In an age where it is increasingly difficult to make a career in the arts, more aspiring artists are looking to diversify their skillsets in order to be employed in multiple positions. This is especially true in the world of theatre arts, where multitudes of people are needed both on and off the stage in order to maintain a career.
For both Keely McPeek and Kate Pasula, the diversification of their artistry is precisely what brought them to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Both accomplished stage performers, the two of them came to hone their skills behind the scenes as stage managers.
Winnipeg audiences are certainly familiar with McPeek’s on-stage exploits with companies like Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Dead of Winter and Manitoba Opera, among others. After a year of theatre adjacent jobs in development and production, she has come to build on a craft that first piqued her interest a couple of years ago. “When I was in school at the University of Manitoba, I had a theatre minor and it was a Zoom year, so I stage managed two shows on Zoom,” McPeek explains. “I thought this would be a beautiful place to learn how to stage manage and see if it was something that I wanted to continue with, and I really like it so far.”
It is a similar story for Red Deer product Pasula, who also caught the bug for stage managing as she was performing in her theatre studies at the University of British Columbia. She notes that being at the Banff Centre has already helped to facilitate potential connections with other theatre departments as her and McPeek assistant stage manage the upcoming production of the operatic rendering of The Handmaid’s Tale. “I’ve already learned so much,” she says. “It was a bit of a learning curve during the first couple of weeks, but now I feel like we’ve got it down.”
Both Pasula and McPeek say that working as crew members on a show is giving them new insights into how they will perform when they inevitably return to the spotlight. “To be a good performer, I think you need life experience besides performing,” McPeek explains. “Then, you have things to put into your performances. If you’re only performing... I feel like that’s kind of all you know. To be in more rooms, you meet more people and then you have more people to put into your performances and ideas.”
Despite this knowledge of the good things that come from wearing different hats in the theatre world, Pasula admits that there was a time when she thought that trying different tasks and jobs would be detrimental to developing her on-stage talents. “It’s such a gift to be in the room,” she says of her perspective now. “No matter what you’re doing, to be a part of the process and to meet all of the people to see a different side of things... I think it’s been a gift and a treat.”