Last Thursday, under the blazing heat of the August sun, the Souris Valley Theatre was host to a travelling theatre group, acting out a quintessentially Saskatchewan experience. Members of Embrace Theatre put on a highly interactive and creative performance of Saskatchewan Outdoors, a humorous play about the disconnect between today’s over-reliance on technology and the simple pleasures of camping and the great outdoors.
“The father realizes how dependent his kids are on technology and decides to take them to camp, where there’s no self-service, no radio reception and no power to charge their video games and whatnot,” said Dakota Hebert, a performer and co-creator with Embrace Theatre who played a girl with a diverting addiction to video games learning to appreciate the great outdoors. “At first, the kids are devastated, but they go on some adventures and help each other out as a family. There’s music, puppetry and high-energy performing for all 35 minutes,” Hebert added.
During the performance, members of the audience were encouraged to join in through activities to help break down the “fourth wall” (the separation between the play and the audience watching it.) Audience members held a blue sheet, to simulate the effect of a rural Saskatchewan lake; and they contributed throughout the performance with an assortment of other quirky direct and indirect interactions with the performers.
Saskatchewan Outdoors incorporated many elements of puppetry, too. At one point, three of the actors dressed themselves in grey, walking in sequence, with one in the front holding a pair of antlers, mimicking a deer. There were also musical pieces where actors and actresses sang, playing the guitar, harmonica and violin.
“I thought it was great. I was assuming at first, that it was just going to be a simple puppet show. I figured it would be a good thing to go to, while I take care of my grandkids for a week,” said Judy Muirhead, a member of the Wednesday’s audience. “There was more to it than that. They kept it very lively, and the music was great.”
Alex Spencer, a younger member of the audience couldn’t decide what part of the play she liked best. “I don’t have a favourite part. I found when they included the audience was by far, the most interesting part,” she said.
“It was very entertaining. The songs were about everyday things in Saskatchewan, and I thought they were all quite good,” said Beth Spencer, a member of the audience. “I thought, ‘Yeah, that happens a lot.’ The actors and actresses also had very good voices. With the kids, they get especially interested, being able to go along with the show. It was well worth it to see.”
Saskatchewan Outdoors was a collaborative endeavour from the very start. Hebert noted the play began as the product of several brainstorming sessions between the members of Embrace, with lots of tweaking over the months since April, 2014. The play began as improv, and after the groundwork with some of the lines and plot was established, members of Embrace consulted their audiences for ideas, looking for stories from the everyday lives of the people of Saskatchewan which they could incorporate.
“We started talking with people afterwards. We picked stories that we could see as being entertaining,” said Hebert. “We started throwing out ideas about things we knew about camping, and asked people to let us know if they had any stories.”
From there, members of Embrace started working stories and anecdotes they heard from others into the script of their performance, developing it into something that reflected the real-life experiences of those who would later become the audience.
“It’s important to us that we include people’s stories,” said Hebert. “That’s what you see onstage, something that’s reflective of your life.”
The audience response to Saskatchewan Outdoors was overwhelmingly positive, from spectators of all ages. The children present took particular delight in the play’s participatory element. Adding to their excitement was a workshop in which they were invited to participate after the performance.
“Ten minutes are devoted to a music workshop, and after that, Emma Thorpeint does a puppet workshop with them, just to teach them something and expose them to a bit of theatre. It gives them the opportunity to create something on their own,” said Hebert. “It’s important to us to keep theatre alive by ‘infecting’ the love of theatre into the youth.”
The play is on its last leg of a seven-week tour of the province, noted founding director Charlie Peters. He said he hopes Embrace will reach a total of 40 separate performances by the end of the summer. The group, consisting of Peters, Hebert, and performers, Chris Donlevy, Shelby Lyn Lowe and Emma Thorpe, travels around the province in a single SUV, keeping a busy schedule of performances spanning Saskatchewan.
Hebert said they’ve covered some serious ground, both this year and last year, travelling to an assortment of cities and towns, sometimes covering distances as great as that between Canora to Ness Creek in a single day.
“This is one of the first shows where I sing, too,” she said of Wednesday’s performance. “It’s challenging, a great learning experience and lots of fun, interacting with the adults and kids. It’s really rewarding.”
