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Manitoba artists to be seen in Ottawa with Prairie Scene

By: Mia Rabson

Posted: 02/11/2010 1:00 AM | Comments: 0 (including replies)

Heather Moore: 'a lot of consultation' (DAVID LIPNOWSKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS)

OTTAWA -- When Mother Courage and Her Children opens tonight at the Manitoba Theatre Centre it will bring a piece of the National Arts Centre to Winnipeg.

Next year, the National Arts Centre will bring pieces of Manitoba's arts scene to Ottawa.

From April 26 to May 7, 2011, the NAC will stage Prairie Scene, a festival of more than 500 artists from Manitoba and Saskatchewan across every medium, from dancers and painters to musicians and writers.

It's meant to keep the 'national' in the National Arts Centre.

"The NAC doesn't want to be known just as great big building on the side of the Rideau Canal," said Rosemary Thompson, NAC's director of communications.

The National Arts Centre was created in 1966 to mark Canada's 100th birthday. Its mandate is to develop performing arts in both the capital region and across the country.

Mother Courage is a co-production between the NAC and MTC, and is the second play this year performed by the newly revived NAC English Theatre Company.

Prairie Scene is the fifth in a series of scene festivals planned by the NAC on two-year intervals. The most recent version was B.C. Scene, held in the spring of 2009. It saw 600 artists from British Columbia visit Ottawa for 90 different events over 13 days. The Atlantic region, Alberta, and Quebec have also had their scenes in the sun, while Ontario and the Arctic are still to come.

Thompson, who joined the NAC recently after more than a decade as a CTV national reporter, said one of the things that drew her to the job was the opportunity to participate in events like Prairie Scene.

"Part of the fun of working here is it does have a national reach," she said.

Thompson, who got her start in journalism as a cub reporter with CBC television in Winnipeg, even thinks her prairie connections may have helped her land the job.

"(The scenes) really are a chance to get to know the country through its artists," said Heather Moore, executive director of Prairie Scene.

No artists have yet been confirmed. Moore said about one third of the programming will be decided by next fall.

She's in the middle of regular visits to the Prairies to get a good feel for the arts communities. In Winnipeg, she had an unofficial office space set up at The Fyxx in the Exchange District for what she said felt a lot like blind dating.

"There isn't a formal curatorial process but we're doing a lot of consultation," said Moore. "We don't want to paint some Ottawa vision of what the culture scene is locally."

There will likely be some of the more well-known suspects -- the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Winnipeg Ballet -- but also an entire roster of emerging artists.

Thompson said one of the fun parts of the scene events is that the NAC puts scouts in the audience ready to discover a hot commodity from a region they might not have had the opportunity to find otherwise.

"These may be people well-known in their regions but not elsewhere," she said.

Tamara Kater, executive director of the Winnipeg Folk Festival, is looking at partnering with the NAC on some musical presentations for Prairie Scene.

She moved to Winnipeg from Ottawa a little more than a year ago and is very familiar with the scene-festival concept.

"It brings an amazing reflection of what is going on culturally in a specific region in the country," said Kater.

Kater said one of the reasons she moved to Winnipeg was because she kept running into people who would go on and on about how wonderful the Winnipeg arts scene is.

"There is a buzz about the art that comes out of here," said Kater.

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition February 11, 2010 A6

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