Northan is donating $1,000 of her $5,000 prize money to Ellis Lalonde, now 20, whom she met at Loose Moose when he was 16.Tony Lombardo
The first time Rebecca Northan met Naheed Nenshi, it was in the lobby of a theatre before her show Blind Date.
This was in the early days of what has become her signature piece – a juggernaut that has toured all over the place over the past few years with 11 more weeks booked this year.
In the largely improvised but structured piece, Ms. Northan's sexy clown character selects an audience member for an onstage blind date that – surprise – is not just an amusing diversion, but an enthralling performance that showcases Ms. Northan's powers as a skilled improviser, a comedic talent, and an astonishingly focused listener. (The Globe and Mail's theatre critic, J. Kelly Nestruck, gave the show four stars when he saw it in Toronto four years ago.)
That date is selected based on casual chatty interviews conducted by Ms. Northan and her colleagues who mingle with the audience in the lobby ahead of the show. That's where she first met Mr. Nenshi. He wasn't mayor yet; he was, in fact, there with an old high school pal of Ms. Northan's. But he knew her work – he had seen her at the legendary Loose Moose Theatre Company, and he became a huge supporter of Blind Date, she says.
Ms. Northan and Mr. Nenshi met again this week when Ms. Northan – who was born in Calgary and is based there and in Toronto – was presented with the Doug & Lois Mitchell Outstanding Calgary Artist Award at the Mayor's Lunch for Arts Champions.
"It just makes me want to cry … and it makes me feel really humble and really proud," said Ms. Northan, 42, in an interview before receiving the award. "This is really amazing. It's on par with being white-hatted. Which I [told] Naheed Nenshi 'all I want, my dream is to be white-hatted.' He said 'you're not allowed to be white-hatted. It's an honour that's reserved for non-Calgarians.' "
Ms. Northan is donating $1,000 of her $5,000 prize money to Ellis Lalonde, now 20, whom she met at Loose Moose when he was 16. "He blew me away with how mature his improv work is."
Ms. Northan's improvising-with-the-audience success continues. In addition to Blind Date – she has trained four new Mimis – her new show, Troublemaker, premieres at the Loose Moose on March 4; she has a new show in development at the Stratford Festival – An Undiscovered Shakespeare turns a true event from an audience member's life into a new Shakespeare play; and Legend Has It, which premiered last year at the Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays and will be at Alberta Theatre Projects in the fall. Legend Has It also sources its co-star from the audience, but in this case, it's a fantasy adventure, and the volunteer is exposed for the hero he or she is.
"Our premise in Blind Date is that everyone's a romantic hero and that there's something lovable about everybody. And then in Legend Has It, our premise is that everyone is a hero in their own lives in some small and quiet way. And we look to find: How are you a hero?"
Several other arts heroes were honoured Thursday: MoMo Dance Theatre artistic director Mark Ikeda won the Emerging Artist Award; visual artist Hamraz Salehi, originally from Iran, won the New Canadian Artist Award; painter Aaron Sidorenko received the Healing Through the Arts Award for his work as a recreational therapy aide; Springboard Performance artistic director Nicole Mion won the Creative Placemaking Award for creating containR – a village of pop-up venues made of repurposed shipping containers in the Sunnyside neighbourhood; Verb Theatre co-artistic director Col Cseke won the Community Beacon Award; and the collaborative arts centre Studio C won the City Builder Award.
Marsha Lederman