Student work soars at annual Taking Flight festival
By Rachel Woodward, March 27 2017 —
From March 27 to April 8, music, dance and drama produced by University of Calgary students will showcase at various theatres across campus for the 2017 Taking Flight Festival of Student Work.
U of C drama chair April Viczko says the festival is an important aspect of students’ degrees because of the opportunity it gives them to work in multiple projects and take control over the work they create.
“It’s important to allow students to participate in each other’s projects,” she says. “Taking Flight has always been a completely student-driven festival. All of the work either comes out of a class or comes directly from students. The students in drama have always been very excited and very supportive about Taking Flight and that has spread throughout the school.”
This year’s festival will prioritize music and dance as well as its main focus on drama. Shows such as Dance@Noon and Dance@Night are events where dance will be a main focus.
“This year is the first year that drama had dance and music added to this number of projects. The music projects that were scheduled for this time of year normally had their own programming along with the dance projects, so they would take place at the same time but would be under different umbrellas,” Viczko says.
The festival will feature events at multiple locations on campus, including the Reeve Theatre, Matthews Theatre and Eckhardt-Gramatté Hall. The schedule is curated so that multiple shows of various disciplines could be seen by an audience member in one night. Viczko says that this is an important aspect of the festival’s diversity.
“Having things programmed so that a patron could go to a music event and then to a staged reading and then head over and see a play, really excites me. I think it’s unique. I think it’s worth the trip up to the university to see it,” she says.
The events are all student-produced, including Scientific Americans, directed by Sarah Bannister and Shark Bite, directed by Alyssa Bradac. As a class, Drama 460: Performance Creation II will produce If it’s ok, Can we Just, Talk about Debbie, For a moment, led by instructors Mike Czuba and Peter Balkwill. Graduate students in the drama department also created their works as a part of their pre-theses. Viczko says that she hopes the festival will pay tribute to the work happening on campus across the arts.
“My hope is that audiences will be inspired and driven to come and see more work next year [and] that they will see the breadth of the work that happens with our students across disciplines,” she says.
The Taking Flight Festival of Student Work will run from March 27 until April 8 at various locations across campus. Ticket prices vary, but is free with your student ID through the Claim Your Seat program.
For more information, visit scpa.ucalgary.ca