‘Intimate’ play launches Northern Light season
Artistic director Schmidt takes a rare turn onstage for Keith Bunin’s The Busy World is Hushed

One of Edmonton theatre’s most consistently surprising little companies will launch its upcoming 32nd season with a play that garnered big interest – and a big star, Jill Clayburgh – for its New York premiere last year.

The Busy World is Hushed renews Northern Light Theatre’s relationship with American playwright Keith Bunin, whose breakthrough piece The Credeaux Canvas was onstage at The Third Space in 2004.

NLT artistic director Trevor Schmidt calls The Busy World “an intimate little play, beautiful and painful, about three wounded people, searching for belief – in God, in love, in each other. Delicate, thought-provoking, under the radar, hard.”
Saskatoon’s Skye Brandon directs a cast that includes Hilly Turner as biblical scholar Hannah, Farren Timoteo as her estranged atheist son, and Schmidt himself as the outsider hired to help with Hannah’s late publication. “I’m scared and excited,” says Schmidt, rarely onstage himself at NLT. “I know it will be a life-changing play for me.”

3 Different Heavens premieres at NLT next season. This new two-hander from actor/writer Nathan Cuckow, author of StandUpHomo and star of Kill Your Television’s Monster, gives us two high-contrast mothers brought together by a terrible accident involving their sons. Schmidt, who directs, explains that “one is urban, liberal, outspoken, ballsy; the other is rural, conservative, low-key, Mormon.” The two actors (Blair Wensley, Coralie Carins) play the middle-aged mothers, plus the other woman’s son. “A seminal play,” says Schmidt, “and one that will continue to have a touring life after our production.”

With the provocative Cherish, Ken Duncum, a New Zealand writer unfamiliar on this continent, brings to the stage a contemporary family consisting of one gay couple and one lesbian couple, with a custody battle involving surrogacy. Schmidt’s Canadian premiere production stars Sue Huff, Brad Loucks, Nadien Chu and Richard Meen. “It’s all about responsibility to self and responsibility to others,” says Schmidt. “Ah, and lost potential; I’m a sucker for that.”

In his casting choices and play selection, Schmidt has always been at pains as he says, “to develop new talent and new work.” With the 10th anniversary edition of Urban Tales, which weaves four original new scary tales into a whole, NLT launches another innovation: the country’s first live webcast of a professional show.
The scenario that links playlets by Darrin Hagen, Rosemary Rowe, Jason Chinn and James Hamilton is a rock band, BiFurious, of the “where are they now?” persuasion a la ABBA or Fleetwood Mac, trying to create their farewell album. This season’s artistic intern Taylor Chadwick returns to head the project.

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Job Posting: General Manager

Northern Light Theatre (maternity leave) Edmonton, AB.
(August 2007 - August 2008)
Posted February 27, 2007

Northern Light Theatre History
Northern Light Theatre was founded in 1975, by Scott Swan and Allan Lysell, as Edmonton's first lunch-hour theatre company. Northern Light Theatre (otherwise known as NLT) performed lunch box performances in the Edmonton Art Gallery Theatre weekdays at noon. Throughout the 31 years, NLT has given Edmonton audiences everything from the first taste of Shakespeare in the park, musical revues, classics, and Canadian plays both old and new.

Over the past few years, NLT has further defined themselves as a company concentrated on embracing and promoting local Edmonton talent. Under the creative imagination of the current Artistic Director, Trevor Schmidt, Northern Light Theatre is dedicated to producing intimate and affecting work that speaks to the modern audience of the urban human condition, the failure to find security and the loss of the dreams held by all for love and happiness.

Mandate
To challenge both artist and audience by producing and developing provocative scripts- language rich texts that are dark, poetic, funny- which reflect a complex world, and lead us to question our hierarchy of values.

Responsibilities
The General Manager will be responsible for all aspects of the Theatre1s operations. The ideal candidate will be visionary, creative and possess a strong commitment to both the Theatre and the community it serves.

Theatre Management and Development
In addition to developing, structuring, and coordinating internal theatre policy and guidelines, the General Manager will be responsible for:

- administering the human resources of the department including hiring, supervision, performance appraisals, and professional development of staff;
- working closely with the Artistic Director regarding programming and implementing the Theatre1s five-year strategic plan;
- liaison with other community partners to build strong, supportive external relationships; and
- liaison with Workshop West Theatre for all the building / facility maintenance and rentals.

Financial Management
Working within a the current budget, the General Manager will be responsible for:
- preparing and monitoring the theatre1s financial plan;
- preparing grants and proposals for funding requirements; and,
- further developing and overseeing the Theatre1s fundraising operation.

