Elena Belyea in I Don’t Even Miss You, Tiny Bear Jaws, opens Common Ground’s Prairie Mainstage Series. Photo by Brianne Jang
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
“One of the strengths of Common Ground Arts is that we’re big enough to have institutional support, staff, a team, a board…. And small and scrappy enough that we’re malleable, to support the needs of whatever project we’re working on.”
That’s how Rainier Pearl-Styles describes the multi-limbed arts organization she’s headed this summer as its new managing producer, before leaving for a Vancouver job in November.
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“Common ground,” as the idiom goes, is mutual turf you “find,” then share. And that’s exactly what happened two years ago when Rainier Pearl-Styles and her wife Emilia Fox-Hillyer, a fellow indie theatre artist and facilitator who’s doing a master’s degree in theatre practice at the U of A, arrived here from Boston two years ago, (with uncanny timing on the first day of the Edmonton Fringe). And she’s a veritable poster person for the kind of resources, connections and producer expertise that Common Ground lives to unlock and set in motion — for artists at every stage of experience and their ideas at every stage of development.
In crossing the border Pearl-Styles and Fox-Hillyer left behind the Fork & Shoe Cooperative, the burgeoning Boston theatre co-op they’d co-founded in 2020 (with Nicholas Chieffo). It has, says Pearl-Styles, a very similar mandate to Common Ground, “to increase access to the arts for people, indie artists … to help people produce their own work.” And speaking of connectivity as we are, Fork & Shoe continues to be a Common Ground sibling (Chieffo joined Pearl-Styles for a new two-hander clown show Jeff and Grungled KNOW FRILLS, which played the Fringe here, and was at the Vancouver Fringe earlier this month).
Pearl-Styles’ introduction to Edmonton theatre and her first ‘connection’ (a favourite word in conversation along with ‘excited’) after Common Ground managing producer Mac Brock, came via the company’s Producers Lab, a program that brokers one-on-one coffee meetings with theatre professionals. “I didn’t know any of the names, so I Googled,” and ended up meeting with Fringe artistic director Murray Utas. “I really credit going to Producers Lab with my integration into the Edmonton theatre scene!” she says.
And here’s a Common Ground story: suddenly Pearl-Styles found herself working with Common Ground’s associate producer Sarah Emslie on a project together. Then her solo 100 Foreskins For My Hand In Marriage was accepted to the RISER program (“I was a theatre producer in Boston but I didn’t really know how to do it here”), an initiative to support, mentor, and showcase the work of indie theatre artists and co-ops, and connect them to professional mentor companies in the community. And it premiered at the Calgary Fringe in 2025.
So Pearl-Styles landed in the Common Ground managing producer gig with a first-hand appreciation for all its programs and outreach initiatives. “My entire theatre community here is because I connected with Common Ground when I moved here,” she declares. By the time Pearl-Styles had a six-month transition working alongside Brock before he left in July, “I felt I was getting a diploma in non-profit arts management….”
Sophie May Healey in Hysteria’s House, Found Festival 2026, Common Ground Arts. Photo supplied
It’s a multi-disciplinary, multi-faceted, multi-program operation, to say the least. “It grew so much under Mac’s (six-year) leadership: new projects, the Producers Lab, the Prairie Mainstage Series, (Brock’s restructuring of) RISER,” the country’s first outside Toronto when it kicked off here in 2022. Ah, and the annual Found Festival, founded by Elena Belyea and Andrew Ritchie in 2011, even before Common Ground was born, is a flagship event for the company, with a new producer Salem Zurch, stepping into the curatorial role occupied for six seasons by Whittyn Jason, who has left to resume their theatre design career.
Elena Belyea, I Don’t Even Miss You, Tiny Bear Jaws. Photo by Brianne Jang
The Prairie MainStage Series, now in its second season (with a new season producer/curator Hayley Moorhouse), opens Thursday with Tiny Bear Jaws’ I Don’t Even Miss You. And it’s followed by I am your spaniel; or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson (April 29 to May 7). It’s exciting, says Pearl-Styles, to create community partnerships with each show now that people know that it’s a program here to stay — that it’s not just two indie shows that happen throughout the year but something that engages the community in a larger conversation!”
Pearl-Styles, who brings to her job a background in theatre education and a master’s degree in applied theatre, is enthusiastic about community outreach. “A company by and for artists is lovely, and fills a niche. But I’m excited by the possibility of a company by artists for everyone….”
It’s all about finding resources “people who have big ideas and don’t know where to start their craft. Or early-career artists “who are partnered through the year, with support for everything from grant-writing to venue scouting.” RISER “is for early-career (indie) producers,” ready to develop their show, and find where it belongs. Found Fest, a celebration of art in unexpected places, attracts “artists with a wide range of experience”: people trying something new, people revisiting something they’ve done before, but in a surprising new location perhaps. Found’s annual “Fresh AiR artist residency” provides a residency year for an artist to work on a new piece, then a full production premiere the following year. Louise Casemore’s Fresh AiR artist residency gave her a chance to develop Lucky Charm. This past July it was Shyanne Duquette’s SKNHEAD; in 2027 we’ll see Goalie Play by Alex Ward and Alex Voutchkov.
As Pearl-Styles puts it, “Common Ground’s job is to throw energy and resources at what the artist wants…. Some come in with a very clear plan of attack; other people are excited about learning from us, and finding out what resources are out there. Both are really welcome!”
With the Prairie Mainstage Series , “we’re trying to creating a working professional prairie touring circuit of mainstage shows that have been done before, that have some support behind them already, that we are presenting” — rather than education or mentorship as in RISER and Found. The mandate is to have one show from Alberta-based artists, and one from Saskatchewan or Manitoba. Pearl-Styles echoes Brock when she says that “there’s so much learning that happens after the first run of a show.”
The Prairie Mainstage Series opener, Elena Belyea’s I Don’t Even Miss You, a wonderful Tiny Bear Jaws production that’s had major successes everywhere it’s touched down, was part of the debut RISER Edmonton cohort in 2022. When I saw it then (here’s the review at the time), it was a fascinating multi-media concert, for the protagonist Basil an autobiographical record of their identity in original music, dance, video. The show has had big tours since, runs at Toronto’s Factory Theatre and One Yellow Rabbit’s High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, with striking changes every time out. “And now (after a four-stop national tour) it’s back home in Edmonton! … the dream of what RISER could be,” says Pearl-Styles.
i am your spaniel; or, A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare by Gislina Patterson. Common Ground Arts, Prairie Mainstage Series. Image supplied
I am your spaniel… is the work of a Winnipeg-based duo We Quit Theatre, and has had a high-profile run at Toronto’s Buddies In Bad Times, among other theatres. (Here’s a teaser: it comes with slime and gore warnings for audiences in the front rows).
Pearl-Styles finds her analogy: “Common Ground is like a library info desk. If you know what book you want, but you can’t find it in the stacks, we could help you with that. Or we can help connect you to the people who made it. Or you know exactly what you want, you just need a space to do it in….”
“Increasing access for people to create their own work … is the through-line of why theatre matters,” she says decisively. “People get to tell their stories. And the more they tell their stories the better!”
I Don’t Even Miss You, billed as “a one-person dystopian pop concert,” runs Thursday to 11 in the Studio Theatre, at Fringe Arts Barns. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.
