The Big Bad Wolf mixes folklore and eco themes at Trout Lake, for the Vines Art Festival
The “immersive promenade” activates natural spaces during park-wide Our Tended Harvest celebration
Davey Samuel Calderon and Janelle Reid in The Big Bad Wolf.
Vines Art Festival presents Our Tended Harvest at Trout Lake on August 13, from 1:30 to 8 pm. Pre-register for the free The Big Bad Wolf, at 2:30 pm, here, or drop by to see if there’s a spot.
THE BIG BAD Wolf is best known as the sinister fictional creature who emerges from the forest in Little Red Riding Hood or blows down the houses it The Three Little Pigs.
But in the immersive interdisciplinary show named for the character at the Vines Art Festival’s Our Tended Harvest celebration at Trout Lake Park this weekend, the wolf will take a different, symbolic form. And so will several other figures recognizable from fables, fairy tales, and myths.
Interdisciplinary artist Valerie Christiansen’s new site-specific, theatrical “promenade” takes audience members around Trout Lake, where they will meet new versions of like Moby Dick, the Siren, and Sleeping Beauty in a piece about the climate crisis, and the power of women to join forces on a cause.
“You see these characters at a different point in narrative than you've been used to seeing them,” says Christiansen, whose site-specific work joins dozens of other performances and installations throughout the afternoon. “Some of the characters have been portrayed as villains in the past. But here, for example, the story of Moby Dick is told from her perspective, about what it's like to be hunted.”
Along the way, watch for singer Janelle Reid as the Siren. And audiences will be guided the entire way around Trout Lake by Big Red, played by drag artist Davey Samuel Calderon, wearing a hooded red cape familiar from a certain Grimm Brothers fairy tale.
“Drag queens teach you how to take up a space, be loud, use your voice,” Christiansen explains. “So we teach the audience some moves right at the top of the show to take up the space and be bigger and powerful and wonderful.
“From the beginning we definitely want people to feel powerful,” the artist adds. “A lot has happened through the pandemic; we have felt disempowered as a society.”
By the end of the journey, Christiansen hopes the audience of all ages will be asking who the monsters are in our own lives, and on our planet, and whether we play a role as a “big bad wolf”. Full of absurdist humour, the interactive performance provides a fresh way to look at the climate crisis in our world, and where we sit in it. “I also want to hold industry accountable, in particular, as being responsible for the climate crisis,” Christiansen hints. “It’s not just that we need to recycle or become vegetarian.”
For all of these ideas, theatre has been the chosen vehicle for the artist, who has devoted a lot of her work to the topics of the environment and social justice—both driving themes at Vines fest.
“I really think the climate crisis is the biggest crisis that we have right now to face,” says Christiansen, who has devoted a lot of her interdisciplinary and theatre work to the topics of the environment and social justice—both driving themes at Vines fest. “However, on the other side of that, it’s not a subject that we necessarily like to hear about or think about. I think theatre, because there's a play element, we tend to listen to things more when we’re playing or having fun. Of course the concept of the potential end of humanity is just doom and gloom, but I hope that the show empowers the characters. And I want the audience to feel empowered.
“We have so much power and we have so many choices that we can be making,” she says. “So theatre I think is the best way to do so, because of the cathartic nature of laughter through some very scary turbulent times.”
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