Peek behind the curtain Complex dual production 'R+J: Closing Night' brings theatre audience in on panicked process of putting on a show By: Ben Waldman Posted: 5:55 PM CDT Friday, Sep. 4, 2026

Masquerading as the cast and crew of a fictitious theatre, Theatre Projects Manitoba will attempt to pull off an extraordinary feat of live performance next week with a metatheatrical experiment that walks the tightrope between on-stage drama and backstage chaos.

On paper, R+J: Closing Night is the most stylistically and structurally ambitious piece of original, professional theatre to première in Winnipeg since the onset of the pandemic.

At each performance, the 120-member audience will be divided in two. One group will be treated to the fictional Elizabeth Paige Theatre’s closing night production of Romeo and Juliet.

When those performers make their exeunts, the second group — donning headsets as part of the EPT’s Backstage Learning Program — will get an intern’s peek behind the curtain at the offstage disorder the professional company hopes to keep hidden from the spotlight.

At intermission, the two audience groups switch places and the action rewinds, causing worlds to converge and lines to blur between performance and “reality.”

“I think that it’s an opportunity for the audience to experience the work of making theatre in a way that’s fun and including and revealing, peeling back that curtain to see what the duck’s feet are doing under the water,” says Suzie Martin, who will direct.

Keeping those ducks paddling in a row for two simultaneous performances — one on the Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage at Prairie Theatre Exchange and the other in the backstage rehearsal space — is a gargantuan challenge, requiring a level of technical precision that could give even the most level-headed theatre pro a tactical migraine. Tech week, for example, was 10 days.

“Onstage,” actors Laurel Fife, Jack Maier and Alissa Watson have been drafted into the Elizabeth Paige world to portray the company’s stage managers, tasked with maintaining order and calling the shots over the course of the fictional closing night.

“Offstage,” in the booth and in the wings, actual assistant stage managers Patricia Cyre and Devon Helm are working alongside stage manager Jethelo Espaldon Cabilete to ensure the only bumps and bruises occur exactly according to playwright Jessy Ardern’s plan.

In its construction, and even in its program, which features well-known Winnipeg actors performing under Elizabeth Paigean pseudonyms, R+J: Closing Night guides audiences to be more aware of the artifice of the live theatrical experience: the information viewers receive is technically both true and false, honest and deceitful, exact and ambiguous. What even is a theatre company?

The production — conceived by Ardern and Edmonton’s Fox Den Collective over the course of six years — emphasizes the creative team’s interest in exploring and exposing the “liveness” of theatre, says associate director Carmen Osahor.

“There’s an opportunity in live theatre in particular, as opposed to other art forms like film, to bring people right into the action of life,” Osahor says. “It’s been an interesting journey figuring out how to find this line, upholding the professionalism of the Elizabeth Paige Theatre.

“It’s not a community theatre production where things go off the handle because people don’t know how to do their jobs. This is a unique day for these professionals — a very specific time — and there’s all these myriad reasons why things are failing.”

It’s Espaldon Cabilete’s job to make sure that everything fails exactly as scripted.

Perched in the tech booth above the mainstage, the stage manager watches the action in front of him and behind him. He could probably use a third ear: while listening to those two worlds, Espaldon Cabilete is also listening in on the interplay among Fife, Maier and Watson as they call the shots for the fictional cast.

“Are you ready?” sound designer Ashley Au asks Espaldon-Cabilete in the PTE lobby Wednesday.

“Ish,” he says with a smile.

It’s true that even the most casual theatregoer would know who wrote Romeo and Juliet — Shakespeare conspiracy theories notwithstanding — but it’s doubtful that any could summon the name of the stagehand who drew the curtain at the Globe.

While the onstage performances in R+J: Closing Night are bound to be gymnastic illustrations of performative subdivision — roles within roles within roles — their success here, as in every theatrical production, relies on the technical acumen of professionals the audience rarely recognizes.

“I always, in a very facetious, comical way, say that stage management are the ones who don’t get the roses,” says Espaldon Cabilete.

“We get our commendations and applause from our cast, our directors, our production teams who come up afterward and thank us for calling the show really well, for taking care of all of this. We’re kind of like the hub that pulls it together and gives it back in such a way that the technical team can do its job and not worry about A, B or C.”

In set designer Jamie Plummer’s off-set world, there are thousands of micro-decisions that establish the atmosphere of the Elizabeth Paige Theatre’s soon-to-wrap production.

The lived-in rehearsal space looks typical, its dressing tables covered with personal effects. There’s a first aid kit in clear view and a puzzle that the Capulets and Montagues might work together to solve when onstage feuds give way to the possibility of backstage co-operation.

A communal jigsaw is an apt embodiment of the challenges inherent to this production’s assembly.

“There’s a line in one of Juliet’s soliloquies: ‘What if this mixture do not work at all?’ She asks it after she’s just gotten the vial from Friar Lawrence, and she’s trying to decide whether to take it and pretend to be dead — she’s having her doubts,” Martin says.

“I had a moment this week where I wondered, ‘What if this doesn’t work?’ It’s still in a little bit of flux, and it’s going to be a little bit different. But what I can say is, each side of the play works. It’s super fun and gratifying, really rich and the actors are doing wonderfully.

“There’s always a little bit of chaos theory in the timing. If someone’s a tiny bit late on page five, there might be a knock-on effect on page 15.

“It’s been a really interesting puzzle with a lot of smart minds asking good questions, trying to solve it.”

ben.waldman@freepress.mb.ca

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