Preparing for the Apocalypse (and being misunderstood): the Guild Hall’s ‘WROL’
WROL (Without Rule of Law) at the Guild is an all youth cast with no adult characters in this play about 7 girls preparing for the apocalypse
Brian Fidler
Every January we’re Pivoting
Pivot Festival brings laughs sunshine, & much-needed break from the winter blues. 14th year of bringing the unexpected to Whitehorse.
A dinner party: The Guild brings a new play to town for its first show this year
A Dinner Party at The Guild. “I love Whitehorse audiences, there’s an eagerness & openness to absurdity … and this play gets really weird.”
Welcome back… to the Round Back
With an improved ‘Round Back venue in place, the Guild Hall unveils a new series of performances. Music, theatre, comedy and more.
Every Brilliant Thing
Every Brilliant Thing is a delightfully funny play about depression, but it’s not depressing. It’s also no surprise that the Guild theatre’s first indoor play of the season is about connection.
The shows must go on!
Yukon theatre companies are finding creative ways to present work. Adapting shows and developing unique formats to fit with our new reality.
Isolation, underwear fights and hanging around the house
How Isolation, underwear fights and hanging around the house inspiration for Theatre in the Bush. ‘That would make a great spot for a show.’”
Subversive and sexy
After an absence of two decades, eight low-rent vaudevillians trying to evade the secret police in their homeland have returned to Whitehorse. The Guild Theatre opens its 2019/20 season this week with a remount of the wacky comedy, El Crocodor, written by Vancouver playwright Peter Anderson. Describing it as “just the most ridiculous show,” director Allyn Walton …
Downfall of a Salesman
The Guild Theatre will launch its 2018–19 season this week with Lawrence and Holloman, a darkly hilarious two-hander by award-winning Canadian playwright Morris Panych. First produced at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 1998, it later inspired a film by the same name, starring Ben Cotton and Daniel Arnold, which drew mixed critical and box office response. …
Spelling it out
Mary Sloan was only vaguely aware of the 2005 smash Broadway musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, when she learned that the Guild Theatre’s artistic director, Brian Fidler, had picked it as this year’s season finale.
Hand to God
Lust, grief, denial and repression (not to mention demonic possession) in the bible-belt town of Cypress, Texas. Oh, yes. Don’t forget the puppets. These are all elements of the Guild Theatre’s upcoming production of Hand to God, a dark comedy by Robert Askins, who actually grew up in the Houston-area community in which he set …
Good Night, Good Morning
Ann-Marie MacDonald’s award-winning comedy Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) has been around for almost 30 years, but Brian Fidler and Clare Preuss are convinced it will still play well to contemporary Whitehorse audiences. “I think it appeals to the core audience of the Guild that likes a good Canadian classic show, and that loves Shakespeare,” …
Identity Crisis
What does it take to make a puppet show that is also a stage show and a live-action video all in one? A script, a bunch of performers, some music. Lights, cameras, action. And cardboard. Miles of cardboard, according to Edward Westerhuis. “We go to different stores, to the dump behind their stores. The stuff …
Splattering Comedy
Whitehorse, it seems, has such an insatiable appetite for high-camp horror that the Guild Theatre has added another week to its run of Evil Dead: The Musical. The spring break-themed romp comes with a caution: if you intend to sit in the first few rows, be prepared for laundry afterward. You’ll be in what’s called …
Hang on, George
Christmas Eve, 1946. Several actors huddle around their microphones, live-broadcasting a radio station’s seasonal drama, complete with commercial intervals and a touch of Yuletide music. The story they are dramatizing concerns a well-meaning chap from a small town, struggling to save his deceased father’s savings and loan company from bankruptcy. His world is collapsing, because …
Old Time Horror
Geneviève Doyon and Jessica Hickman have, once again, combed through silent films, searching for excerpts to play on a screen to an audience. This is the third year they’ve done it. Doyon and Hickman are the co-artistic directors of Open Pit Theatre. Doyon is based in Whitehorse, Hickman in Victoria. The film nights have become …
Roller Coaster
From Beirut to Buffalo, then Whitehorse. That’s how Clare Preuss sums up the summer of 2016 from her standpoint as an itinerant stage director. The Toronto-based actor, choreographer and director is currently in the Yukon to steer the Guild Theatre’s season-opener, Myth of the Ostrich. Although the Matt Murray comedy was a standout hit at …
Who’s Line is it Anyway?
