Downstage Performance Society

In 2004, Simon Mallett, then a grad student at the U of C, believed Calgary lacked a theatre company that was a vehicle for Canadian playwrights who addressed socially relevant topics. In response, he created the Downstage Performance Society. Since then, the company has regularly presented thought provoking plays meant to address important issues. “We’re not interested in issue-based plays where someone is simply expressing their political view or agenda on the world,” says Ellen Close, Downstage artistic producer and a colleague and collaborator of Simon’s since 2007. “What we’re looking for are dynamic plays that are entertaining, engaging and often funny, but also show a range of viewpoints on a question.” Downstage calls the intimate Motel Theatre in the EPCOR Centre home for its productions, though some of its plays have been presented in larger theatres.

Among its crowning achievements have been In the Wake, a comedy about geo-engineering and ocean health, Sharon Pollock’s Man Out of Joint, about the war on terror and Guantanamo prison and Good Fences, a play that examines the relationship between the petroleum and agriculture industries in Alberta.

While presenting such topical plays, the company also holds a discussion session after each performance as a means of starting public dialogue on the issues they address. Ellen cites Good Fences as a great example of an after-play conversation that ensued between oil company land agents and ranchers who attended the show. “Those people certainly have a lot of interaction in really defined parameters of negotiation and agreement, but it’s not often that they get to have a philosophical or political discussion about land use and how we can negotiate that together.”