Northern Light Theatre at 51: a new ‘Life Takes A Turn’ season

At a crossroads: Northern Light Theatre turns 51 next season with a trio of plays about characters poised, or stuck, or shoved into the intersection where big life changes unexpectedly happen.

To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

The “Life Takes A Turn” lineup announced this week by artistic director Trevor Schmidt includes the premiere of a new Canadian play and two Brit two-handers, one a much-revived 1980 hit, and the other by a much-awarded English playwright who leans into characters in a rural setting.

The Northern Light season was tailored, as Schmidt puts it, to feature “artists I want to work with,” and showcase exceptional performers who have been overlooked, lack opportunities, or in some cases are making their professional debuts.

The series opens (October 22 to Nov. 7) with the world premiere of a new Schmidt play, the wittily named Iron Matron. A 60-ish woman, “almost divorced and faced with the aggravating humiliation of moving in adult son and his wife, reconnects with her estranged college roommate. And they form a heavy metal garage band, joined by a career musician in answer to their ad for a drummer.

The play, says Schmidt, “is not about menopause or anything like that…. It explores friendship,” making new friends or somehow re-igniting long dormant, fractured friendships. It stars veteran actor/director/teacher, and Northern Light newcomer Pamela Schmunk as Alice, “an abrasive character, myopic, thoughtless, and a bit callow. Not mean in spirit but insensitive,” as Alice’s creator describes. ”

Joining Schmunk onstage are Davina Stewart and Linda Grass. Both have extensive Northern Light credits in their resumés. Schmidt directed them together in the Donald Margulies play Dinner With Friends at Theatre Network in 2007. And both have had many Northern Light credits before and since, Grass with perhaps a longer NLT archive than any other single Edmonton actor.

Émanuel Dubbeldam and Michael Watt in Milked by Simon Longman, Northern Light Theatre. Photo supplied

In Milked, a 2015 play by the English writer Simon Longman, two young men, best friends in their early ‘20s, are struggling, each in his own way, to find a foothold in life, find a job — and, most immediately, to deal with a dying cow stuck in a field. “As most plays I choose, it’s very funny, and ends on a fairly tragic note — but hopeful!” Snowy, who’s rural and living on his dad’s farm, has persuaded his friend to help him with the the ailing bovine, either by curing or killing, and they’re stumped. Paul, a university grad “wants to move to the city and break into communication and marketing, but has no real clue how to get started.”

Schmidt is interested in “rural plays,” rare in the theatre repertoire, not least because of his own experience: he spent 10 years in Saskatoon and the family moved to Shaunavon for a year.” And he plans to re-locate the Hertfordshire country setting of Milked to “somewhere outside Red Deer, where going to the “big city” means Calgary or Edmonton. Two of this town’s hottest young actors  Émanuel Dubbeldam and Michael Watt — “so charming, warm, bright, gifted” as Schmidt describes — star in the North American premiere production that runs Jan. 21 to Feb. 6, 2027.

Duet For One, starring Lianna Shannon and Melanie Dreyer-Lude, Northern Light Theatre. Poster photo supplied.

The season finale, Duet For One by the late Brit playwright Tom Kempinski, chronicles a visceral experience of loss and resilience in its story of a concert violinist who consults a psychiatrist when her career is cut short by a multiple sclerosis diagnosis. The story of cellist Jacqueline du Près springs to mind.

Schmidt’s production re-introduces into the theatre scene an accomplished actor, Lianna Shannon, who has been using a wheelchair during rehabilitation from a spinal chord injury. Melanie Dreyer-Lude plays the psychiatrist, whose encounters with the artist are the fabric of the play.

Schmidt says tracking down the rights was a veritable obstacle course; the theatrical publisher Samuel French was no help; eventually rights were obtained direct from Kempinski’s widow. Duet For One runs April 8 too 24.

Meanwhile, in addition to Iron Matron Schmidt is working on multiple new plays, including two Fringe shows (one for Players de Novo and one for 100 % More Girls). And Northern Light’s 50th anniversary season continues with Franz Xaver Kroetz’s Request Programme, opening May 1, and starring a series of 16 actors, all women and of all ages — a different one every night — who have performed with the company in the last half century.

Tickets for Request Programme and subscriptions for the upcoming season in the Studio Theatre in the Fringe Arts Barns (10330 84 Ave.): northernlighttheatre.com.