Candidate Profile
The ideal candidate will possess a bachelor1s degree from an accredited institution in arts administration or drama, with a minimum of three years of professional experience in theatre management. It is essential that the candidate have knowledge and expertise in the following areas:

- financial management;
- grant writing, fundraising, public relations, and marketing experience;
- human resource management; and,
- communicating with theatre staff and problem solving in high pressure situations.

Resume deadline April 15, 2007

NLT offers a competitive salary and benefit package. Northern Light Theatre is an equal opportunity employer. We thank all applicants in advance, but only those selected for an interview will be contacted.

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Local theatre pulls off the Hard Sell
Colin MacLean – Edmonton Sun March 14, 2007

Two men sit in a small dark room lit only by harsh overhead lights. Their eyes have disappeared into dark, malevolent pools of threat.

The two are Pig (Mark Stubbings) and Filth (Dave Clarke), two police officers about to go into the familiar good cop/bad cop routine. Their suspect won't talk. Not surprising when you consider she's a department store dummy.

The short, brutal play is Craig Baxter's Hard Sell, a hit at the Edinburgh Fringe, now in local production from Northern Light Theatre.

Filth is loud, repulsive, menacing and skating on the edge of some sweaty psychosexual fixation. He keeps sticking his hand down his pants as if to assure himself of his own manhood. Filth has little use for his partner. Pig is a passive momma's boy Filth sees as being homosexual.

Hard Sell is yet another exploration of the macho male power dance - masculinity in crisis in a spectacle that the unfortunate, silent female can only sit and watch.
The lady is Kate, the rich widow of Sir James, who is found floating face down in his pool. He is discovered by his business associate Robert. But who did him in?
Because Kate is silent the two cops decide to work out their own idea of what went on in a re-enactment.

The story they come up with is the sale of Kate by Jamie to Robert for L70,000 in some ridiculous power game with Kate as the perfect wife, mother, whore and helpmate, in short "the commodity" - the ultimate prize.

But as the two cops play out their little game, their own distaste for each other surfaces in different, and possibly lethal ways.

There is little that is new here and one wonders why a small Fringe play from Scotland that comes with mixed reviews, should get the full season treatment from a local company - even one so edgy as Northern Light.

The acting is superlative.

Clarke's embittered loner is always fascinating to watch, and no one fills a theatre with menace as effectively, but you know everything you're going to learn about these two in the first few minutes of the show.

Director Trevor Schmidt has placed the three in a small claustrophobic room, surrounded by a scrim, which tends to shut you out rather than include you in the action.

He directs the currents and shifts of the action well and the lighting is nuanced and effective.

But despite the production's impressive staging, after awhile, the posturing of the two protagonists is as empty as the expression on the dummy's face.

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Hard Sell is everything but
David Berry – Vue March 15-21

If “Fringe play” isn’t already an established sub-genre of theatre, we need to get on the case of whoever it is that classifies the species of art.

Not plays that show at a Fringe, mind you, but plays built specifically for the ADHD summertime theatre set. Modest production values; quick, crackling pace; generally leaning on comedy and/or outrageousness of some kind over contemplation: these plays are made to be watched in (hopefully) air-conditioned theatres while salivating over beer gardens and elephant ears – in-out, laugh-gasps, clap cheer and do it all again in 15 minutes.

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with that particular format – I only bring it up because, as far as exemplars of the Fringe play go, Craig Baxter’s Hard Sell might as well be a textbook. Though Trevor Schmidt’s NLT production has gussied up the values considerably – and to pleasing effect – this play, with its hard-boiled cops at each other’s throats, half-gimmicky role-playing to solve a murder case and closing-in-on-the-top spitting obscenity, is like early summertime, with the aimless kind of fun that implies.

It’s not to say there’s nothing extra going on in Hard Sell – there’s a little bit of meta commentary on acting, and some perfunctory stabs at class dynamics – but nevertheless the broader the better, something Schmidt seems to realize to full effect.

Dave Clarke’s Detective Sergeant Filth, the lead investigator in this murder mystery, is an overcooked asshole, equally at home masturbating the change in his pocket while he breathes down the neck of his pretty, silent witness as he is firing shots across his partner’s, Detective Constable Pig’s (Mark Stubbings), bow, from questioning his sexuality to bastardizing the syllables in cun-stable.

