Risk and reward

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This article was published 07/03/2025 (249 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Barrels of broccoli, babified boy bands and sword-wielding goblins invaded the Gargoyle Theatre Wednesday for the opening night of Inhibition Exhibition, the Village Conservatory for Music Theatre’s five-day festival of new Manitoban works.

Founded in 2021, the conservatory’s goals include providing both a testing and training ground for local theatre artists, who are encouraged to embrace risk and vulnerability on stage and in the rehearsal hall as they expand their worldviews, managing director Paul De Gurse told the audience as the festival kicked off.

Part of the beauty of the festival — which will also feature a staged reading of playwright Ethan Stark’s Sinking Ship, 11 new musical pieces and a live cabaret version of the conservatory’s podcast Monkeys and Playbills — is that audience members get the chance to see such a wide-ranging variety of performances, says associate producer Daphne Finlayson.

After focusing their wit on labour rights, mental health crises and a 19th-century world’s fair in their most recent productions, the Harry S. Rintoul Award-winning JHG Creative (Breaking Up With Me, The Mailroom) debuted the opening number from its upcoming original musical, a pop-music satire entitled Sugar Boyz!, due at the Gargoyle for this year’s Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. “We’re eating good tonight,” makes for a delicious refrain.

Other standout performances from Wednesday’s opening night included Heather Witherden’s heartfelt and held-breath story Naloxone, an honest and deeply felt monologue about life-saving medical intervention that will feature in Moms Moms Moms at this year’s festival and at the Rec Room on Mother’s Day.

Composer Sara Kreindler shared three songs from her upcoming original musical The Blue Door, each of which was elevated by the rich bass-baritone of David Watson, a veteran of both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the Manitoba Opera. Kreindler’s rollicking, kid-friendly lyrics and Watson’s booming enunciation, especially during a song about broccoli, filled the theatre with laughter.

Tonight at 7:30 p.m., as part of the festival’s Mindful Mayhem program, 11 artists from the conservatory’s 18-week training program will share new works, including Easy as Cake, a musical, idiomatic critique of the English language, and Disorganized Crime, a Mafioso tale choreographed by Shanice Raymond and set to the prologue of West Side Story. The Mindful Mayhem program will run again on Saturday at 2 p.m.

On Saturday at 7:30 p.m., De Gurse will be joined by the Village Conservatory’s artistic associate Jillian Willems for a live cabaret version of their Monkeys and Playbills podcast, entitled Should This Be a Musical?

Launched in 2021, each episode explores the history and ultimate downfall of a Broadway musical that enjoyed fewer than 100 performances on the Great White Way, including early misfires from the likes of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Stephen Sondheim.

De Gurse and Willems, both well-established musical theatre pros in the city, are set to geek out and share selections from shows such as Sondheim’s 1964 flop Anyone Can Whistle, which closed in one week and features very little whistling, De Gurse was dismayed to discover during his pre-show research.

On Sunday, Stark, a filmmaker and Rintoul-nominated playwright (The Ethan in the Room), will host a staged reading of Sinking Ship, a new play that heads to the underworld to expand on the legendary myth of the River Styx ferryman, who encounters a long-lost friend who is crossing the threshold into the afterlife. Featuring Parker Koepnick and Madyson Richard, the reading is scheduled for 2 p.m.

Tickets to all events are cash only at the door, with pay-what-you-can pricing ranging from free to $20. More information can be found at villageconservatory.com.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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