Alberta Theatre Projects’ 07/08 season is coming to an end. What has truly been a fantastic season wraps up with the winner of the 2005 Governor General’s Award and Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Half Life, running until May 17th.
“I think it has been a pretty good year. In retrospect, I really liked the range of the work and different kinds of experience. I think it is really important when you do 10 plays in a season that you really find a lot of variety for the audience, and I think the experiences have been pretty broad. You go from the emotional ride in Rabbit Hole to the wild theatricality in Oliver Twist to some really interesting writing in the PlayRites festival,” said Artistic Director Bob White. “I have been very pleased and the response has been good too. Certainly in terms of our core audience they have appreciated the smartness of the shows - I don’t think there is anything that was dumbed down to any extent.”
Half Life is the story of Patrick and Clara, who meet in a care home and begin to fall in love believing they are rekindling an old flame. When they begin to talk about marriage, questions arise about the nature of memory, love and age. As Patrick and Clara’s adult children observe their parents, the older couple rediscovers beauty and love in the twilight of their lives. In addition to his role as Artistic Director, White also directed this production.
“What you are supposed to do as Artistic Director is have the big popular show at the end of the year under the belief that it will lead to more subscriptions. In choosing Half Life I clearly wasn’t choosing to go there, there are no dancing knives and forks in this show, not that there is anything wrong with that,” he recalled. “When I read the play I was so overwhelmed by how smart it is and how it explores territory that we don’t often see on the stage.”
White also put together a stellar cast of veterans and up-and-comers, many of whom will be familiar to regulars on the Calgary theatre scene.
“Upon reading the play I knew I could cast it two or three times over in Calgary as the scene has grown so much and we have more than one or two people who could play these parts. It gave the opportunity to put together a little ensemble from senior veterans like Grant Reddick to people like Kira Bradley who have been on the scene for awhile but are young. That has been one of the joys of the rehearsal process: working with this group of people who have all worked together in one way or another over the years, and they bring a real trust to the rehearsal process, which allowed them to jump in right away and go deeply into these characters.”
Set in a home for veterans, the show has two quite complicated storylines, and themes that are not often presented in a serious manner in theatre - something that appealed to White.
“One story is of an elderly couple discovering, or rediscovering one another and falling in love at the age of 82 and 80. The other major theme of the play in many ways, the children of that couple coming to terms not only with the relationship, but loss and the knowledge they are going to lose their parents. That transition where you become the parent and your parent becomes the child is something my generation is going through or has gone through. [Playwrite] John Mighton is so smart and he deals with this in such a sophisticated way without being sentimental or mocking. That is what appealed to me, a play that deals with important issues but has intellectual rigor and emotional complexity.”

Half Life
April 29th – May 17th, 2008
Alberta Theatre Projects
www.atplive.com