In Flanders Fields musical set for Calgary
Last Updated: Thursday, June 24, 2010 | 3:40 PM MT
A one-act musical about John McCrae, the Canadian doctor and poet who penned the poem
In Flanders Fields, will premiere in November at Calgary’s Lunchbox Theatre.
Lunchbox Theatre released a 2010-11 lineup of seven plays on Wednesday, including three world premieres. It is the first season under artistic director Pamela Halstead.
Gail Hanrahan, Ian Prinsloo and Bob White, all former artistic directors in Calgary, have been recruited to direct during the Lunchbox season.
The unusual theatre company performs short plays at lunch and in the early evening in Calgary.
In Flanders Fields, a musical that outlines McCrae’s experiences in the Great War, was created by writer Robert Gontier and composer and lyricist Nicky Phillips of Toronto.
The other premieres are Christmas comedy With Bells On by drag queen and TV host Darrin Hagen and Shopaholic Husband Hunt by Calgary’s Glenda Stirling, whose Shopaholiccomedy also premiered with Lunchbox Theatre.
Other one-act plays planned for 2010-11:
- Ways and Means by Noel Coward, about the penniless idle rich.
- Lauchie, Liza and Rory, by Sheldon Currie, about twin brothers who love the same woman.
- Wanda’s Visit, by Christopher Durang, about an old flame who becomes the houseguest from hell.
- Tuesdays and Sundays, a drama about star crossed lovers by Daniel Arnold and Medina Hahn.
Lunchbox theatre hosts an annual emerging director presentation and shares its downtown space with other independent theatre groups, including One Yellow Rabbit.
Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/calgary/story/2010/06/24/lunchbox-theatre-season.html?ref=rss#ixzz0roI0zi7E
Lunchbox Theatre’s 35th Anniversary Party
Rounding out the pre-weekend party circuit was Lunchbox Theatre’s 35th anniversary bash on Thursday night at the Auburn Saloon.
June 20, 1975 was the date founders Margaret and Bartley Bard were given the green light to fire up Calgary’s third official theatre company (after Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects), and from that day forward, what is now the world’s longest-running lunchtime theatre company has never looked back. Lunchbox founders, staff, volunteers, donors, sponsors, actors and fans came out in droves to celebrate the big 35, with actress Karen Johnson-Diamond breaking out her A-game standup as expected, serving as emcee.
Deputy mayor Brian Pincott represented on behalf of the big wigs, reminding the crowd of both the importance of the arts to our city, and that he’d worked in every last local theatre other than Lunchbox before trading in his four-time Betty Award-winning lighting design talents to sit in City Hall for a living. Much less depressing was the recognition of four volunteers who’ve given 25 tireless years (and counting) as Lunchbox Theatre volunteers, and a lesson in the theatre company’s history told by general manager Leslie Biles and newly appointed artistic director Pamela Halstead.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Eddies+brew+good+times/3148191/story.html#ixzz0qqcnQgk5
Lunchbox Theatre, a company known for its growing emphasis on laughter in the past few seasons, is taking itself more seriously when it comes to its true mandate — new one-act play development. Accordingly, Lunchbox’s Suncor Energy Stage One Festival of New Work is longer than ever — five weeks.
The 22nd annual festival runs on Fridays and Saturdays, until July 3. Under the new expanded program, 10 plays will be workshopped and then given one reading each.
“There’s nothing being workshopped that I don’t think may potentially end up in our season (of seven plays) in the future,” says Lunchbox artistic director Pamela Halstead.
Two of the Suncor festival plays, In Flanders Fields (a newly expanded musical) and Shopaholic Husband Hunt, are already slotted for the 2010-11 Lunchbox season.
Coming up for public readings this weekend are Halifax playwright Joanne Miller’s Cradle and All (Friday at 6:10 p.m.) and The Whimsy State or The Principality of Outer Baldonia (Saturday at 12:10 p.m.) by Calgary writer A.J. Demers.
The former is a comedy about an artist-mother grappling with her sense of loss of self in having had two children, compounded with the antics of an overbearing mother trying, first, to get her gay son hooked up with an eligible young woman, and second, to get her daughter’s younger child baptized (the kid’s dad is Jewish).
