Lee White and Inbal Lori of The Lorilees in Deep Dream, Improvaganza 2025. Photo supplied.
By Liz Nicholls,
We sure do know how to get festive in this town. It’s a FOUR-festival weekend on (and above and near and beyond) Edmonton stages. So a toast is in order.
•At the Exchange Theatre in Strathcona, Rapid Fire Theatre’s Improvaganza 2025, an international showcase of innovators in the fine and roistering art of spontaneity, is underway through Sunday. The annual festivities assemble an array of improv talent from around the world (and often reconfigure these deluxe forces in unexpected ways). This year’s lineup includes troupes from Berlin, the U.K., France and Israel, Vancouver. Ah yes, and RFT’s hit Improvised Dungeons & Dragons, a costumed extravaganza led by Mark Meer.
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The shows happen in unusual formats. In Deep Dream the Berlin duo The Lorilees, for example, conceive of the stage as poised on the imaginary border between between sleeping and being awake, with dreamy visuals to match. In The Play’s The Thing, Chris Mead, Ali James, and John Oakes from the U.K. improvise an entire Shakespeare play before your very eyes and ears. Vancouver-based Tightrope Theatre from Vancouver improvises a sci-fi mystery thriller, The Yes Files. And on Saturday afternoon Kidding Around is the Improvaganza edition of Rapid Fire’s kids’ show.
Check out the lineup and improvise yourself some tickets: rapidfiretheatre.com.
•Alberta Circus Arts Festival, the brainchild of Firefly Theatre’s Annie Dugan, a multi-faceted performer herself who likes her art up in the air, is back through Sunday at La Cité francophone. It comes with an international array of performances, workshops, and fun hangs (in nearly all senses of that word). Flô: Immersive Circus, created by the Quebec-based duo circus artist/sailor duo Alexia Gourd and Hugo Noel, imagines an adventure in the middle of the Atlantic. And it uses circus arts, music, video and immersive technology — it happens in a “ship” — to take us there. On a ship, really.
Full schedule of shows and activities: albertacircusarts.com.
•NUOVA Vocal Arts Festival, which embraces the worlds of musical theatre and opera, launches two of its shows this weekend. One is a new opera, Silence, based on a 1999 play by the English playwright/screenwriter Moira Buffini: music by Leslie Uyeda and libretto by Darrin Hagen. Kim Mattice Wanat’s production runs at the Orange Hub (10045 156 St.) through June 27. Have a gander at ’s preview interview with Hagen in this new adventure in writing for the playwright/ actor/ director/ composer/ activist, queer historian.
The other is the ‘50s Broadway musical comedy Once Upon A Mattress, running at the Capitol Theatre at Fort Edmonton through June 28. Tickets: nuovavocalarts.ca.
•The Thousand Faces Festival returns Saturday and Sunday, bringing to the hospitable and diverse Alberta Avenue ‘hood an enticingly global array of performances — theatre, dance, music, storytelling — and food. The locale is the great outdoors outdoors at the Alberta Avenue Community Centre (9210 118 Ave.). Cuban Movements, a troupe that has delighted Fringe audiences, is in the lineup. So is The Qala Troupe, Edmonton’s first Hindi language company. And Theatre Prospero brings The Doomed Prince, inspired by Egyptian mythology to the festival; the audience get to play the characters. Check out the schedule at thousandfaces.ca.
