>>PREVIEW
TROUT STANLEY
Opens May 2
University of Calgary Department of Drama, Ground Zero Theatre, Blacklist Theatre and Firebelly Theatre
Reeve Theatre (University of Calgary)
In a crooked world where fraternal twins hold a decade-long vigil over a junkyard while a man with a fish’s name is compelled northward, a love story might seem like an uneasy addition to trailer trash, both literal and figurative. And yet, with the sixth annual University of Calgary Alumni Show, a collection of university alumni and current students are tackling a dark and strangely whimsical play whose poetic language belies its simple tale of longing.
Written by Claudia Dey, Trout Stanley is a misanthropic love story focusing on three uniquely damaged people. Living in a trailer at the edge of a junkyard, sisters Grace (Brieanna Moench, BFA ’02) and Sugar (Abby Charchun, BFA ’96, BEd ’99) live in the shadow of their parents’ decade-old deaths. A deeply co-dependant pair, Grace flaunts her beauty on a gaudy billboard outside town while Sugar remains a functional hermit trapped in her home and her mother’s dingy track suit. Then, overnight, with reports of a stripper/Scrabble champion’s disappearance still on the airwaves, a mysterious traveler named Trout Stanley (Trevor Leigh, BFA ’93) appears, skulking silently into the pair’s lives.
Haunting and dark, the play’s language is a distinctive blend of Dey’s poetic style and the salt of the earth vernacular of its rural characters. With dropped s’s and g’s alongside flights into existential questions, it’s a combination the production’s cast refers to as "Shakespeare in a trailer park" – elevated language whose characters and themes are still grounded in the recognizable.
"I think once you go beyond the poetry of the script you see a universality," says Charchun. "It’s a love story, going for what you want in this world and pushing past your fear."
"I think there’s a reason (Dey) set the play in a trailer in the woods," adds Leigh. "The characters are quite rooted to the land, but their hearts and emotions and dreams are poetic. Its setting is realistic, but its emotions and ideas are ideal."
The final production of the university’s mainstage season, Trout Stanley closes a season that began with another kind of literal absurdity, courtesy of Eugene Ionesco’s The Chairs. But while both plays include characters whose language has more to do with stanzas and metaphor than everyday chatter, Trout Stanley’s cast sees a particular beauty in language that doesn’t apologize for its density.
"We all laugh about, ‘We’re going to go to poetry jam sessions,’ and people groan, but if you go and get someone who really knows how to read their poem or someone else’s, it’s a transcendent experience," says Charchun. "The cadence and diction of (their delivery) will change depending on what they’ve written. To be in that place and for it to be real, we can’t make a meal of it."
A co-production directed by Johanne Deleeuw (BFA ’85) that includes the U of C’s drama department, Ground Zero Theatre, the Blacklist Theatre Project and FireBelly Theatre, the alumni show is a consummate example of the university’s importance to Calgary theatre. Of the three collaborating companies, all are "alumni" themselves, started by former students of the university. Closing its season with an unusual love story, the U of C’s final production is in many ways a reminder of the drama department’s own nuanced relationship with the university and the city at large, one riddled with persistent issues of support and funding.
So a troubled love story set in a bent world may be as appropriate an addition as any after all, especially on the stage of one of the city’s primary sources for new artists.
"It seems that this poor department keeps getting more money sucked out of it," says Leigh, referring to repeated budget cuts. "It’s important to show that this institution creates artists and that the people who are now on TV, on film and in theatre across the country are (U of C) alumni."
"It’s not about the three big theatre companies in town anymore," adds Charchun. "And that’s the way it should be." |
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