Stubbings took a bit longer to get a bead on his uptight dogooder, likely because he had less to play with through the first half, but he settled in admirably, bubbling up with the right amount of seething to make exchanges uncomfortable but still maintaining a soft enough side to make a speech about his deceased mother hit the heart (all the more admirable considering most of the play is aimed at the groin).
The centerpiece is an extended role-laying sequence wherein Pig and Filth act out the various principles in an effort to solve the crime – it’s readily apparent all three men had plenty of fun putting together this sequence. From Filth alternatively hitting on and portraying a slinky, Sharon Stone-esque witness to Pig increasingly playing with his lead detective’s thick head, these scenes crack like the best of high-impact Fringe drama, fun and ominous all at once.

After that, all that’s left is a twist ending, and while I won’t spoil it here, suffice to say, it too has the type of pop that will leave you sousing it out on your way to the green onion cakes.

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Masculinity on display, in all its sweaty thuggery
Machismo looks rotten in black comedy about murder
Liz Nicholls – Edmonton Journal – March 15th

Sergeant Filth and Constable Pig are interrogating a murder suspect.
This latter is a society wife – widow actually, since her husband is floating face-down in the pool – exercising her right to remain silent. Filth, setting the tone, is deploring the constraints of an age in which it’s no longer kosher to “beat the hell out of the suspects or at least show them the instruments of torture.” Pug is nervously deferring to his superior.

That’s the setup of a snarky little two-hander now getting its North American premiere at Northern Light after a splash at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Did I say two? I meant three, really, since the logistical puzzler of the cast list, consisting of Dave Clarke and Mark Stubbings, is resolved by the mannequin performing admirably in the silent role of the woman. Which cuts to the chase without dallying in subtlety. The “hard sell” in the title of Craig Baxter’s 70 minute black comedy is masculinity, in all its sweaty thuggery and brute one-upmanship. May I refer you to Exhibit D, a signed contract by which Kate’s husband has recently sold his wife to his business partner for 60,000 pounds (70,000 with the baby)?
Machismo is up for perusal here. And it looks rotten. Not least because Filth and Pig, who scramble to improvise re-enactments of the crime with its big-money hoity-toity participants, can’t help replaying the dynamics of their own toxic power struggle. Their amateur theatricals, with their sense of class grievance, are a major source of comedy. When Filth says that someone from the hoi polloi at sushi, he spits out the word like someone vomiting a rancid oyster. When he does the mating call of the moneyed male, “make me and offer, make me an offer, make me an offer,” it’s a simulated crescendo that’s like assault.

But Clarke is no mere concept. As Filth, the swaggering bully who sniffs out weakness and threat like a shark toying with a swimmer, he’s the thing itself. It’s a performance of unsavoury splendour that dominates the stage, the space, and the evening. Along with Trevor Schmidt’s clever staging which makes us voyeurs of proceedings in a dark, translucent mesh box, it’s the best thing about the production. Its sheer repelling menace and ferocity with sexual overtones (Filth’s hands stay in his pockets way too much) help us not to notice the play isn’t very hefty.

Think of it as a mood piece with a great gimmick, perhaps. Schmidt’s design and Roy Jackson’s lighting are striking and, as Filth says of Kate, “quality product.” If the dynamic doesn’t quite hit a dangerous equilibrium, it’s mainly because Stubbing’ Pig, resentfully deferential, is never as convincing as his counterpart, either in presence, accent or cadence. True, he’s replaying a scenario by which the underestimated secondary male gets his chance at comeuppance. But still…
In any case, you won’t be getting the witty repartee of a Martin McDonagh or a Joe Orton. You will, however, be getting a battle within a battle. Boys will be boys.

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Old school meets po-mo
Hard Sell has it both ways
Gilbert A. Bouchard – SEE March 15-21

With their exciting new production of Craig Baxter’s Hard Sell, Northern Light Theatre gets to hold their artistic cake and eat it too, deconstructing and reveling in the ever-popular genre of police procedurals.

First off the “cake holding” portion of the show. On the surface, all is quite straightforward and seemingly on the up-and-up in this mystery-besotted show.
We have a play that unfolds crisply, quickly (only 70 minutes), and in real-time as two old school cliché English cops (Dave Clarke’s menacing Sergeant Filth of the shaved head, thick brow and foul mouth counterpointed by Mark Stubbings’ younger, shakier and only slightly more sympathetic Constable Pig) interrogating a wealthy young woman after the suspicious death of her husband.

