making people happy to be a team.
The death of Bagnall in January, age 36, after a spirited two-year struggle with cancer, is a premature exit that leaves the Edmonton theatre scene without one of its brightest lights.
“She was one of the most positive people I’ve every met,” says Citadel production manager Cheryl Hoover. “The thought always was ‘You know it’s going to be a good day when Kate’s on the crew’ … She had the right touch to keep people smiling even when the (lighting) board has just crashed.”
Production crews at every theatre in town, from the Jubilee Auditorium and the Citadel to the tiniest Fringe venue, got the benefit of that combination of professional expertise and sunny nature. At Theatre Network, the Lethbridge-born Bagnall, a Grant MacEwan theatre production grad, was technical director from 1999 to 2002.
Technical director gigs don’t come any more complicated than the Fringe, with its hundreds of shows, dozens of stages, frantic pace of performances. Bagnall was a perfect fit, says Fringe Theatre Adventures’ operations director Mike Ford, an instant pal from their Grant MacEwan student days.
“Setting up stages, running lights, doing stage conversions, getting crews of 10 carpenters and maybe 30 technicians, co-ordinating them, keeping up morale: A lot of people to organize. And then the liaison with artists and unrealistic expectations.”
Siobhan Vipond worked Fringes with Bagnall as techies, though never in the same venue. “Her sense of humour defined her,” says Vipond, president of IATSE Local 210 and now secretary-treasurer of the Alberta Federation of Labour. “Kate was a very funny person. She could find humour in every situation — demanding artists who’d say, ‘I want the lights to go kinda whoosh, and then whoosh.’ ”
“She was no-nonsense; you knew where you stood with Kate,” says Ford. “She had high standards, and people had to live up to them to be in good standing with her … She’s one of those people you give projects to, and then have peace of mind. She created systems we still use today. I can see her fingerprints all over the building.”
Vipond agrees. “With Kate, you knew the work would be done right; safety in theatre was so important to her. And that gave you the freedom to have fun, and not be stressed.”
The lighting technician permanently attached to the Citadel’s intimate Rice house (before its Club reinvention of 2012), Bagnall ran lights for shows like True Love Lies, Another Home Invasion, Courageous, among others.
More recently, upstairs on the Maclab stage, Bagnall lent a hand to the backstage magic of A Christmas Carol: The lights come up on Scrooge’s house; his door knocker magically becomes the face of Jacob Marley. “That was Kate,” says Hoover.
Naturally, Bagnall’s own love story had a theatrical setting. It was at the Citadel, eight years ago in the café bar, she met her future wife, Stella Garcia, then working in the box office.
“There I was sitting at one of the long tables at the Eastbound (now Normand’s ) with the administrative people; Kate was with the technical crew,” says Garcia. “Within two minutes, we just knew. You meet people for a reason.”
They married in February 2013.
“‘Eastbound’ became our mantra,” says Garcia, now supervisor of operations at the Alberta legislature. “She was so funny. Every day, Kate had me on the floor crying with laughter.”
She describes her spouse as a delightful combination of “earthy, artsy, extremely creative.”
Bagnall learned web design. She studied reflexology.
“She was very good at making things, so efficient at solving problems,” says Garcia. “When she was (technical director) at the Fringe, she saved them a thousand hours off the load-in; that’s how her mind worked.”
She loved their two dogs Bear and Raven; the couple launched two companies, Bear-dog Cafe, which sells organic treats for dogs and horses, and the Rescue Pantry in support of rescue dogs.
Again and again, the people who knew her refer to the liveliness and warmth of her personal connections. Two or three weeks after Bagnall and Garcia met, the Cirque du Soleil phoned Bagnall with a job offer in Madrid. She turned them down. Garcia, who’s planning to launch an annual theatre production award in Bagnall’s honour — the details await — recalls the moment.
“‘What’s life without love?’ Kate said. ‘If you can’t share your life with someone, what’s the point?’ ”