On Wednesday evening, Theatre SKAM announced our trail artist line-up for the fifteenth SKAMpede festival! We are so excited to have an incredible array of artists and productions at on the SKAMpede trail.
The line-up is as follows (in alphabetical order):
- Fairy Schedule, “I Do Believe in Ferries”
- A joyful, audience interactive family comedy play starring Sasquatch and his 2 friends; the BC Fairies. Their jobs are to spread kindness and take care of all our local BC forests and critters. Sasquatch and the fairies make other’s dreams come true on a daily basis, but they all struggle with believing in their own dreams. Sasquatch wants to find love: somebody to “believe in him”. The Fairies have a lifelong goal of spotting a mythical creature with their own eyes, an elusive sea beast known as the “BC Ferries”. The play follows their adventure through our province’s different biomes to the coast where maybe….hopefully…they will find a BC Ferry! And for lonely Sasquatch, perhaps love as well.
- A joyful, audience interactive family comedy play starring Sasquatch and his 2 friends; the BC Fairies. Their jobs are to spread kindness and take care of all our local BC forests and critters. Sasquatch and the fairies make other’s dreams come true on a daily basis, but they all struggle with believing in their own dreams. Sasquatch wants to find love: somebody to “believe in him”. The Fairies have a lifelong goal of spotting a mythical creature with their own eyes, an elusive sea beast known as the “BC Ferries”. The play follows their adventure through our province’s different biomes to the coast where maybe….hopefully…they will find a BC Ferry! And for lonely Sasquatch, perhaps love as well.
- Green Hummingbird Productions, “Dawn of the Hermit Crab”
- A 10 minute comedy/drama about the struggle to find home. The play focuses on the interaction between an angry, scared young Girl and a Woman who has no interest or experience in dealing with children. They meet by coincidence on the beach. In between slinging insults at each other, the two find that they are able to form an understanding and connection.
- Melody and Movement,“crawling to the other side of the centre”
- This project is a collaboration between dancer/artist Lee Ingram and violinist/composer Owen Fairbairn. Owen is a classically trained violinist and composer with a love of improvising freely, and a reverence for spontaneous musical expression and the forces of nature. Music is a language which transcends all others and it is especially good at expressing emotions and fundamental natural forces.Lee is a primarily self-taught dancer using improvisation and spontaneity in her work. There is plenty of material for dance, stored in the body, the natural world, people, and in everyday gestures. During each performance, Lee will be responding to Owen, and visa versa, in an improvised state. This relationship becomes a way of also responding to the “now”, which is always happening. Each spontaneous performance is about communication without language and the relationship between humans and the elements of nature. It is an attempt to empty the mind of conscious thought and allow the artist to use their skills to reconvene with the present moment and in turn invite the audience along.
- Salty Broad Productions, “(You’re Invited To) Mary’s Very Beary Special Teddy Bear Picnic”
- The play follows third grader Mary Morbles as she prepares to throw a Teddy Bear Picnic for all her friends. When only one person, the class outcast Amber shows up, and tells Mary the others aren’t coming because they think she’s weird, Mary has a meltdown resulting in a teddy bear massacre. As Mary learns from Amber that it’s okay to be a little bit weird, they begin to reassemble her bears, creating Frankenstein creations with mixed and matched parts. They are weird and perfect in every way and it is a very beary special picnic indeed.
- Sarah Hin Ching U, “Stratum”
- Stratum is a duet performance installation interlacing dance and textile art. The installation resembles a nest that hangs in the middle of multiple trees/poles that are close in proximity. It is composed of long stripes of earth tones silk and mesh fabric that intercross, interlays, hangs, and knots on each other. Together with intricate choreography by Sarah U, Stratum highlights 2 dancers, Sarah U and Jacqueline Ritter, who are long-time collaborators connected by their passion for innovative contemporary dance and partner work.Stratum is an ongoing collaboration between movement and textile art in which these two elements continue to shape and transform each other during the process and performance itself. As the performers enter the nest, they begin to influence the structure and the integrity of the installation with our movement, pulling, shaking, leaning on, giving and receiving weight. They have chosen silk and mesh fabric to compose the majority of the installation because of its elasticity and ability to receive information and conversate with the performers. The stripes of textiles response to our movement by loosening, tightening, dragging, surrendering and resisting. This energetic conversation between the performers and the textile completes Stratum.
- Sydney Hunt, “E. Carr”
- E. Carr is a one woman show about the life and times of Edith Carr. Less known than her sister Emily, Edith was an artist, philanthropist, matriarch and backbone to the Carr family. On top of her remarkable personal life, Edith founded the YWCA of Victoria. This show will be a touching story of what it’s like to be the sister, the other and the runner up, even after achieving all you can. Bringing Edith to life will be a fun example of what biographic theatre can look like.
- SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacles, “Suitable Transpo: A Junk Puppet Spectacle”
- From a distance, 2 puppeteers, 2 clowns and a musician ride & push 3 suitcase-laden bicycles from three different directions. As they march towards the place where the three paths meet, items fall and the puppeteers must scoop them up to put them back on their rightful places on the bicycles – arguing amongst themselves about where exactly the items belong. When they reach each other, they discover that all of their junk can be combined together to make a stage space. The musician plugs his bass into a portable amp and starts to play, the suitcases open up to reveal little homemade worlds, and the puppet show begins. A butterfly is born from the first suitcase. As it flies out of its frame it is snapped up by a large red bird. The bird is captured and made into a meal by the clown. This whimsical, dark, moving junk-art installation is a reflection on the cycles of life and death.
- Two Little Theatre, “Bridge”
- On May 26, 1896, Alice Smith and her sisters hop on the back of an overcrowded streetcar headed to Macaulay point to watch the Victoria Day celebrations. Like the streetcar, Alice is brimming with life and expectation, but as they cross Point Ellice bridge she hears a loud crack. The beams collapse under the weight of the streetcar, everything tumbles into the murky sea below, and despite heroic rescue efforts, 55 would-be celebrants die. Today, very few residents remember the disaster. No one remembers Alice.Emerging from the water after 130 years, Alice dredges up the tragic tale of this disaster along with her own story. The story of a young woman gone and forgotten, but perhaps not yet lost to history.
And there’s more on the way! On May 31th from 5:00 p.m. – 7:00 p.m. at Studio 846, SKAM will be announcing the SKAMpede HUB artists. You can RSVP to our Facebook event here!
UPDATE:
Unfortunately, Two Little Theatre is no longer able to perform at SKAMpede. We will still have eight trail artists. Ez’s Dandies: a youth led performance art collective, facilitated by Ez Sybom will appear at this year’s festival. The collective aims to create opportunities for young people to take the reigns on their own stories, and build a community of artists working together to create genuine theatre by and for young adults. Their show is titled Diamonds Aren’t Forever and it is both an homage and a parody of classic spy movies, as well as a subtle anti-capitalist satire. It’s a campy, comedic take on the classic interrogation scene wherein our dashing, witty protagonist finds himself strapped to a table in front of a death ray. Of course, he can’t die without a gloating monologue from his arch nemesis. Throughout the pre-death banter, the two realize they may have more in common than they thought. With some convincing from the supervillain’s sassy secretary/henchman, the hero re-evaluates his loyalties.