Expect the unexpected. This is good advice for both performers and audience at a typical improv event. Mind you, “typical” is a misnomer for a genre defined by having a unique performance every time. If you’ve ever had a yen to create one-of-a-kind, hilarious scenes, get yourself to the Guild Hall every Tuesday at 8 …
New Artistic Director used to couch surf at The Guild Hall
One of Brian Fidler’s first memories of the Yukon is sleeping on the couch at The Guild Hall. He had just arrived in town and – without a car – would hitchhike to rehearsals of El Crocodor, his first Yukon theatre experience. From those early years, Fidler spent a lot of time at The Guild. …
New Artistic Director used to couch surf at The Guild Hall Read More »
Fiddling Through Time
It was a visit to the Yukon Transportation Museum that got Whitehorse fiddler and music teacher Keitha Clark thinking about an ambitious project for the 25 young Whitehorse musicians known collectively as the Fiddleheads. “I thought this would be a funky place to put on a show. It’s an unusual, kind of unconventional space and …
Party like it’s 1955
Dig out your poodle skirt and put on your saddle shoes. The Open Pit Theatre is hosting a 1950s Sock Hop Film Night in Whitehorse on Saturday. The evening features five films with an on-the-spot, improvised soundtrack by live actors and musicians. “The movies are the main entertainment,” says Geneviève Doyon, co-artistic director of Open …
Puppets, Comedy, and Gore
Whitehorse has an awesome art scene. This month, The Guild will try to make it more awesome when its production of Cannibal! The Musical hits the stage. The play, which is based on the film of the same name, has been circulating North America for over 15 years, to rave reviews. The story is centered …
Theatre in the Bush
Theatre in the Bush is held in the fall, and with a start time of around 8:45 pm, it’s held in the dark. The darkness and the bush are integral to the event. This year the show was on a Saturday evening in mid-September. ‘Theatre in the Bush’ was projected onto Brian Fidler’s gravel driveway; …
L’Ark Brings Communal Experience (and fish) to Young Audiences
The creative spark for a new theatre company, L’Ark, took place at Yukon Educational Theatre’s (YET) presentation of Dean Eyre’s Diabetes, A Love Story nearly two years ago. Producer Arlin McFarlane arrived mid-show to a school gymnasium filled with young people. Immediately, she was struck by how completely engaged they were, listening intently to the …
L’Ark Brings Communal Experience (and fish) to Young Audiences Read More »
Broken Heads Down the Road
Brian Fidler’s latest one-person show, which he wrote and stars in, has an inclusive quality about it. Broken, which premiered in Whitehorse in the fall of 2012, deals with Alzheimer’s disease and the way it affects family relationships. “The story is universal,” says Fidler. “Nearly everyone will have experiences with aging and dementia at some …
Staging local talent
As the sunshine creeps into the evening and temperatures slowly rise toward double-digits, some art organizations’ seasons are winding down. One of the final accomplishments in focus for Nakai Theatre is a barrage of local performance artists. Also affectionately known as the Homegrown Festival. “It’s emerging artists, first-time artists and artists who are devoting their …
Varietease is so baaaad, it’s good
Burlesque cabaret uses psychology in such a delicious way: it is a naughty place and we feel naughty being there. So we throw decorum to the wind, having forsaken the high moral ground, and give ourselves willingly to the sensations of dance, song and comedy being paraded in front of us. Entering the theatre at …
Brian Fidler did it!
