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Ghost River Theatre has been blessed with a full year of connecting, recentring, and art making. As we’re approaching the end of our “season” (we’re using the term loosely because we don’t follow a typical theatre season schedule), we wanted to update you all on where we’ve been, where we’re at, and where we’re going. There’s been a lot of talk with words like “unprecedented” and “these challenging times” and although we agree that these words are suitable to describe the last 12 months, something a bit different resonates for us here at Ghost River Theatre. To be honest, we’re still doing what we always do. Yes, we’re wearing masks. Yes, we’ve been working from home. Yes, we’re grappling with systemic changes. But we’re still doing our best to make theatre and art for our community. We’re supporting and paying local artists. We’re striving to fulfill our mission and we’re sticking to our values, the things that matter most to us. Mostly, we’re flowing down the river of these strange times. And we’re happy you’ve been along with us for the ride.
So, what have we been doing in the last year?
Where has the last year gone? It’s seemed to have flown by! Last summer we shot a proof of concept for our upcoming climate thriller So Dark the Sky, which received funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and CBC. More on this very exciting project below.
Because of decreases in COVID-19 restrictions at the time, we were able to present SensoryBox, the most recent installment in our Six Senses Series, as a hybrid in-theatre and online experience in September and October 2020 at the West Village Theatre. You can read our wrap up from that show on our website: www.ghostrivertheatre.com/news/wrapping-up-sensorybox
Last November, we needed to cancel our regular education intensive but instead were able to meet for a week with local Black, Indigenous, POC, and Trans artists to explore new devising methodology. It was a rejuvenating, enlightening, and inspiring experience and we’re grateful to have been able to hold that space in our theatre. To wrap up 2020, we were also very pleased to have our Executive Director, Kate Stadel, recognized as one of Avenue Magazine’s Top 40 Under 40!
In early 2021 we began workshopping our upcoming production of STRUCK, written and directed by Artistic Director Eric Rose. The full workshop was, unfortunately, cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions, so we pivoted to present a reading of the in-progress work to a small group online. In the spring of 2021 we began to develop a new deaf-led devised theatre production with deaf artist Landon Krentz and continued our ongoing development of Laura Anzola’s Blue Borders project, which explores how whale communication and migration studies can create a path to understanding the complexity of immigration, the concept of borders, and our relationship to the world that we inhabit.
SensoryBox was translated and produced in French at L’Uni Theatre in Edmonton while, simultaneously, a TYA version of the show was being developed through Toronto Young People’s Theatre’s Shifting Stages program. We’re so excited our little sensory boxes are being experienced all around the world and in so many different ways and by so many different people!
Where are we now?
This month (June 2021) we’ve been deep into phase two of the workshop development of our upcoming show Makambe Speaks, collaborating with Dora-Award-Winning artist Makambe K. Simamba. The show is continuing to grow and we’re excited to explore the new direction it evolves in.
A Black Woman. A prairie sky. The Ponoka County Fair. An adventure. A fantasy. A WHOLE LOTTA JOKES. Makambe Speaks is an exploration, a provocation, and a deconstruction of the age old question, “Where are you from?”
We’ve also hired a new administrative assistant, Grace Donner, who is going to be joining us in our home at the West Village Theatre to help support our administrative work this summer. She’s been hired through the Canada Summer Jobs program and we’re very pleased to have her with the GRT family. We’re also going to be hiring another position, an artistic associate and we’re looking forward to that as well.
GRT has also been doing some strategic planning over the last few months as well and during that we’ve updated our values a bit. If you haven’t seen them already, we recommend you check them out: www.ghostrivertheatre.com/company.
We have a lot of exciting projects coming up in the next year. And we mean a lot. First, the staff are going to be taking some time off in the summer to take a breath, reconnect, and spend time with family. Then in August we are jumping right back into things by workshopping some new works and developing new collaborations. We’re very pleased to have reached so many new audience members and collaborated with so many new artists this year. And we’re looking forward to doing the same for the rest of 2021 and into 2022 as well. The future is coming and we are delighted to dive into it!
