Local festival to showcase the magic of theatre in the outdoors

Cutting says the festival offers mentorship to young or starting actors or actresses in the community. Photo courtesy of Artists' Collective Theatre

A local theatre collective is using the backdrop of Maffeo Sutton Park to host its theatre festival.

The Artists’ Collective Theatre started in 2012 and moved from Alberta to Vancouver Island during the COVID-19 pandemic. The collective is a space for actors and actresses to strengthen their skills and showcase their talents through new works and fresh perspectives on classic plays. 

The Island Summer Theatre Festival first premiered in Parksville on July 23 of this year and will be running in Nanaimo from July 31 to August 4.

Actor and director Amanda Cutting is the artistic director of the collective. Cutting said prior to starting the festival on Vancouver Island, the collective supported another local theatre group in Canmore, Alberta and ran a festival there for serval years.

“We really wanted to invest in the community itself. So we reached out to see if people were interested in a summer theatre festival that has the same mentorship principles,” Cutting said. “We had a resounding turnout– a large turnout actually at our auditions and a great group of people who ended up getting cast in the show from the ages of 11 to 70 plus.”

Cutting said the festival offers mentorship to young or starting actors or actresses in the community. She mentions two actresses who are both playing the role of Alice in the play Alice’s Wonderland.

“The shows are so well balanced and everybody through the mentorship and support has really created very consistent energy on stage,” Cutting said. “We have some young performers for sure, we have our other [actress playing] Alice is 11 years old and she's an absolute powerhouse and has been taking so much skill and experience by learning and working beside Delaney, who's been a fantastic support for her.”

She said the festival also features a great diversity of professional actors who are community theatre veterans, giving access to mentorship.

“The festival has a big focus on lateral leadership. So not just learning from one person top down, but from everybody across the board,” Cutting said. “So everyone has different skill sets and some are talents and some are learned skills that they can share with each other.”

The festival will feature three shows: a rendition of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing set on a 1940s beach in Nanaimo, a whimsical retelling of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll in Alice's Wonderland, and the bilingual Voices in My Body/Des Voix dans mon Corps which integrates dance and theatre

The festival will be using the outdoors as its stage with Nanaimo’s performances being held at Maffeo Sutton Park.

Cutting said having the performances outside makes the show more intimate.

“There's something magical about doing it in the outdoors,” she said. “Both of these shows are set outside–at least our versions are–and it allows for the beautiful landscape that we live in to really support the play.”

Cutting who directed this version of Much Ado About Nothing said having the performances be outside was a new challenge for her.

“One of the big challenges is [Much Ado About Nothing] is kind of like a soap opera and each scene changes to a different location,” she said. “So instead of having to do multiple scene changes–which would become incredibly challenging–we set it all at a clam bake on the beach and it really helped the fluidity of the show progress and we made it a big party sequence.”

As well as Alice's Wonderland, which she wrote, Cutting said she first read through Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and then selected scenes that would flow nicely into each other as the original story deals with a lot of scene changes. 

Delaney Irving is one of the actresses for the Island Summer Theatre Festival and has roles in both Much Ado About Nothing and shares the role of Alice in Alice's Wonderland.

Irving who is about to start her second year at Vancouver Island University’s theatre program said she has been interested in acting since she was eight years old.

She said she got involved with the festival after Cutting saw her in a show at VIU and asked if she asked if she wanted to audition for a role. She said it was a surprise she landed the role of Alice.

“I didn't think that they still needed an Alice to cast, so I didn't think I would be cast as Alice,” Irving said. “When I found out I got the role, I was really excited, it's been great to share the role with Kali, and we've really been learning a lot of things from each other.”

She said although the other actress who shares the roles with her is much younger, they are still able to learn from each other.

“Kali and I have definitely helped each other with this role. I’ve helped her with a few things I've had a little more experience in acting since I'm quite older but then I definitely learned a lot from her being that she is younger and we are playing a younger girl like Alice,” she said. “So it's definitely fun to see the differences that we take in our acting approach.”

Irving also mentioned she’s been able to learn from the veteran actors. 

She said this is her first time performing outside and although there are challenges that come with it, she is still having a lot of fun.
Funding Note: This story was produced with funding support from the Local Journalism Initiative, administered by the Community Radio Fund of Canada.