Theatre companies revisting past glories

The Winnipeg theatre community is slowly beginning to stir back to life after the creative blow-out that was the fringe festival last month.

No one is expending too much energy in the dog days of August and are mostly focused on staging repeats.

Aqua Books is hosting a fringe-fest holdover series beginning with Padre X, the five-star solo show written and performed by Marc Moir about the only Canadian chaplain to win a Victoria Cross. Showtime is 7 p.m. Thursday at the 274 Garry St. bookstore and tickets are $10.

Other fringe revivals coming to Aqua: One Good Marriage (Sept. 22); Unequal Harvest (Sept. 29); When the Killer Mutant Lizards Attack (Oct. 6); UnADULTeRATED Me (Oct. 16); Shorts (Nov. 16 at 7:30 p.m.); and African Folktales (Nov. 16-20), the latter two shows featuring South Africa's Erik de Waal. For tickets call 943-7555.

Over at Manitoba Theatre Centre, artistic director Steven Schipper is reprising its 2000 production of The History of Manitoba from the Beginning of Time to the Present in 45 Minutes as part of the River Barge Festival at The Forks. The free performances featuring the original cast of Robb Paterson, Tracey Napinak and Ross McMillan are set for noon Aug. 28 and 29.

A new theatre troupe is about to make its first public bow Sept. 29 at 7 p.m. with a free public workshop reading of a long-shelved Bruce McManus adaptation of Anton Chekhov's classic Three Sisters at the MTC Warehouse Theatre. Zone41 is a collection of Winnipeg professional actors who want to specialize in presenting re-imagined classics. The independent company's name refers to the Wolseley mosquito-fogging area in which many of the performers live.

Actress Krista Jackson is spearheading the company, which for the reading includes Derek Aasland, Ardith Boxall, Carolyn Gray, Patricia Hunter, Omar Khan, Erin McGrath, Rob McLaughlin, Harry Nelken, Gordon Tanner and Cory Wojcik.

"For about 10 years I have had this company in my head," says Jackson.

Jackson, last seen in Theatre Project's North Main Gothic last spring, was moved to action after being part of the cast of Tom-Tom Theatre's The Winter's Tale last September and enjoyed "cracking open a very difficult classic." The 36-year-old mother became adamant about continuing that kind of stagework with a professional company. If all goes well, zone41 will debut with Three Sisters next September and continue presenting an annual show.

"We're not trying to do too much but to do one thing very well," says Jackson, who trained with stage star Thom Allison in Winnipeg and was his roommate in Toronto. "My passion is to get into something that has already been written and re-invent it."

McManus (Selkirk Avenue, All Restaurant Fires are Arson) was commissioned to write an adaptation of Three Sisters by Prairie Theatre Exchange during the tenure of Allen MacInnis eight years ago. After MacInnis left Winnipeg, the script went unproduced. Recently Jackson got her hands on a copy and made it zone41's first project. McManus has set the Chekhov drama about three Russian women yearning to escape from a stifling province in 1959 Saskatchewan on a Royal Canadian Air Force base in Moose Jaw.

"It's a little bit Chekhov and a lot of McManus," says Jackson.

-- -- --

Apart from FemFest and a touring production of Mamma Mia!, it appears to be a quiet September, theatrically, but there will be a surprise appearance of the Carol Shields Festival of New Works at Prairie Theatre Exchange.

Traditionally the spate of play readings, films and dance is held in May but an abbreviated event dubbed 7.5 has been set for Sept. 22-24 to coincide with national culture days, a Canada-wide interactive celebration of arts and culture.

"We thought it would be good to line it up with culture days so we have a significant activity to offer," says PTE artistic director Bob Metcalfe, "It's a bit of an experiment."

Given that there will be only about four months between festivals, 7.5 will be less comprehensive with no films or dance pieces. Besides a selection of short shots there will be four readings: Sharon Bajer's Burnin' Love (set for the PTE stage March 3); Daniel McIvor's Bingo, about a high school reunion involving tequila shots, stomach punches and puking; Toronto's Julie Tepperman's adaptation of August Strindberg's The Father (to be seen at WJT in January); and a monologue penned by local comic Al Rae tentatively called Man Up.

kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 21, 2010 C10