What’s coming up?
We have a special surprise planned for September and October that we aren’t ready to announce yet. So keep your eyes and ears peeled for that! In the meantime, there are more projects we have coming down the river.
In January, we have our rescheduled development time of STRUCK, which is an examination of our Artistic Director Eric Rose’s true story of being struck by lightning as a teenager and the ripples of that event into his adult life. We’re going to be exploring ways to combine in-person audiences and live-feed video capturing with livestreaming for a digital audience in a new hybrid, multimedia artistic style.
After spending so long away from artists in our community we’re eager to return to our educational and outreach initiatives. After our Artists-in-Residence project was delayed because of health restrictions, we decided to carry the same project forward into 2022. So we’ll be working with Janelle Cooper and the Ellipsis Tree Collective to host a project during Black History Month in February 2022.
In the fall we’re going to be returning to our in-person intensives! We have our 4-day Devised Theatre Intensive in November. And looking farther forward we have our famous 3-Week National Devised Theatre Intensive happening in June 2022. We can’t wait to see all you artists back under our roof at the West Village Theatre. Honestly, it’s going to be such a joy to have the creativity and energy of artists working in our space again after it’s been empty for so long.
What else? We’re still developing other shows including Blue Borders with Colombian artist Laura Anzola, Extinction Song with Downstage Theatre and Bucket Club (UK), and Boxes with Montreal’s Jon Lachlan Stewart. It will be quite a while until they’ll be seen on stages here in Calgary, but if you know us you know this is part of our M.O. We develop and mount original productions through a significant investment in imaginative research and development. We know things take time, and we’re okay with that.
Last but not least in our upcoming projects is our climate thriller So Dark the Sky. You thought we were just a theatre company, didn’t you? Well, thanks to funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and CBC, we’re going to be producing an episodic short-form series being developed for an online streaming service. We know we’ve been saying we’re excited about a lot of things but we are really excited about this project!
We have so many projects in development right now! It’s an exhilarating time. We’re looking forward to reconnecting with all of you in person soon. Whether you’re artists, audience members, community folks, family, or friends, we want to see you soon. We want to gather with you in an audience. We want to play with you and make art. We want to share. We want to learn. We want to grow. Together. And that’s all going to happen in this upcoming year. Thank you for being part of the Ghost River Theatre family. So buckle up, stay tuned, and let’s get going on this crazy adventure together.
Here we go!
As we approach the end of the year, we are looking back at our most recent endeavours as a company. This past fall, with the support of the Rozsa Foundation’s Online Programming Grant, we at Ghost River Theatre were able to launch a hybrid presentation of the newly-crafted pandemic production SensoryBox, which was presented both live at the West Village Theatre for a physically distanced audience and streamed online across the world.
The project brought the sense of touch into focus, which was already at the top of mind for many people both at home and abroad. Due to COVID-19, everything we touch is part of our consciousness. This production examined this phenomenon and also what touch means in the midst of a pandemic. We are sitting in the discomfort of the unknown, weathering the storm, waiting out what seems like an eternity. There are so many variables overwhelming all of us so we thought it would be wonderful to just sit down and focus on something joyful. The Rozsa Foundation believed in this idea and gave us the funding and resources to take it on. We, in turn, brought the idea to you, our audience members.
Photo Credit: SensoryBox 2020. Photo by Jaime Vedres
SensoryBox is an exploration of the unknown. It is a positive reframing of something that feels daunting to all of us. The experience took this time of isolation and separation, and offered a sense of connectivity, discovery, and delight from afar. We may be apart, but we’re in this together. That is why it was so important for us to be jumping into hybrid-style productions, where we have audiences in-person at the theatre and watching live online. After experimenting with this new form during SensoryBox, we’re eager to continue developing new productions with similar models in the future. By presenting objects to the viewers, especially those at home, we’re creating a bridge to the immediacy of live performance. Artistic Director Eric Rose said, “It is our intention to celebrate and examine our relationship to touch at this particular moment in time. We are experimenting with how visceral touch can be in a live performance and through an online medium.”
