The Western Canada Theatre is adapting to the COVID-19 pandemic by asking local artists to propose shows for the fall and its been good so far.
That’s according to Artistic Director James MacDonald who says he’s been impressed with both the quantity and the quality of the submissions.
“There was 26 proposals that came in from the community, which is just fantastic,” he said on the NL Morning News.
“I would say that everything that we’ve received is, in one shape of form, producible. Like whether we’re producing the thing as it is suggested or it’s an idea that we’ll be working with the artist or the group to develop, they’re all things that we’re interested in collaborating in.”
MacDonald thinks there could still be more diversity from proposals coming in as they want to cover a variety of perspectives.
“Personally it would be great to hear more voices from the Indigenous community, from the Black community from the South Asian community or from any other marginalized community that maybe is underrepresented on our stages in general and we’d love to see more from that,” MacDonald said.
“We’re also interested in stimulating more community conversations that people want to have. If there’s a discussion about homelessness, if there’s a discussion about health and public health, these are all forms of theatre we’re looking at as well.”
And he went on to say that Western Canada Theatre has heard from several musical acts, but notes they have ideas beyond music.
“What they’re also proposing are things that aren’t just like hey let’s come to a concert, it’s like, hey we want to do a concert that has a theatrical bent to it, that might have a multi disciplinary feel, you now might incorporate some video and projections, so it’s people taking what they do but developing their own artistry or their own presentations a little bit further to do some innovative work and to experiment,” he said.
And with the variety of submissions, he says it’s great to see artists stretching their limits.
“That’s really the point of the whole series is for people to innovate, to experiment, to try things they may not have had a chance to do because when you’re dealing with an audience of fifty or less there’s a really good chance to sit there and say we’re going to put this out to a few people and a lot of these ideas will continue to grow over the next couple of years as well,” MacDonald said.
As for how the WCT will showcase the performances, organizers are still working to find the best platform to do that, as well as the frequency of these shows.
The deadline for submissions is August 15 but MacDonald is encouraging people with ideas beyond that date to reach out to him. You can do that through the Western Canada Theatre website.