There is a moment in Becky Mode’s Fully Committed when Brian Fidler’s character, Sam, gives his father some disappointing news over the telephone. The entire audience tenses up. It was only one of many wonderful dialogues, so it cannot be considered a “magical moment”, but it was certainly a moment when the magic of this …
One actor, 37 characters
“I don’t want someone who can do 37 voices,” says director David Mackay. “I want 37 characters.” Therein lies the magic he hopes to capture with local actor Brian Fidler when they team up to present Fully Committed at the Guild Hall Feb. 5 to 21. Fidler needs to present 37 characters in this one-man …
Brian Fidler
For Whitehorse-based theatre artist Brian Fidler, the desire to perform dates way back. “I can trace it to third grade,” he says. “Our teacher would get us to read stories we’d written in front of the class and I loved getting a reaction.” Shortly thereafter he knew he had to make it in the theatre …
An artistic director returns with a dream cast
He had been in Baked Café for only one minute and had already said hi to three people, and one of them got a hug. However, “Some people see me in the street and they just wave as if I hadn’t been gone for four years,” says Michael Clark, the former artistic director of Nakai …
A ‘rase’ by any other name …
Q: What do Brian Fidler, Barbara Chamberlin and Harreson Tanner have in common? A: Those of us in the media often spell their names wrong. I, personally, have allowed two of their names to be spelled wrong in this paper and I remember the circumstances of each one because we editors (and writers) really hate …
On this stage, everyone is ‘Ynkluded’
It was like walking onto the set of High School Musical … there are people milling about, laughing and joking around, spinning playfully in wheelchairs and then, boom, cohesion breaks out into a delightful musical number on a plywood stage. Then Brian Fidler, the director of Tell Me More…, says, “OK, now get up or …
Cam & Legs are ready for their closeup
Cam, that breakdancing Brownie Hawkeye camera; and Legs, the glove that struts and dances like a DJ, have returned to Whitehorse. Cam & Legs creator and puppeteer, Brian Fidler, has scheduled the shows for Thursday to Sunday at The Old Fire Hall. Then he is on his way to Victoria’s Uno Festival for performances May …
It’s a ‘building year’ for Nakai
This year, Nakai Theatre will not be producing any plays. David Skelton, Nakai’s artistic director, says the company will be concentrating, instead, on developing local scripts. This means that instead of spending money on a venue and staffing to produce a play, it will use some of that money to bring up DD Kugler, a …
The 3rd annual Pivot Festival: Floating, swimming, flying
The Pivot Festival is upon us — and with it comes a huge ton of theatre. You have six shows you can see at multiple times, all wildly different, appealing to both broad and specific audiences. It’s like a carnival of mad, wonderful theatre taking over the town for a week. Feeling a bit like …
The 3rd annual Pivot Festival: Floating, swimming, flying Read More »
Preschoolers get their own festival
With the Atlin Arts and Music Festival taking the summer off, to re-tool and re-tune and re-fresh, Atlin residents may have suspected the second weekend of July would be relatively boring. Instead, the streets will be filled with three- to five-year-olds looking for a good time on Friday, July 9. “Overrun with three- to five-year-olds?” …
Maybe we are not alone
Yukon skies could be busier than usual next week as extraterrestrial visitors zoom in on the Yukon Arts Centre. The annual Longest Night celebration is taking a playful look at alien life forms through film, story and music. Among the close encounters will be three distinct takes on the theme “we are not alone” by …
Wit and Film Noir
When Betty Beemer needs a health pamphlet written, she turns to Vaughn Fischer, a freelancer whose career is going nowhere. But Vaughn quickly becomes obsessed with turning a simple tract on syphilis into a masterpiece. That’s the basic premise of Peter Jickling’s quirky play, Syphilis: A Love Story, which Ramshackle Theatre will present for a …
A Blast of Craziness
Rocket ships hanging from strings, tinfoil meteorites and cardboard cutouts… who doesn’t love a good ’60s sci-fi B-movie? They’re low-fi and cheesy, with terrible acting, and were an instant inspiration for Brian Fidler. After watching several in a row, the actor, director, puppeteer and Ramshackle Theatre founder thought about how to translate that quality to …
Unpacking Memory
What is memory? Where does it live? Where can it take you? Who does it belong to? What is it like to live without it? These are some of the questions at the heart of Broken, a new play by Whitehorse theatre maker Brian Fidler that opened this week in as a Nakai Ramshackle Theatre …