In an energetic and believable search for the truth in the matter, these two increasingly worked-up and superbly rendered detectives indulge in a goodly dose of good cop/bad cop tactics as well as a great deal of psychological and forensic reconstruction as they poke and prod at the facts of an irritatingly murky crime.
Where the show really gets interesting is in the “cake eating” phase, where the show hunkers down and rips into the genre, starting with the fact that the “woman” the two cops are questioning (and hopefully will get the confession that most procedurals need for a clean wrap-up) is an inherently silent and confessional-less mannequin.

More so, as the interrogation/re-enactments move forward with increasing energy and speed, it becomes harder and harder to figure out if the cops are still talking about the crime they’re investigating, or have started to interrogate themselves.
This show is directed by the ever-cerebral Trevor Schmidt, who also decided to set this edgy and interpersonal and society-arching battle of a play in a cage-like box walled by a fine black mesh, animated by batteries of bright and luridly coloured lights.

The effect is to both distance the audience from the increasingly uncomfortable proceedings as well as to toss you uncomfortably into the midst of he action, creating a wildly effective claustrophobic scenario.
Kudos as well to thespians Clarke and Stubbings. This duo was totally adept in modulating their energy as the text demands, flipping their characters about on a dime as they walk the hard and fine line between cliché and naturalism.

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CHANGING THE GOOD COP-BAD COP FORMULA CAN BE A HARD SELL

DAVID BERRY / david@vueweekly.com

Grimy, tobacco-stained fingers stub another filter into an overflowing ashtray. A single light dangles just overhead, haloing the victim with clinical, invasive, pure white fluorescent light. Beads of sweat on everyone’s forehead as two gnarled, spitting veterans roll up their sleeves and lean in on the puke in front of them. Chairs get tossed, the hapless patsy bounced between good cop and bad cop like a rag doll’s ping-pong ball. If it’s true that prime time television shows almost five acts of violence per hour, it probably also shows about three police interrogations, and that might just be the Law & Orders.

It shouldn’t come as a surprise, then, that Mark Stubbings and Dave Clarke’s first reaction to playing police officers in Craig Baxter’s swirling interrogation-room drama Hard Sell was to bust out some classic hard-line cop questioning behaviour.
“I love those police scenes, where they’re leaning on the guy, trying to make him crack,” admits Stubbings with a wide-eyed smile. “When I was first reading the script, I was just thinking, ‘yeah, this is a boy play with guns, and I’m going to get to come in and toss a chair … ’”

“Yeah, they were ready to turn into them yelling, you know ‘you-want-the-truth-you-can’t-handle-the-truth-aghhhh,’” interrupts director Trevor Schmidt. “I just said, ‘Okay, guys, you can’t do that. You have to find something else.’ Then when we did, it got a lot more interesting and exciting.”

Good on Schmidt for reeling in the Hollywood reaction: as fun as busting some balls can be, to play Baxter’s dizzying morass as straightforward prime time drama wouldn’t just be missing the point, it would be almost impossible. What starts as a seemingly simple questioning by old-school near-retiree Filth (Clarke) and earnest upstart Pig (Stubbings) quickly evolves into a hands-full two-hander as the two attempt to solve a murder mystery by role-playing it out with half the facts and a full-blown rivalry.

“Just figuring out who I’m supposed to be when I say a line is trouble,” says Stubbings with a laugh. “When I swear at him, is it actually Pig saying it, or is it one of the characters he’s playing? Or is it just me, because I’m angry I’m not exactly sure who’s supposed to be saying it?”

“There is a lot of that for us, never mind the audience,” agrees Clarke. “I don’t know if I would say it’s complex, but maybe dense is the better word.
You’re trying to figure out not only what’s going on, but what exactly the characters are figuring out, or trying to figure out, too. And I’m not even sure if we’ve got it figured out, yet.”

“Well, they’re working entirely in hypotheticals, they’re going through all these possibilities of what could have happened, but the instant they decide to go one way, not only do you have this other way which you’re putting aside, you have all these other things on that hypothetical path that could be happening, and you have to figure out why one of them wants it to go that way,” continues Schmidt, almost breathlessly. “The whole time, you’re asking yourself, ‘Now, is this what they think happened, or is that what actually happened, or is this just what is happening right now? What’s the reality of what we’re seeing?”

"You know, it’s really nice, actually,” says Clarke, pointing his finger towards the middle of his forehead, “because it makes your brain pulse right there.”

Fri, Mar 9 - Sun, Mar 18
Hard Sell
Directed by Trevor Schmidt
Written by Craig Baxter
Starring Dave Clarke, Mark Stubbings
Third Space (11516 - 103 Street), $15 - $18

©2006 NLT -11516 - 103 Street Edmonton, AB T5G 2H9
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