U of C’s School of Creative and Performing Arts presents: 7 Stories
By Laura Beldor, March 23 2026—
Content Warning: This article contains mentions of suicidal ideation
From February 6th to 14th, 2026, the University of Calgary’s School of Creative and Performing Arts (SCPA) presented performances of the play 7 Stories at the Reeve Theatre. Laurel “El” Spring, who plays “The Man”, the lead character of the show, sat down with the Gauntlet to discuss this production.
7 Stories was created by acclaimed Canadian playwright Morris Panych and premiered in Vancouver in 1989. Since then, productions of the show have been staged throughout the country, and was highly regarded within Canadian contemporary theatre. The play centers around The Man, who decides to end his life by jumping off the 7th floor of a building. Throughout the play, he is constantly interrupted from this task by the eccentric residents who recount their own stories to The Man.
“My character, The Man, is kind of your constant through the show—someone who is bringing you through the journey of all these other people’s lives,” said Spring.
It might be initially difficult to imagine that a story centring on such a morbid premise could be considered a comedy. Panych is known for blending darker themes with humour within his works, 7 Stories being one of the most well-known examples. Spring describes how, when preparing for this role, their goal was to utilize the more comedic elements to highlight the complexities of The Man as well as the other characters within the play.
“I think a lot of the time, when you have shows like this that deal with a very serious subject matter in a comedic light, people tend to use the comedy to kind of hide the actual thing that we’re speaking about — which is suicide,” said Spring. “As a cast, we’ve been doing a really good job of finding what our characters are saying, finding what this means to them as people before adding the layer of that joke.”
The cast and crew of the show are composed mostly of upper-year undergraduate and Graduate students within the Creative Arts department, with Spring themselves being fourth-year Arts Education students. Spring details their experience working with fellow students and how supporting one another has been a key element in the process of putting on the production.
“The biggest thing about this production is that [the cast] are all in one acting class together, and these are all people that I have been in this program with now for at least four years,” said Spring. “My castmates, as well as my crew, who are undergraduates like myself, I think a big thing is just understanding that we’re all learning. And that everyone is coming from a window of wanting to figure out what their process is in acting.”
Although it was created over 3 decades ago, 7 Stories continues to be a play that is regularly staged by universities and local theatre groups. The story’s continued relevance can be attributed to its universal themes of self-reflection and isolation. Spring describes how various elements of play mirror current events within the real world.
“[In 7 Stories], something serious is very clearly happening, and a lot of people just don’t want to see it. I think that is a very prominent point in our show that is very relevant right now with how our world is going in the news and media,” said Spring. “There are very serious things happening, and everybody knows. A lot of people don’t want to see that, and I think that’s something that Morris’s writing keeps very consistent from when it was written to now: that this is a feeling that people will always have.”
Overall, 7 Stories presented by SCPA is a story about identity, through both the plot of the play and being a showcase of the skill and creative talent that students involved in the production have developed during their time at the University of Calgary. The play brings to the stage relevant, thought-provoking and ideas about finding meaning in one’s life put on by individuals that represent the future of fine arts within Canada.