You know the feeling — it’s 9 p.m. on a Wednesday. You’re about to boot up that new video game or start the novel that’s been gathering dust, unread, on your bookshelf since you bought it on a whim. A cold wave hits you. That 15-page paper you’ve put off writing since it was assigned three months ago? It’s due on Friday, and you’ve skipped almost every class. The shape of the next 48 hours snaps painfully into focus. With only a couple pages of scrawled notes and the few lecture slides you can wring out of Canvas, you need to lock in.
Now imagine you’re required to give a dramatic reading of the final draft to a live audience, complete with lighting, smoke and sound cues, and you might have some idea of what Theatre Under the Wire demands of Vancouver’s local theatre troupes. A set of two shows co-organized by five local production companies including the Vancouver Fringe, the event challenged 10 acting companies to write, produce and stage a 15-minute play over the course of 48 hours based on a set of prompts provided to them. The plays were presented — five per night — on Feb. 12 and 13.
Theatre Under the Wire (previously Theatre Under the Gun) is a long running tradition. Chris MacGregor is the artistic director of Axis Theatre, one of the production companies who helped put this year’s event together. In 1998, he co-created Theatre Under the Gun at the Cultch in hopes of drawing more young people to the venue with the prospect of slapdash spectacle. It worked — MacGregor said the event was a hit with the Cultch’s execs, in part because their “beer and wine sales were astronomical.”
During the pandemic, MacGregor and co. managed to host an online version of the event which was livestreamed for free, but Theatre Under the Gun went on a hiatus in the years following. This February, it was reborn with a new name at a new venue — the Revue Stage on Granville Island. Duncan Watts-Grant, executive director at the Vancouver Fringe Festival, was excited to get involved for the first time, and said The Fringe and Theatre Under the Gun have long had a symbiotic relationship.
“Seven or eight of the 10 companies [presenting at this year’s event] have been on Fringe stages in the last three years — three or four of them have won [Fringe] awards.” Likewise, some Theatre Under the Wire companies end up expanding their 15-minute plays into full shows, which they go on to produce at The Fringe’s fall festival.
Here’s how it worked: 48 hours before showtime, each company received their “inspiration package.” This included a line of dialogue borrowed from a famous B.C. playwright, a sound effect, a prop and a costume pulled from a randomized pool. Over the next two days, each company needed to incorporate these elements into a completely new 15-minute show.
The results presented on Theatre Under the Wire’s first night ran the gamut in every way imaginable. A wild west showdown, a jukebox musical about satellites, a trio of farting witches in leotards who transformed into multicoloured trees — you name it. StoryFreak, a commedia dell’arte troupe of three UBC MFA acting students, put on a breathlessly quick-paced show that saw a jester eating a wizard’s turtle and subsequently being transformed into a cow — only to win a game of dice and be transformed back.
Though commedia dell’arte — a 16th-century form of Italian masked theatre — is built on stock characters and plotlines, StoryFreak wrote and staged their Theatre Under the Wire show completely from scratch. Alivia Sabatino, who switched back and forth between playing the wizard and a wealthy lady obsessed with him, said they got started immediately after receiving their inspiration package, which included a cow costume and a large foam die.
“We were in the studio an hour later. We had [the objects] laying on the floor and we all just started scribbling on the chalkboard — whatever ideas came out.” That first night, the troupe was in the studio until almost 1 a.m. Dahlia-Raphael Kerr, who played the turtle-eating jester Truffeldino, said that when you get your hands on a good idea, “you have to hold on for dear life until the idea fizzles out.” Sleep comes second.
Still, a 48-hour production schedule will take its toll, and StoryFreak felt the strain. By the end of rehearsals, Kerr said, everyone was a little burnt out. Skylar Somnus, who played the cowardly rogue Torturella with a campy but surprisingly smooth Italian accent, agreed, but said the crunch was “like going on a camping trip. You have to negotiate all these different variables, but you’re with these people that you totally fucking love, so it’s super easy.”
Two late nights, one shared Red Bull and a reheated container of pasta later, it was showtime, and fatigue turned to fear. “It hit me that we had done this before, but it had been years,” said Kerr. Everyone was feeling the pressure, but they all trusted each other to improvise if “shit hit the fucking fan,” as Kerr said.
There was no need to worry. With their homemade masks and a thrown-together screen made from a laundry rack and poster board, StoryFreak put on a seamless show that would have been right at home alongside any of The Fringe’s summer programming. As soon as the show was over, Kerr said, they immediately wanted to do it again.
They’ll have their chance — StoryFreak is set to return to Granville Island for shows at the Picnic Pavilion on Aug. 6, 7 and 8. Watts-Grant and The Fringe, meanwhile, are hard at work on their Fringe Presents series, which puts on shows throughout the year that didn’t make it into the fall festival.
