Arts in ReviewDirectors’ Festival shows off UFV talent

Directors’ Festival shows off UFV talent

This article was published on May 10, 2013 and may be out of date. To maintain our historical record, The Cascade does not update or remove outdated articles.
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By Katie Stobbart, Amy Van Veen, and Jessica Wind (The Cascade) – Email

Print Edition: May 8, 2013

The curtain has closed on another successful Director’s Festival (or D-Fest, for you theatre regulars) hosted by UFV’s theatre department.

Ian Fenwick, theatre instructor and Director’s Festival coordinator, said that the 18th annual festival was among the best they’ve had. Alexandra Shewan, co-creator and director of The “F” Word, has been involved in every directors’ festival since 2009 and she praised this year’s as being the best.

“The calibre of the work was very high across the whole board (UFV or visiting),” she described. “I was only able to get to [approximately] 15 of the 25 shows, but I thoroughly enjoyed everything I saw.”

“The quality of the productions was impressive especially when you reflect on what our relatively small department accomplished in hosting the festival, mounting 16 individual productions, and providing tech and front-of-house support for all the productions including the nine visiting shows,” Fenwick explained.

With 4073 tickets sold, this year’s festival drew the largest audience D-Fest has ever seen. Fenwick argued that the festival is one of UFV’s highest attended events and the top drawing theatre event in BC’s post-secondary sector.

It’s a lot to think about as a director when you’re just hoping the audience will laugh at the right moment.

Colleen Plenert, director Don Zolidis’ The Brother’s Grimm Spectaculathon, was particularly worried about the amount of audience participation her show required.

“I’ve never done a show where we needed to rely on the audience like that and in rehearsal it was really hard to gauge how that would work,” she explained. “Audiences just had great reactions. They were willing to just make believe with us that all these actors were playing these different characters.”

For Dylan Schroeder, writer and director of What the Water Gave Me, the anxiety came from having his script come to life on stage.

“It’s a really unique anxiety,” he explained. “If the script bombs, it’s 100 per cent your fault, but on the other hand every time the audience laughs or feels something because of something you’ve written, the rush is that much bigger.”

If you missed the two plays at D-Fest, or if you want to catch them for a second, or fourth time, the side splitting comedy of The Brother’s Grimm Spectaculathon and the fantastical coming-of-age struggles of What the Water Gave Me will be playing at the Harrison Festival of the Arts on July 9.

With 25 one-act plays in five days, 16 of which were directed by UFV students, there was ample opportunity to enjoy the university’s own talent.

Cait Archer, writer and director of Miss Somewhere, hopes that the next festival will be an opportunity to show her play again after some rewrites.

“D-Fest is a great place to see modern, edgy content for a very low price, and we’d love to see more students taking advantage of the opportunity. It’s also hella fun,” she said. Archer added that the practical component of the Directors’ Festival is what makes it so valuable for students.

“There were five original works in the festival this year,” she explained, “and that kind of environment, where you’re relying on your own instincts but are still fully supported if you ask for help, is essential to creative growth … you can theorize to your heart’s content, but that learning is cemented by practical experience.”

The student directors have coaching sessions with festival coordinator Ian Fenwick, but aside from those the plays are student directed.

“It was really a labour of love,” she described, “and my brilliant cast made it all possible … One of the best things about D-Fest is that we’re able to do things like this with barely any supervision … It would be really awesome to increase our student audience over the next few years.”

Shewan, too, was thrilled with the response to The “F” Word, a play compiled by herself and the three other members of the Four Muses Ensemble, made up of herself, Madison McArthur, Natasha Ray and Renee Reeve. The play brought forth a lot of discussion, both humourous and controversial, and uniquely had a Q&A portion at the end for those who wanted a space to ask questions or share their opinions.

“To be honest,” she explained, “we were expecting quite a bit of apprehension, especially with the talk-back portion at the end of the show. I am very pleased to say that those expectations were not fulfilled in the slightest! Our audience was always at the forefront of our mind when creating this piece. Our goal was to create something accessible that will get people thinking and talking, and I believe we achieved just that.”

For those who missed this year’s hugely successful D-Fest, there will be the two plays at Harrison Festival of the Arts, but for the rest of us, there’s a whole new season of UFV theatre starting in the fall semester and another directors’ festival to count down to in the spring of 2014.

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