On Sunday, June 12th at the Jubilee Auditorium, One Yellow Rabbit (OYR) will celebrate its Silver Jubilee. The evening will feature the OYR ensemble of Michael Green, Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis, Onalea Gilbertson and Richard McDowell performing some of their favorite pieces from OYR history. They will be joined by The Kids in the Hall’s Bruce McCullough, Daniel MacIvor, The Rheostatics, and many more. It truly is a celebration worthy of 25 years!
“Fuck no, not a chance. I didn’t think I would be a guy who started a job and worked there for 25 years, and it turned out like that so it is kind of weird,” says co-artistic director and one of the Rabbit’s co-founders Blake Brooker, when asked if he had any idea they would be around for so long.
“When you think about it, the world has so many little parts and so many things that happen to it in the world of communication, culture, commerce, family, love, sport, event and politics. It is so intricate like the great clock of the world, and I am aware that doing theatre is just one of the tiny bits of it.”
OYR has long been a theatrical outlet for the Queer community. Recent years have seen the production Bash’d, the band The Hidden Cameras, and the wedding of Annie Sprinkle as part of their High Performance Rodeo.
“Annie’s wedding was a wild community happening with so many people involved from the Queer and Alternative community. There was a sense of merry transgression all night and was a beautiful visual expression; so many people were in costume. It was just a remarkable, wild thing.”
It was a very different style from the formalism and coolness of a Daniel MacIvor piece, or the flamboyance and incredible virtuosity and passion of marionette artist Ronnie Burkett. Burkett & MacIvor, as well as Brad Fraser are three of Canada’s biggest queer artists, and all have had an extensive history with OYR.
“When you look at those three male voices from that part of the Queer spectrum, they are the leading figures. We have had arrangements and associations and been involved with them for many years, which is something I feel really positive about as well. In the case of Ronnie, it was a question of collaborating, and we used to present him all the time. Daniel MacIvor has done many pieces here. With Brad we did The Ugly Man.”
It is hard to grasp in today’s society the sort of challenges that faced a theatre company in the 1980’s and 90’s in trying to present alternative and queer theatre.
“When you do something that is handmade and what we refer to as local and authentic, it is not a big ticket item. It isn’t advertised everywhere. The gay community has always been a dynamic community that is incredibly communicative when it is against the world and the world is against it especially back in the day. Theatre has often been lead by and is really quite gay. I am cognizant of the fact that the picture of where we live now is not the same as it was when we started out, and I think that’s a good thing.”
Toronto’s MacIvor is looking forward to being part of the celebration.
“I love those guys, and I can’t believe it’s 25 years because they are all so young looking still. It is exciting for Calgary and Canada that there is an audience for non-traditional theatre and a place for people with a non-traditional voice to perform. It shows that as a country we have an interest in not just the traditional theatre,” MacIvor said. “The Rabbits have supported me from the beginning. I first discovered them when I was doing The Glass Menagerie at Theatre Calgary. We clicked just hanging out, and I saw their work and really identified with what they were doing. When I began to identify politically as queer, back in the early 1990’s, the Rabbits are about as queer as you can get. It is more of a lifestyle thing than just a sexual preference thing. The Rabbits have made me feel like I am part of a community, and they set the bar for international touring. They helped not only to make me feel at home here, but elsewhere too. They have been an incredibly supportive and inclusive group of people.”
MacIvor has created many solo works that he still presents today, that had their early incarnations with OYR.
“Pretty much all of my solo shows were all presented at the Rodeo in very early stages of their development. Monster I really found in Calgary. There was something about the crowd at the Big Secret Theatre and their excitement that picked me up and kicked me up a notch. It was a show the Rabbits really embraced with me. They supported me at the early stages of these solo works at a time when I needed it in order to see that someone was interested in what I had to say.”
We asked Brooker what we can expect on June 12th for the celebration.
“It is going to be light, fun, and celebratory not of One Yellow Rabbit but of Calgary and that community of Do It Yourselfers. OYR came of age and derived out of the punk movement in a sense. The idea and ethic of expressing ideas, thoughts, and concerns about the world but from a local perspective that is what we have always done. We have been very fortunate to interact with these people, and as an organization we have an ensemble and work, interpret, and present pieces and have a festival, and also we tour. Hopefully the evening that we have going is just going to be fun.”

One Yellow Rabbit’s Silver Jubilee
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Jubilee Auditorium
www.oyr.org