Shields festival opens stage doors

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This article was published 24/05/2007 (7077 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

WINNIPEG actor Kevin Klassen had penned a couple of unforeseen fringe festival hits before unveiling his first full-length play at the 2006 Carol Shields Festival of New Works.

Attending the reading of Bleeding Hearts — the story of three brothers who re-form their rock band to write a song for their mother’s funeral — was producer Laurie Lam who was the first at the Manitoba Theatre Centre to be enamoured by the script, but not the last. Last fall MTC optioned Bleeding Hearts and is looking to present it as part the 2008-09 Warehouse Theatre season.

“Without the festival I think I would have been hard pressed to get any attention,” says Klassen, a member of Shakespeare in the Ruins. “It’s a great showcase for playwrights.”

Klassen could join a growing list of dramatists who are emerging from the three-year-old Prairie Theatre Exchange-sponsored event with theatres eager to produce their scripts. Three of the most intriguing productions of 2006-07 season — Head, Summer of My Amazing Luck and The Elmwood Visitation — were first previewed at the festival named after one of Winnipeg’s most famous writers.

“It has had an impact,” says PTE artistic director Bob Metcalfe. “It’s woven itself into the fabric of the theatre community.”

In a relatively short time the festival has offered a first sighting of what locally-written plays will appear on Winnipeg stages in coming years. It is certainly a key measure of success, but not what Metcalfe had in mind when PTE conceived the three-day showcase.

“I’d like it (the measure) to be the number of playwrights who used it or were inspired to keep playwriting because the festival exists,” says Metcalfe. “Part of the initial impetus in creating the festival was to give more profile to playwrights and new creation. Whatever we can do to raise the profile of playwrights is better for theatre.”

Klassen, 35, is back for the second year running with Cue for Treason, which he has adapted from the Geoffrey Trease novel he read in high school. The Elizabethan adventure follows a young sheep farmer who flees his nasty landlord, joins a roving band of actors who end up in London auditioning for Shakespeare’s theatre company. It’s a precursor of the movie Shakespeare in Love.

“I’m sure having Bleeding Hearts read last year went a long way to getting the development grant (from the Manitoba Arts Council) for Cue for Treason,” says Klassen, whose new work will be read tomorrow at 6:30 p.m. at PTE’s Colin Jackson Studio Theatre. “I hope it will be ready for Shakespeare in the Ruins for the 2008 season.”

Other locals having their full-length works-in-progress read include Carolyn Gray, whose followup to The Elmwood Visitation is The Confessional of the Black Penitents; the late Harry Rintoul, whose last completed play The Convergence of Luke will also be read tomorrow night; and Joseph Aragon’s new musical Lucrezia Borgia.

Aragon, who graduated from the National Theatre School in Montreal last year, is using the festival as a warm-up for the 2007 Winnipeg Fringe Festival where he will premiere a full production of Lucrezia Borgia.

He has always aspired to having his work on the PTE stage.

“I don’t know if this counts,” he says. “I’m not getting paid for it. I guess it’s OK.”

Winnipeg dramatist Bob Armstrong says it can’t be underestimated how important it is for a script to meet an audience, like his comedy The Offal Truth did at last year’s festival.

“It was a chance to see where I was losing people, where I was grabbing people, where I was making them laugh and where I made them scratch their heads,” Armstrong says.

The event is called the festival of new works, not festival of new plays as might be expected. That was done purposefully to include non-theatre offerings. For the first time, Royal Winnipeg Ballet will contribute three original ballet pieces choreographed to Leonard Cohen tunes for tonight’s gala. They are being paired with theatre selections specifically written by members of the PTE Playwrights Unit.

As well, Winnipeg artist Jamie Wright will paint his impression of the dance and three works throughout the event.

“I’m hoping the festival is the beginning of a conversation between the disciplines,” Metcalfe says.

All the readings and other presentations are free except tonight’s gala for which admission is $20.

Ú kevin.prokosh@freepress.mb.ca2006 Carol Shields Festival of New Works

TODAY

11:30 a.m. InstaPlay — 90 minute Playwriting Contest

Edmonton Court in Portage Place

7 p.m. Gala Opening — Kevin Kerr (Unity (1918)) keynote speech

Selected musical theatre numbers

Dance/Theatre presentations

PTE Mainstage

TOMORROW

Noon — Short Shots

Edmonton Court

6:30 p.m. — Cue for Treason by Kevin Klassen

Colin Jackson Studio Theatre

7 p.m. — The Confessional of the Black Penitents by Carolyn Gray

PTE Mainstage

9 p.m. — The Convergence of Luke by Harry Rintoul

PTE Mainstage

SATURDAY

Noon — Short Shots

McNally Robinson in Portage Place

1:45 p.m. — InstaPlay Competition winners presented and read

PTE Rehearsal Hall

2:30 p.m. — The Elusive Spark by Janet Munsil

PTE Mainstage

4:30 p.m. — Selections from works in progress

Colin Jackson Studio Theatre

7:30 p.m. — Lucrezia Borgia by Joseph Aragon

PTE Mainstage

9:30 p.m. — Playwrights Cabaret

PTE Rehearsal hall