The Whimsy State is based on the true story of the rise and fall of the Nova Scotia micronation (Outer Baldonia) whose founder, in 1948, declared war on Russia — “which is how it all came crashing down,” Halstead says.
“It’s hysterical.”
Admission is free for all Suncor shows, but you can reserve by calling 403-265-4292.
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/entertainment/Ballet+Breakout/3135657/story.html#ixzz0qqc7AAxB
Lunchbox Theatre’s 35th Anniversary Party
By KELLY DOODY SAT, JUN 12 2010
Rounding out the pre-weekend party circuit was Lunchbox Theatre’s 35th Anniversary bash on Thursday night at the Auburn Saloon.
June 20, 1975 was the date founders Margaret and Bartley Bard were given the green light to fire up Calgary’s third official theatre company (after Theatre Calgary and Alberta Theatre Projects), and from that day forward, what is now the world’s longest-running lunchtime theatre company has never looked back.
Lunchbox founders, staff, volunteers, donors, sponsors, actors and fans came out in droves to celebrate the big 35, with actress Karen Johnson-Diamond breaking out her A-game stand-up as expected, serving as emcee extraordinaire.
Deputy Mayor Brian Pincott represented on behalf of the big wigs, reminding the crowd of both the importance of the arts to our city, and that he’d worked in every last local theatre other than Lunchbox before trading in his four-time Betty Award-winning lighting design talentsto sit in City Hall for a living.
Much less depressing was the recognition of four fabulous volunteers who’ve given 25 tireless years (and counting) as Lunchbox Theatre volunteers, and a lesson in the theatre company’s history told by general manager Leslie Biles and newly appointed artistic director Pamela Halstead.
Overall, the 35-year timeline tells of countless actors, directors, productions, location changes, fundraising campaigns, award nominations, award wins and a started-from-scratch theatre company this city should be very, very proud to call their own.
Clem Martini - University of Calgary’s Drama Department Head and Lunchbox Theatre’s most famed playwright
Calgary arts and culture crusader - Deputy Mayor Brian Pincott
Actress, educator, mother, improviser, emcee - it’s the famed Karen Johnson-Diamond
Lunchbox artistic director Pamela Halstead and general manager Leslie Biles show off Lunchbox Theatre’s 35-year-old certificates of incorporation
DJ Kelly, Lunchbox’s marketing and communications guru and chair of the Calgary Performing Arts Alliance
25-year Lunchbox volunteer Wyn Bailey
Lunchbox Theatre’s fantastic founders, Bartley and Margaret Bard
Dave Kelly unplugged in upcoming Calgary readings
Former Breakfast Television host discovers new challenges in writing while mining comedy from childhood memories
By Stephen Hunt, Calgary Herald June 9, 2010
Former CITY TV Breakfast Show host Dave Kelly is working on the scripts he has written to two new plays that will be read in June at Calgary theatres.Photograph by: Lorraine Hjalte, Calgary Herald
Previews
Dave Kelly -Unplugged and Undone, reading today at Theatre Calgary. Reservations: 403-294-7440 Ext. 1344 or e-mail jkinch@theatrecalgary.com
Dad’s Piano, by Dave Kelly Reading at Lunchbox Theatre on June 25 at 12:10 Info:403-2654292p.xm.0
—
One minute Dave Kelly was everyone’s morning smile, as the affable host of Breakfast Television. Then, as 2010 dawned, no more Dave — at least no more Breakfast Television Dave.
Where did he go?
In a nutshell, after spending more than a decade in front of it, Kelly has taken a detour behind the camera to see if he prefers the view from back there.
Part of that involves Kelly Brothers Productions, the video production company he’s running with his brother Rob, doing all sorts of production company-type things — a Big Rock commercial here, a short film there, with lots of other irons in the fire.
The other part is sitting down and writing about his life.
That writing life is taking a public turn this month, when a pair of plays he’s been working on will have readings at Theatre Calgary and the Lunchbox Theatre.
The first, Dave Kelly — Unplugged and Undone — takes place tonight at Theatre Calgary. It’s a one-man show where Kelly explores what it was like growing up in an Edmonton religious family with five brothers, four sisters, and no television.
