The second production in Mount Allison’s Motyer-Fancy Theatre season is not going to be your typical theatre experience, says resident designer Ian McFarlane.
THE DARK will take audiences outside, on a lantern-lit procession through the Sackville Waterfowl Park, culminating in a staging of a poem featuring Mount Allison’s Elliot Chorale in Normandy Field. Audiences are also invited to participate in advance, in lantern making workshops happening this weekend.
CHMA spoke with McFarlane this week:
McFarlane says he has been “tinkering with lanterns and light” for years now, and since coming to Mount Allison has had some “extraordinary creative collisions” with other artists such as THE DARK’s co-creator Kiera Galway of the Elliot Chorale, and Sackville poet Keagan Hawthorne, whose poem The Dark inspired the production.
THE DARK takes place next weekend on November 2 and 3 starting at 7:30pm near the Waterfowl Park entrance beside Cranewood on Main. Participants are asked to bring a lantern for a night time procession through the park, and can register in advance on Eventbrite. Optional lantern making workshops are happening this weekend on October 26 and 27, from 10am to 1pm at the Purdy Crawford Centre for the Arts.