SensoryBox is the latest instalment in our celebrated six-senses series of performances including Tomorrow’s Child, The Intuition Project, and Scent Bar. The series is a rigorous exploration of what happens to the boundaries of narrative when you focus on stimulating the audience's senses. When you take away sight—our primary gateway in the world— how do our imaginations open up to narrative? The performance, which featured one storyteller, Mike Tan, and a mysterious box for each audience member, was performed for sold out audiences here in Calgary and was also viewed by people in Vancouver, Charlottetown, Kingston, Toronto, Pittsburgh, New York, Jacksonville, Amsterdam, New Zealand, and Serbia. As Mike said to the audience during the shows, “The contents of the box in front of you originated here...they passed through this place on the way to you.” It’s a profound connection, a physical and tangible connection, that this experience provided for audience members no matter where they were in the world. This is a global pandemic, it is a holistic human experience, and we’re extremely pleased to have been able to connect with people all across the globe with this fantastic and imaginative project. We look forward to connecting with you all again soon.
Photo Credit: Mike Tan featured in SensoryBox 2020. Photo by Jaime Vedres
Even for live theatre, Tomorrow’s Child was an unusually immersive experience that required audience members to shut out their surroundings.
Spring is here in Calgary now and things are looking more different than ever at Ghost River Theatre. Because of the global pandemic, Eric, Kate and Andrew are working from home for the foreseeable future, which means we're seeing a lot more of our families and a lot less of our theatre. Last week the West Village Theatre announced it would be closing until further notice. Theatres are meant to be active, but our theatre is empty, just like countless others across the country.
So what does that mean for us? Right now, we are making plans to bring some theatre to you. We are fortunate to receive operating funding from the government, so we're not currently in a financial crisis. However, we know that in times like this arts are more important than ever. In a time of self-isolating and social distancing, human connection is more important than ever. Our Executive Director Kate Stadel says, "We want to continue to provide a home for arts and culture in our community because we know that is what people will turn to when they're feeling alone or isolated. We'll be here through these uncertain times."
We have just made the very difficult decision to cancel our upcoming production of ONE by Jason Carnew, which was set to run at the West Village Theatre in Calgary from May 20th to 31st, 2020. You can read more about that below. Ghost River Theatre has always been nimble and adaptive by nature. We’re exploring how to embrace our new reality. We're making plans now on ways for you to journey through these times with us and we'll be announcing some new projects soon, so stay tuned.
In the meantime, we'll take a note from Mayor Nenshi and pass along these wise words to live by now: "Clean hands, clear heads, open hearts."
Kind regards,
Eric, Kate, and Andrew
The Ghost River Theatre Team
Our tour of ONE by Jason Carnew to Factor Theatre in Toronto was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 13th, 2020. We were deeply saddened by this news and we are standing together with all the other companies and artists across Canada that are now in similar circumstances due to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
After closely monitoring the coronavirus pandemic over the last two weeks, Ghost River Theatre has made the decision to cancel the production of ONE in Calgary, which was set to run at the West Village Theatre from May 20th to 31st, 2020. Ghost River Theatre’s top priority is the health and safety of our artists, staff, volunteers, and patrons. Our hearts are with the artists of this show and their families as we say goodbye to this production. We will continue to follow the most up-to-date guidelines from Alberta Health Services, World Health Organization (WHO), and the provincial and federal governments as we look to the future for the company.
If you are a ticket holder for ONE, you will be contacted shortly with information regarding your tickets for this production. Please be patient with us as we work through this troubling time. We also ask you to consider donating the cost of your tickets to Ghost River Theatre. As a non-profit society, we rely on donations from our patrons in order for us to create new works of theatre. This is important now more than ever.
To stay up to date on further developments with Ghost River Theatre, please visit www.ghostrivertheatre.com/news. Thank you for your understanding and support at this time.