Calla Wright in Binding, RISER New Works Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang, BB Collective.
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
New this year the RISER New Works Festival began its weekend of performances and workshops last night with a work-in-progress production of a challenging and playful one-human many-puppet show.
To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.
Destined for Azimuth Theatre’s Expanse Festival in 2026, Calla Wright’s Binding is built on a fraught, conflicted relationship. Cal, the non-binary person we meet onstage, can’t happily or sustainably live with parts of their anatomy that send the wrong identity markers to their bearer, and to the world. As the title suggests, it’s their boobs. They undermine the self, its sense and stability. And this show is an encounter, a challenging, witty confrontation between these problematic parties and Cal. It’s a conversation, and the boobs are articulate, to say the least, and not just size large smart-asses, in sticking up for themselves.
Binding by Calla Wright, RISER New Works Festival. Photo by Brianne Jang, bb collective
At the moment, the production, directed by Sarah Emslie, seems to be experimenting with its theatrical flourishes of the piece, the outsized props of the trans experience, all retrieved, amusingly, from A Closet. Wright is a smart writer, and their sheer unflinching honesty will knock you back in your seat. There are more performances of Binding this weekend, and stay tuned for the full production at Expanse.
RISER is all about supporting and mentoring indie artists and producers. And this new festival, the brainchild of Common Ground Arts Society, has had he bright idea of a producer’s lab. It taps the resources of the community, in an initiative that sets up one-on-one meetings with this theatre town’s expert professionals.
Details, and the full schedule of the four festival shows, are up on the Common Ground Arts Society website. And you can have a look at ’s preview interview with Common Ground’s executive producer Mac Brock here.
RISER New Works Festival runs through Sunday at the Backstage Theatre (Fringe Arts Barns, 10330 84 Ave.).
