Expanse Festival 2025 poster, Azimuth Theatre.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
Its birth, 20 years ago, was dance. And gradually, Azimuth Theatre’s nimble, well-named Expanse Festival, returning Friday for an anniversary edition, has expanded the frontiers and expectations of dance to embrace “movement arts” and “body-based performance.”
That’s the welcome that Expanse has offered a variety of innovative, often unclassifiable theatrical offerings from here and across the country. “It was built, originally, to fulfill a community need,” as Azimuth co-artistic producer (with Sue Goberdhan) Morgan Yamada puts it. Its history that began with a bright idea partnered by Murray Utas and Amber Borotsik when Grant MacEwan College (in its pre-university days) cancelled its dance program.
“It was a response.” And two decades later, under the flag of community engagement, Expanse is still responding, as Yamada and Andrés Moreno, Azimuth’s associate artistic producer explained last week. The 2025 edition of Expanse, dubbed “Intertwined,” is particularly alert to “the political situation, the anti-trans legislation … where we are in terms of climate change and oil and gas… ” of our moment.
“Conversation” is a word that Yamada and Moreno use a lot, along with “celebration” and “accessibility.” All of the above apply to a lineup that takes over the Fringe Theatre Arts Barns with four mainstage offerings, workshops with their creators and performers, and between-show originals from The Lobbyists, led by Louise Casemore and Kijo Gatama. The Lobbyist ensemble partners this year with the Edmonton Poetry Festival.
Sissy Fit: Battle Cry, by and starring Brett Dahl, Expanse Festival 2025. Photo supplied
Sissy Fit: Battle Cry, billed as “a drag spectacle of pure cathartic release,” is the work of the versatile theatre artist Brett Dahl. As Yamada explains, it is “a direct response to the current political climate,” both “ferocious” in its battle-cry attack and an invitation to laughter and “radical joy.” It is an ode to the “showpersonship, the queer spirit that can’t be squelched…. We still have to to continue to fight for our rights.” With the support of local kings and queens in The Fantastiks, Dahl is joined onstage by four drag performers, Hunny Moon, Felicia Bonée, Orpheus, Voula Callas. Glitter is involved (costumes by Benjamin Toner), as well as Rory Turner’s lighting and projected media and scenic design by T. Erin Gruber, and Kena León’s sound design. And the show, which runs March 30 through April 4, is built for touring.
Claren Grosz in I Love The Smell of Gasoline, Pencil Kit Productions, Expanse Festival 2025. Photo supplied
Toronto’s Pencil Kit Productions brings to Expanse I Love The Smell of Gasoline, which could scarcely be more timely. Its creator and star, the queer multi-disciplinary theatre/visual artist Claren Grosz, a Toronto-based transplanted Calgarian, was inspired by her own family background — and the tension between her dad’s work in the Alberta oil patch, and the doom-laden momentum engendered by climate change. How can “the chasm of understanding” (as Grosz puts it) between the two, lived experience and global imperatives, be negotiated, much less reconciled? For their part Moreno thinks of the show as “an opportunity, a push for the audience to have conversations” about community, identity, different lived experience.
The solo show pairs Grosz’s performance with an original array of overhead projections. It runs Friday through March 30.
Hot Dyke Party, Expanse Festival 2025. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt Photography
The queer femme band Hot Dyke Party, Vancouver-based and six members strong, who recently played the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary, brings to Edmonton a kind of free-wheeling free-form multi-genre concert cum theatre piece cum community party. Moreno calls it “a celebration of femme voices, kinda punky kinda rockin’.” They play March 30 through April 4.
The Living Room Party, Expanse Festival 2025. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
The Living Room Party, as billed, is all about works in progress from the local artists. And it’s community-driven. Moreno calls it “a love letter to Edmonton … creating connections between artists and audiences.” The 12 acts, says Yamada, are “emerging pieces” in a wide variety of forms, including poetry, music, script excerpts, clown, burlesque. Ah, and this: “a new clown stand-up duo,” says Yamada mysteriously.
Integrated into the show is a piece by the winner of Good Women Dance’s New Work award, and this year’s winner will be announced on Expanse opening night.
The four workshops include Claren Grosz on overhead projections, Brett Dahl’s “Devising Devising,” “costume design for drag and the glamour of gender diversity” with Benjamin Toner, and “Workshopping Your Concept: Tools to Take Away” with Arthi Chandra.
PREVIEW
Expanse Festival 2025
Theatre: Azimuth
Running: Friday through April 4
Tickets: fringetheatre.ca (all tickets are pay-what-you-can; suggested price for mainstage shows $35, for workshops $20)
Full schedule, times, and show details: azimuththeatre.com.
