Faces of Carousel: June

Here we are at last; those are good words to begin with. Here we are because four decades ago, Des and Faye Davis launched Carousel Players into seasonal participation theatre for young people for the first decade of its life.

Des Davis (Artistic Director from 1972 to 1980)
When speaking of the early years, Des says: Unzipping the occasional Kindergarten out of his or her full-length snow suit before the show became a skill we never thought we had. Reading Des’ comments and hearing the road stories from those early shows, you get a sense that the first decade was exactly about that: surprises, discoveries, creative trouble-shooting… It must have been an adventure and a half. Our audiences have never ceased to amaze us, and we have the advantage of building on the knowledge accumulated by all of those road warriors. Our work is peppered with little details that were learned from those adventures . When I hear Des talking about sliding across the ice carrying mats into school gyms, I cannot help but think of the number of times we have had the “mats or no mats” debate on different shows, and smile.

Let me share one more anecdote from Des before we touch on the contributions of our other artistic directors:

In a Mummers’ Play which we were asked to perform in a Shopping Centre in St. Catharines, we were given a space somewhere in the middle of the Mall which backed onto an area where the adjacent store had pulled out their sale items of washing machines and dryers. It was a bit inconvenient, but, being the troopers we were, we dressed in the nearest closet we could find and walked through the shoppers to our performance space.   We were costumed in traditional Mummers’ garb -the fool, the doctor, St. George, etc etc- some pretty weird stuff! I happened to be playing the Doctor in black tails and top hat.  Just before making an entrance (what entrance we could manage) a shopper grabbed my arm, “How much is this washing machine?” I whispered “I’m in a play just here.”  Not deterred, she replied “Well, what about the dryer then?”

Duncan McGregor (Artistic Director from 1980 to 1990)
Duncan had acted in Carousel Players productions before becoming the 2nd artistic director. He picked up the baton from Des and ran with it through the 80s. For a decade, he led the creation and production of many, many new works . Just look at our production history and you will see what I mean. Duncan also had a deep and personal understanding of participatory work which he brought to the creation and performance of those plays. All you have to do is walk down the hallway at Carousel Players to see him lifting a masked Kirk McMahon in a performance of Totem-Go-Round, and Duncan’s commitment and involvement becomes crystal clear. Or, since this is the Internet, you can just click on this link to see the picture in question.

Pierre Tetrault (Artistic Director from 1990 to 1998)
Pierre’s stewardship carried Carousel Players through some difficult times (the 90s came with their own set of challenges), and like his predecessors, he made Carousel Players a place where great work for young audiences could be created. Plays like Michael Miller’s The Power of Harriet T or Colin Thomas’ One Thousand Cranes left deep impressions in our audiences and in all the people who worked on them. Liz Palmieri, General Manager at the time, told me about the impact of seeing one of Sadako Sasaki’s origami cranes in rehearsal. Pierre’s strong commitment to social justice is imbued in these landmark works.

Kim Selody (Artistic Director from 1998 to 2006)
I actually had the opportunity to apprentice with Kim the year Carousel Players produced his adaptation of The Hobbit. That was a large production that toured only to theatres, unlike most of the work we do in the schools. And that kind of big and bold thinking defines Kim’s years at the helm of Carousel Players: adaptations like George and Martha or Where the Wild Things Are (which toured as far as Japan), collaborations with the Niagara Symphony like The Story of the Little Gentleman and Robot from Orion, partnerships with Oily Cart in England or Kazenoko in Japan… Big, ambitious, unapologetic projects. That kind of thinking inspired the creation of the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre, our home in downtown St. Catharines and the performance venue for seven other theatre and dance companies.

One Final Thought
Des Davis founded Carousel Players to be a professional theatre company for all children regardless of their socio-economic status or situation. This mandate has inspired each Artistic Director’s vision for Carousel Players, as it has inspired me, and I want to take this opportunity to thank my predecessors for the theatre they created, for their legacy, and for giving me the opportunity to hear children and adults alike say time and time again: “I saw that!”

Pablo Felices-Luna
(Artistic Director from 2007 on)