Back from the brink Gargoyle Theatre refuses to let massive snowfall end recovery from pandemic By: Ben Waldman Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Wednesday, May. 24, 2023

After starring in Sonja and Richard last February, Marina Stephenson-Kerr and Steven Ratzlaff earned the distinction of being the first actors to take the stage at the Gargoyle Theatre.

An unforgiving Winnipeg winter threatened to also make them the last.

Under the weight of the historic snowfall of 2022, the Ellice Avenue theatre’s roof was compromised, with water seeping into the newly refurbished, repainted and renovated interior.

“It pretty much immediately shut us down,” says Andrew Davidson, the local author who purchased the Mac building in 2019 and funded its rejuvenation.

Over the course of just four years at the helm of the theatre, called “Gargoyle” after his 2008 novel, Davidson has been forced to weather several local storms, along with one particularly pesky global maelstrom.

However, he has remained unmoved in his commitment to the theatre, whose mandate is to workshop new Manitoban works: every show staged at the Gargoyle is a première.

Davidson was not about to allow a few soggy shingles to sink his precious ship. The roof has been replaced and reshingled, and the ceiling, walls and stage top have been restored.

“It’s now stronger than ever,” the Pinawa-born author says.

Just in time: next week, the curtain rises on Breaking Up With Me, the Gargoyle’s second-ever performance, a pop-punk musical written by the brothers Cuinn and Connor Joseph. It’s produced by JMG Creative, whose show The Cause won Best New Manitoba Play honours at the 2019 Winnipeg Fringe Festival.

Breaking Up With Me started as a school project for Cuinn, 26, who was studying astrophysics at the University of Manitoba and then decided to get a theatre degree. The show began as a 20-minute musical piece, with a strong focus on men’s mental health, says production manager Monique Gauthier, 26, who is also Cuinn’s fiancée.

Like the Gargoyle, Breaking Up With Me took its time.

The show went on the backburner for a little while, but JHG Creative, which consists of the Josephs, Gauthier and Jacob Herd, expanded the initial project to be a pop-punk concept album. Then they saw a call for submissions from the Toronto Fringe Festival for the Digital Adams Prize for Musical Theatre.

“Within a matter of a week-and-a-half, our team, mostly Connor, wrote a script,” says Gauthier. JHG earned runner-up honours, just missing out on the $3,000 prize.

After that, the group did a residency with Winnipeg’s One Trunk Theatre company, developing three music videos for Breaking Up With Me. Those promotional materials helped net JHG more than $20,000 in grant funding, mostly from the Manitoba Arts Council.

In 2021, JHG was accepted to the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s residency program, gaining funds to pay actors and the chance to use the RMTC theatre space for a week to develop the show.

A 70-page script expanded to 125 pages, and soon after, JHG took the finished product to the Gargoyle’s pitch day, where aspiring theatre pros make their case for a spot on the new theatre’s stage.

The script centred on a heartbroken young man named Brennan, played by Ian Ingram of local pop-punk band Badfriend. On the advice of his therapist, Brennan creates personas for his mental-health disorders, including anxiety, OCD and depression.

They take the form of a pop-punk band that won’t leave him alone — an emo Inside Out if soundtracked by My Chemical Romance.

Along with the script and music videos, the team brought in recordings of 10 songs, earworms that impressed Davidson with both their musicality and relevance.

“The music was catchy, the lyrics were intelligent, and of course, it’s quite topical now,” says Davidson. He immediately offered a stage slot.

But before the curtain could go up, the roof nearly caved in, delaying the anticipated May 2022 première of Breaking Up With Me by one year.

The delay wasn’t without some benefit: the creative team was able to work with dramaturg Ellen Peterson to iron out a few kinks in the story, says Gauthier.

Meanwhile, the Josephs, both high school teachers — Cuinn teaches theatre, Connor teaches English — had more time to live in the world of pop-punk, a genre which Cuinn calls a tool to express personal struggle.

“In pop-punk, a lot of young men who were taught to bottle up their emotions and resist expressions of anything other than anger were openly expressing vulnerability.”–Connor Joseph

“In pop-punk, a lot of young men who were taught to bottle up their emotions and resist expressions of anything other than anger were openly expressing vulnerability, including deep sadness and anxiousness,” says Connor Joseph.

“Additionally, the genre adds a necessary amount of levity to what can otherwise be a heavy conversation, offering light and hope to its listeners.”

Sometimes, the genre — which includes such bands as Green Day, Fall Out Boy and Paramore — is unfairly maligned as being for teenage girls and skater boys, says Joseph.

“Feeling misunderstood, struggling with mental illness, or being so frustrated that you want to cathartically scream are not (experiences) specific to any group of people,” he says.

“I can say confidently as a 20-something Black man that it is not just for teenage girls.”

In Breaking Up With Me, mental conditions aren’t just abstract ideas, but characters in Brennan’s universe. Duncan Cox, who last played Snoopy at MTYP, will play Depression. Josh Bellan will co-star as OCD, with Kara Joseph playing Anxiety. Nan Fewchuk plays Susan, Brennan’s therapist.

Davidson won’t have to wait so long for the next Gargoyle productions: the theatre will host four performances for the upcoming Winnipeg Fringe Festival, including the première of JHG’s next show, World’s Fair, 1876: The Centennial Exposition.

“I’m currently in the theatre with the air conditioner going,” Davidson said Wednesday, about a year after he discovered the water damage.

“It’s all very exciting.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

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Ben Waldman
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Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

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