Alex the Artist
Alycia Novak Talks Trying to Create During a Pandemic
AThunder Bay playwright says an ongoing collaboration with the Superior Theatre Festival has been slowed by the COVID-19 pandemic, but she’s still determined to bring her musical to the local stage.
Alycia Novak is the writer and creator of Alex the Artist, a musical that tells the story of a young girl who uses her creative gifts to stand up to an evil king who has banned all artists, putting a pall over the town and its people. The performance was first showcased at the 2017 Toronto Fringe KidsFest, and Novak and her partner Chris Tsujiuchi are now working with the Superior Theatre Festival, producer/ director Donna Marie Baratta, and dramaturg Emil Sher to adapt it to a larger stage with the goal of showing it in Thunder Bay. “I smile, I love this piece so much,” Novak says. “The piece is really about what happens when we don’t value artists.”
The story is meant to be something of a rallying cry for creatives, Novak adds, to “stand up [and] create, and you can change the world.” Mother Nature is also a character in the play, she adds, so the story also focuses on what happens when we don’t respect the natural environment around us.
While the story is largely in place, Novak says some necessary tweaks to the script and production needed in order to bring the show to Superior Theatre’s stage are still ongoing, and that the pandemic has made that process difficult. “I was down in Thunder Bay in March [2020] because we were auditioning and it was great; the youth,” she says. “The talent that Thunder Bay has is mind-blowing. I was so excited to put this on its feet for Thunder Bay to see the young talent that we have here. And it fell so fast when COVID just took over, and it was heartbreaking.”
As for when it will be shown, Novak says with so much uncertainty over the pandemic, it’s impossible to put a timeline on it; she’d ultimately prefer to wait for the return of live audiences instead of streaming it or releasing it digitally. “Maybe that’s me being really locked in to live theatre and the energy and [that] there’s nothing better than that,” she says. “As artists, we pivot with the times.”
But ultimately, Novak says, she’s confident the show will go on, and that, given our current situation, Alex the Artist’s story resonates now more than ever. “As an artist, I know I’m struggling in a lot of ways—I know a lot of my friends are struggling,” she says. “As artists, we don’t feel like we’re valued but how many people could say they were able to get through this pandemic or lockdowns without reading a book, listening to music, watching a movie or a TV show? That’s all art.”
For more information and updates on Alex the Artist, visit superiortheatrefestival.com/alex-the-artist.