Downstage is undoubtedly one of the companies that creates the most amount of conversations around theatre in Calgary—in fact it’s right in Downstage’s tagline.
But the return of the company’s Stage It Festival, running from May 21 through to May 24 at the Werklund Centre, the host of fresh new works from some of the city’s most talked about individuals on and off the stage and is sure to stir a few after-show words.
With performers Karla Marx and Bitch Sassidy, The Memorias Collective, Tara Beagan, and ZENON performing over the festival, it’s a weekend of performance where Calgarians will also get to meet some of the people making headlines outside of performance spaces.
“I think with Downstage, we’re always cultivating sort of the risk takers of the theatre world, and so, like, a lot of times they don’t even know they’re theatre people, because they like other live performance,” said Clare Preuss, Artistic Director of Downstage.
“We’re trying to kind of create this sense of adventure and risk taking, and also stir up the idea of what it is to be theatre, because most of the shows that are happening the styles are so different from each other.”
Keeping true to the spirit of the Stage It Festival, Preuss told On Cue Calgary that many of the performances were more in the vein of raw works in progress than a full-blown 10-day production run, keeping each show within the feel of a festival that is meant to provoke conversation.
“There’s staged readings and works in progress, and there are some world premieres. It’s in that festival field, so it’s like a bridge between the idea of a fringe festival and something like a full production,” she said.
“It just happens to be that it’s a lot of femme creators, like women, non-binary folks talking about social issues from perspectives that I would say we often don’t hear from them about.”
A wild weekend of shows awaits
The festival kicks off on Thursday, May 21, with The Memorias Collective’s Four Strong Seasons, which also plays again the Friday and Saturday of the festival.
That production tells the inspired stories of Calgarians in a fictional story that is set against the lives of people who live in the Calgary, whether that is a glimpse of a childhood next door or a friend’s morning walk through Fish Creek Park.
“Four Strong Seasons is amazing, and this is one of the world premieres [at Stage It Festival]. It’s looking at Calgary and neighbourhoods and connections through stories that they’ve been collecting for over a year from actual Calgarians,” said Preuss.
On Friday, May 22, for one day only, audiences will get to take in a staged reading of Squeaky by Tara Beagan, which draws a parallel between the ubiquity of true crime media and the two eras of Trudeau prime ministers.
“Tara’s work, it’s always super profound and also like buoyant and playful and odd in the most beautiful ways. So she’s writing a piece that’s looking at it’s really looking at isolation, it’s looking at I think a lot of the social media kind of isolation but twisted in a different way,” said Preuss.
“It’s actually a young woman who’s been raised through the foster care system and comes upon the Manson murders and starts to go down a rabbit hole. I won’t go too deep into it, but it’s it’s looking at extreme isolation, a sense of deprivation of love, and where people try to find attention and love in our system.”
Preuss said that while she didn’t want to give too much away, it would be a profound look at how that institutionalization can lead to strange beliefs.
That Friday will also see the film and live performance collaboration of Hunt/Peck, in what is likely to be one of the most talked about shows of the 2025-26 theatre season for topic alone.
That production which features a short film directed by Preuss alongside choreography by Denise Clarke and Jared Tobias Herring, flips the narrative on sex tourism by telling a story of older wealthy women from the United Kingdom and Europe travelling to Gambia to have sex with young men from that nation.
“To the point where the Gambian government has contacted the UK being ‘hey like this is actually not good for our country, this isn’t good for our society, this isn’t good for these young men,'” said Preuss.
But, she said, the approach was one of playfulness that explores the topic in both film and dance.
“Hunt/Peck, is one that I’ve been working with Donna-Michelle St. Bernard on for years, and the first time we did a reading of it, I was shocked by some of the response. People have very different responses when they see women going for sex tourism to other countries,” said Preuss.
“They go, ‘okay, like that’s if this was a gender swap, you wouldn’t have that perspective.'”
That conversation is sure to continue, said Preuss, with Womanifesto which is being performed on Saturday, May 23, by Karla Marx and Bitch Sassidy.
That show promises to welcome audiences as comrades to the revolution, as they are walked through the steps of being a good revolutionary in a satirical interactive theatre show.
“It’s like joining the revolution of what it means to be a woman now, and like what their sort of perspective is on womanhood, which is really exciting. It will be very funny and very, very provocative. And I’m sure there’s a coffin involved, I hear,” said Preuss.
That show is being followed by Untitled: The Pippa Bacca Parable which is a dance-theatre work that draws its inspiration of Italian performance artist Pippa Bacca, who was murdered in 2008 while wearing a wedding dress while undertaking a performance art tour in support of world peace.
“It’s looking at this woman, this is true story, this Italian woman who put on a white wedding dress, and she was going to do this walk for love—this international kind of walk for love—and she was murdered in Turkey by a man who did not have the same perspectives as she did,” said Preuss.
The entire Stage It Festival, she said, was also surrounded by music from performers like KaamilK, Harvey Nichol, and ZENON, all taking place near the Centre Court of the Werklund Centre.
“The fun part is that you get to see a theatre show or get some art, but you also have the chance to just have this kind of informal community gathering at the common area outside the Centre Court,” said Preuss.
“Come down, enjoy some art, have a party, be inspired. Let yourself be changed a bit. Let yourself open up and change and think new way. Open your heart, open your mind, have some fun, and bring your friends.”
Stage It Festival is Free, but support is welcomed
Adding to the accessibility of the Stage It Festival, Preuss said that a pair of grants from the City of Calgary and Calgary Arts Development means that the festival is free for attendees.
“We always do the pay it forward program. We always have 20 per cent of our tickets offered no questions asked for free, pretty much across the board for most of our shows. For this one, we went a step further, because we really want people to experience some of these artists that they may not know yet,” she said.
For audience members wanting to support the festival, tickets for individual shows tap out at just $15.
At that price and the length of the shows, Preuss said that this would be one of the most accessible theatre festivals for attendees to check out.
“You see a show, if it’s not your cup of tea, then you can see another thing—20 minutes, and check that out—and if you like that, have a conversation with your pals about who liked what and why,” she said.
“This festival is so wild, oh my gosh there is so much happening. It’s so exciting.”
For more details and tickets, see downstage.ca/show/stage-it-festival.