Religious family in Alberta? That’s not news. Huge family? OK, that has comic potential.
But how, oh how, could a kid survive growing up in Edmonton with no television to block out the view?
That prompts a Dave story that sort of oozes one-man-show material.
“We moved from the north side of Edmonton to the south side of Edmonton when I was in Grade 9,” he says. “And I learned a lesson.
“When I was growing up, I just sort of told people we didn’t have a TV. They all knew there was 10 kids in our family and they knew we all went to church, so I got a fair chunk of abuse.
“When I moved to the south side, I didn’t tell anyone we didn’t have a TV,” he adds. “I would sit on the school bus, and listen to the conversations of everyone on the bus of the shows they watched the night before, so I could fake the conversations at school.”
The genesis of Unplugged and Undone arose out of Kelly doing a few well-received acting roles in town over the past few years. One was The Santaland Diaries (at Lunchbox Theatre), where Kelly played a bummed-out actor working at Macy’s as a Christmas elf; another was a Theatre Calgary production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, in which Kelly played the stage manager, who’s kind of the mayor of the show.
Having Kelly — who regularly topped local lists of most popular television personalities in town — starring in plays proved to be a way to put bums in the seats, which prompted Theatre Calgary artistic director Dennis Garnhum to buy Kelly a beer one day and see if he was up for doing some more stage work.
Kelly replied that he was more interested in creating the script.
He’d already completed a draft and done a workshop of Dad’s Piano with brother Rob (which will be read at the Lunchbox Theatre June 25), but he had something different in mind to pitch to Garnhum.
“What I really love, what I’m really interested in, is to do a one-man show,” he adds, something along the lines of Billy Crystal’s smash hit 700 Sundays, which was a big hit on Broadway a few years back.
So that meant talking about his life. First, Kelly described all the brothers and sisters. Then, religion.
But what brought it all home was the fact that his own mother had never once seen him on TV.
“I’ve been on TV (for 12 years) and she’s never seen me, because she thinks it’s the Devil’s work,” he says. “How the hell does a kid growing up in a crazy religious family end up being the face of morning TV in Calgary?”
Garnhum was hooked.
“We thought, go away, write a bunch of stories, and see if it could take shape (as a play),” Kelly says. “So that’s what we’re doing.”
Of course, mining your childhood for theatrical gold is quite a departure from being a perky morning show host. While Kelly still is a morning person — he’s at the office writing by 6:30 most mornings — he also confesses that part of him, a big part, would rather not write anything at all.
The only relief was discovering that this doesn’t make him a particularly unique writer.
“I was watching My Big Fat Greek Wedding,” he says, “and when the thing went big and Tom Hanks got involved, she (Nia Vardalos) got to meet a bunch of other writers, and she said, what was so amazing and strangely comforting for her was realizing everybody hated writing. Everybody loved having something written, but nobody loved sitting there and getting something written.”
Kelly doesn’t exactly know where his new life will take him, which is alternately thrilling and nerve-racking.
“On my good days — it’s super. When my head is in the right place, I think, ‘This feels awesome, it’s a transition, it’s not going to feel settled and it’s good, so enjoy the shift,’ ” he says. “On the bad days, it’s, ‘What have I done? How am I going to pay the rent? This is insane!’ ”
If the writing life doesn’t pay off, there is the residual goodwill Kelly has built up over a dozen years of being that welcoming face of morning television in Calgary, which he could parlay into another on-air gig.
And, son of a gun, it’s an election year — we’re shopping for a new mayor. Does Kelly have any interest in becoming the next Mayor Dave?
“I like schmoozing,” he says. “I don’t mind that. And I could be charming enough. But if you’re going to be a serious politician, you have to be a little more than that, you know? You’ve gotta be a guy who likes sitting through long meetings, and a guy who likes to talk about policy.”
Either that or you have to be able to play a guy who looks like he likes talking about policy.
“Can you imagine me sitting there all glassy-eyed, when they talk about some overpass?” he asks. “Holy God.”
shunt@theherald.canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Read more: http://www.calgaryherald.com/Mornings+hold+passion+Dave+Kelly/3130702/story.html#ixzz0qTCRLDBm
