Musings of a Wench

The play's the thing

I just did something that made me feel all grown up like – I just bought seasons tickets for a theatre company! http://www.atthegrand.ca/ Theatre Junction does some fun stuff, and their performances are at the recently renovated Grand Theatre – an old theatre, turned movie theatre, turned golf store. 12 million or so went it and it just opened and is apparently pretty darn cool looking. One of John’s summer employers did all the architectural renderings of the place, so I’m excited to see what it looks like in real life.

I think we got a great deal, as we got ~20% off from John’s work social club, and half price tickets anyway because we are under 25. A thing I quite like, these young person discounts. It makes sense to me though. Sure, when you are a student you are really poor and can therefore only go to the theater rarely, but let’s face it, your early 20s aren’t necessarily filled with cash either. Sure, we have the mortgage which doesn’t help, but we are hardly alone in that in this city. It means that we could totally decide to blow $240 on theatre tickets, but $480 would have been a lot harder to justify to ourselves.

7 shows – Insomnia, Show No. 1 (A provocative and entertaining evening of contemporary theatre, dance, music and film), The Old Trout Puppet Workshop: Famous Puppet Death Scenes, Solo: The Doubt Within Me, The Visit Revisited, Unbound, Life Is Good. And, as a bonus, we get free parking, which if you’ve ever tried to theatre park in downtown Calgary, you know is totally worth it.

I’m totally psyched about the Famous Puppet Death Scenes. I’ve been hearing about this group for a while, and they sound really fun. And weird. I’ll admit, I’m a little surprised that John was so keen on this, as there is a lot of dance involved.

It’s odd, but we’ve always gone on a lot more theatre dates than movie dates. This is only a little because we have some friends that do musical theatre. It’s just, you know, more fun. Pumphouse Theatre hosts a ton of different theatre groups, most amateur but most really good as well. As students, it cost slightly less a movie, the quality was often better and even if it wasn’t, it was still live and that’s by default better. J Less cheesy special effects and when one of the amateur actors started chewing on the scenery, you totally get to giggle over it. (I’m talking about you, Sherlock of Workshop Theatre.) Also, so much more original than another RomCom or violent film. And I’ve never hissed in anger at a play before. (I’m talking about you, Blackhawk Down. Biggest piece of shit and lies. I had just studied that whole mess a few weeks earlier and let me just say the movie? Had no basis in reality. And the scene where they are jogging back to base and all the black kids are cheering in slow-mo? Made me throw up in my mouth.)

posted by Morgan @ 11:21 a.m.