rTVƵ bids a final adieu to Tintamarre with upcoming “Exit 26”
It was 1968 at Mount Allison; a young professor decided to try his hand at staging a play he was teaching.
Fifty-eight years later, Fancy says, “I wanted to get students out of their seats and onto the stage where they could better understand the play, enjoy immersive drama, and speak their second language with authenticity that was not possible in a classroom.”
Tintamarre, Mount Allison’s award-winning bilingual theatre project, began with a risk and continues to this day. Directed by Fancy, the student troupe has staged more than 150 productions of classical and contemporary plays as well as original activist comedies. Three decades of school tours with audience talkbacks have engaged and entertained more than150,000 students and their teachers. The Director has given — often with performances by Mount Allison students — presentations at special events and conferences throughout Canada and in five other countries.
“None of this would have been possible without the goodwill of hundreds of students or the generosity of alumni, friends, and sponsors who believed in the value of what we were doing,” Fancy notes.
EXIT ’26 will be Tintamarre’s final major production in Mount Allison’s Motyer-Fancy Theatre. Two dozen actors, designers, and crew are rehearsing an original script featuring a cast who are rehearsing a play-within-a-play, scenes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis-clos / No Exit, the play Fancy first directed in 1968. Tintamarre staged the play again in 2004, as an all-night marathon that attracted considerable attention.
Three very incompatible people are in Hell for cowardice and capitulation in the face of autocracy, an allegory on French collaboration with Nazi occupiers. In Tintamarre’s third approach to Sartre’s iconic Hell, all goes well for Galeck Fantasy and his actors until their rehearsal is invaded by characters from previous productions who question the choice of script and raise their own hell. Who knew the Moitié-Fantasy Theatre was haunted? But all’s well that ends well, especially if the outcome is joyous, inspiring and celebrates dramatic diversity.
Ella Crowley (honours English) and Kyah Lockhart (psychology & chemistry) are associate directors. “Tintamarre shows are always playful and edgy,” Lockhart explains. While Crowley enjoys playing the socially awkward character who understands something very important. “When we exit the theatre, we see the world more clearly than when we entered.”
Motyer-Fancy Theatre, March 4 – 7, 7:30 p.m. Matinée March 7, 2 p.m. Admission: $5 (Radical Access Project.) Pay-what-you-can preview March 4, 7:30 p.m. Bilingual, run time 75 minutes.
Set design: Ian MacFarlane. Lighting design: Nate Lesser (Drama 4011.) Costume design: Alice Lesueur (Drama 4011.) Sound design: Keira MacDuff. Properties: Will Davis.
