Fredericton, Saint John and Moncton are considered the artistic hubs of New Brunswick, and several theatre companies transcended city limits to put together a bilingual, multiple-act show.
The show, titled Shorts and Sweets/Culottes Courtes et Sucreries, is a bilingual joint-production created by several theatre companies of Fredericton and Moncton. Consisting of six first-draft performances, the show holds six 12-minute shows from different playwrights and theatre companies. Each have an Anglophone or Francophone actor, and are performed in the performer’s native tongue.
Marc-André Charron, director of the Satellite Théâtre in Moncton, first got the idea from conversations he had with the French theatre community in Moncton.
“We’d been chatting for a while, trying to get these evenings going where we would present half-finished [pieces] or things that we’d been working on but weren’t productions yet,” Charron said.
Wanting to put together something more relaxed, Charron organized a “jam-session” style performance with companies in the Moncton community. Fredericton’s Solo Chicken Productions and Next Folding Theatre Company were introduced into the collaboration in November.
Each theatre company put together one act, and created and rehearsed their pieces on their own time and space. Because of the spontaneity of the show, directors kept each piece relatively short and simplistic in their stage construction.
“The artists are free to present whatever they want, as long as it’s a first draft,” Charron said. “People will be seeing … stuff that’s never been [performed] before.”
Because of this, organizing Shorts and Sweets was relatively easy despite distance restrictions. Companies divided responsibilities among themselves and promoted the show in their respective cities.
In-person meetings were only done a handful of times for press release and designs, but organization was done “mostly over Facebook messages,” according to Lisa Anne Ross, director of Solo Chicken Productions.
Shorts and Sweets was first performed at the Aberdeen Cultural Arts Centre in Moncton on Jan. 24. Despite almost being cancelled due to snow, their opening night was very well received. Their show included spoken monologues in French and English, puppet shows, silent clown pieces, and play readings.
The producers believe that though none of the acts are translated, language won’t create much of an issue due the universality and expressiveness of each piece.
“It’s a really neat thing to be a New Brunswicker,” said Ryan Griffith, playwright for Theatre New Brunswick and performer in Shorts and Sweets. “We’re part of a bilingual province, [so we can] sit down and watch a show where one act is French and another is English.”
Though variety shows like Shorts and Sweets are not uncommon, Lisa Anne Ross feels that collaborations between cities, languages and cultures are both rare and important.
“You’ve got Saint John, Moncton, and Fredericton; they’re not that far apart, but we don’t collaborate a lot with each other,” Ross said. “We should be working together, but this is the first step.”
The performers have all shown willingness to do collaborative show again, and cities like Saint John have also expressed interest in joining.
“The whole point is to get people together for theatre, and especially since it’s such a small province, to see performers they might not know,” Charron said. “The more the merrier.”
Shorts and Sweets Fredericton edition premieres Mar. 6 at the Charlotte Street Arts Centre at 7:30 p.m.
