Twenty years ago, Dancing Sky theatre was a dream of getting theatre thriving in rural Saskatchewan.
To celebrate 20 years of keeping theatre in Meecham at their hall, Dancing Sky is bringing back their most popular play, Dogbarked, from May 5 to 21.
In a truly Saskatchewan story, farmer brothers Roland and Baxter Taylor find their gas station failing after the highway gets moved.
In desperation, the two decide to make their own resort town, named Dogbarked, in order to draw people back to the gas station.
Two people who do wind up by unusual circumstances in the little town are two television producers, one from Toronto and the other from Vancouver, looking to shoot a commercial in Saskatchewan. Of course they do not understand this Saskatchewan way of life and hilarity ensues, says Director Angus Ferguson.
“The story unfolds about two city people in a rush to get to Vancouver who now need the assistance of these two farmers who aren’t in a particular rush to do anything.”
Beyond the very Saskatchewan plot, the play also addresses the urban versus rural differences while also touching on the question of staying or leaving rural Saskatchewan, a conundrum that every Saskatchewan person has. Ferguson himself spent four years in Montreal before coming back.
Over the 20 years, Ferguson says they have had 55 productions with many of them being plays that were developed on the Dancing Sky stage.
In honour of their 20th anniversary, Ferguson says they asked the audience which play they would like to see again, with the voting leaning overwhelmingly towards Dogbarked.
Being developed on the Dancing Sky stage, Dogbarked had a speculator run as it went from Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon to the Globe Theatre in Regina to Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg to Theatre NorthWest in Prince George.
“It had a pretty good life after that,” says Ferguson, who also admits that Dogbarked is one of his favourites.
With this being the first time bringing back a play, there was a question of bringing back the previous cast or casting from scratch.
Since the original cast is 15 years older and have moved on to other careers, Ferguson went looking for another line up of Saskatchewan only actors to join the show with the only original members of the crew being Ferguson and musician Ernie Kurz who will be doing the music again for Dogbarked.
Playing the brothers will be two well known Saskatoon actors, Aaron Hursh and Joshua Beaudry, both of which have acted in Dancing Sky shows previous to Dogbarked.
Playing the city slickers are two newer actors, Elizabeth Nepjuk and Torien Cafferata, who have not worked in Dancing Sky before this but who Ferguson knew from their work in Saskatoon.
While all four of them are from Saskatchewan, Nepjuk spent time in Vancouver and easily transfers that into her character while Cafferata picked up the essence of his big city character.
Dancing Sky officially started in 1993 but moved into their current space in 1997. Getting Dancing Sky in the air seemed like an improbable thing to start a theatre that seats 100 in a town of 84, says Ferguson.
It was very much a ‘let us try anyway’ attitude, says Ferguson, and it paid off.
“I never really considered that it would last this long. I obviously hoped it would.”
The reason for this Ferguson sees as being two fold; rural people do not see themselves reflected in popular culture and Dancing Sky was giving rural and Saskatoon people a place to come.
The first performance of Dogbarked was pre-Corner Gas so all that was really on television or in movies was New York and Los Angeles, or in the Canadian sense, Toronto pretending to be New York and Vancouver pretending to be Los Angeles.
Dogbarked was something that people had never seen before in popular culture and was so familiar to those who got the chance to see it. They would know their own Rolands and Baxters.
When Dancing Sky was beginning to take off, even Saskatoon was lacking in theatres with only Persephone and 25th Street Theatre. At that point, with 25th Street in decline, Dancing Sky became the only theatre doing new work in the province.
Live Five and other independent theatres are doing more and more, says Ferguson but back then Dancing Sky could do more with less funding and less pressure to do well.
All in all, Ferguson thinks that it stuck around because it was different and found a little place for itself in the heart of Saskatchewan.
