MTYP's impact goes beyond what happens on its stage

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MTYP emerged from cultural anonymity with its home at The Forks. (JOE.BRYKSA@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

A decade ago Manitoba Theatre for Young People was a striving but often overlooked company quartered in a dingy, inadequately heated Exchange District building and lacking a home stage of its own.

On Oct. 2, 1999, the organization emerged from cultural anonymity with the grand opening of the Canwest Performing Arts Centre, a colourful and distinctive $5.27 million structure that stood out at the city's birthplace at The Forks. The 325-seat re-configurable stage and education facility put MTYP on the artistic map of Winnipeg and gave it young people's theatre a prominence and relevance it had never enjoyed before.

"We've created an identity for young audiences, one cultural space that belongs to them and that identity has become a landmark for the country," says artistic director Leslee Silverman.

More conspicuous is how MTYP has spread its artistic wings and taken off in all directions outside the city, introducing its work throughout the world.

"We tour because it's even more important for kids than adults in this country to see that there is such a thing as Canadian work and that it is created everywhere, and that it is inventive and relevant whether you live in Longueuil or Chilliwack," says Silverman.

MTYP's signature work Comet in Moominland was invited to a Hong Kong festival in 2003 but only the sets arrived before the tour was cancelled due to the SARS outbreak. The unique production, performed under a tent, did make it to the New Victory Theatre in New York City in 2007, becoming the first Winnipeg theatre company to open in the American theatre capital.

Canadian stage star Nicola Cavendish approached MTYP about her performing a children's show called Martha, and in 2003 became the first company to perform in English at the Maison Theatre in Montreal as part of a tour that also went to Vancouver. In March, MTYP will première Rick: The Rick Hansen Story as part of the 2010 Cultural Olympiad running opposite the Vancouver Olympics.

Besides its globe-trotting productions, MTYP will this year have over 1,700 students come through its doors to study theatre and another 425 enrolled in its Aboriginal Arts Training and Mentorship Program. Playwrights and directors don't have far to go if they want to know what the kids think.

"We are on the pulse of the child," says Silverman, the first recipient of the Manitoba Arts Council Award of Distinction. "Both in form and content the work is driven by actual subjects being here all the time."

Having one building where theatre can be rehearsed, presented and taught can nurture the aspirations of students. Silverman points to a student named Josh Ranville who came to MTYP as an 11-year-old, became an apprentice in the Aboriginal Arts program, joined the cast of the touring production of Cranked and is now an adult member of the Winnipeg arts community.

Will the training of aboriginal young people accomplish more than turning out future actors, directors and designers?

"It's having a wide impact," she says. "Studies say that when you transform one child, you transform their family, you transform their school and you transform their community. Every one of the 425 kids in that program is changed. Art transforms a community and humanity more than any other force."

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A student theatre troupe has landed the Canadian premiere of Speech & Debate, an off-Broadway 2007 hit.

Stage 16's third ever production opens tonight at the Rachel Browne Theatre (in the former Crocus building on Bannatyne Avenue) with Stephen Karam's dark comedy about a trio of high school misfits who form their own speech and debate club to expose a sex scandal involving one of their teachers.

"It has a fresh, contemporary look at teenager life and focuses on outsiders in high school," says director Ryan Segal. "It's in the same vein of Glee (the new TV series). It has musical numbers and involves a theatre diva, a high school nerd and an openly gay kid. They are stereotypes but the characters are not stereotypical."

In order to replicate the everyday reality of a teen in 2009, much of the Speech & Debate plot is communicated through chat rooms, cellphone conversations, text messaging and blogging.

"It's essential to the show," says Segal, a 20-year-old University of Manitoba student. "It seemed necessary to show the impact of technology on high school students."

Segal is making his directing debut but the experience has not changed his mind about becoming a theatrical impresario some day.

"It's my first directing and probably my last," says Segal. "It's scary, but I had to try it once. It's not for me. There's a steep learning curve about how to overcome working with friends. It's hard to keep the show and the friendships separate, especially for me."

Speech & Debate runs nightly at 8 through Saturday, when there will also be a matinee at 2 p.m. Rush tickets are $10; reserve at 896-7125.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition October 1, 2009 D3