Welcome to the website of the Struts and Frets Players. We’re a professional theatre company based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. To learn more about the company, click the About / Contact tab above.
To check out our previous work, click the Past Productions tab.
To jump to the post about our upcoming show, click here.
Cupid and Psyche will pierce the heart of audiences with its achingly clever and gaspingly funny interpretation of the story of these most famous of lovers. [5 stars] – Winnipeg Free Press
The company both honours the tale and has a tremendous amount of fun at its expense…From start to finish, this superbly directed play is smart, witty, ambitious, thorough and joyfully done — easily one of the best of the fest. [5 stars] – Saskatoon StarPhoenix
Last summer, we returned to Classical mythology with Cupid and Psyche, the story of a mortal woman, Psyche, who is so beautiful that people start to worship her instead of the actual goddess of love, Venus. Naturally, Venus doesn’t take too kindly to this, so she hatches a plan with her son, Cupid – he’ll shoot her with one of his famous arrows and make her fall in love with a monster from the underworld. However, upon seeing her for the first time, Cupid falls in love with her instead. Complications ensue.
Stylistically, we blended Classical Roman fashion and architecture with elements of Art Nouveau. Instead of shadow puppets, we incorporated several large, hand-held puppets to depict various the fantastical beasts described in the story: Cerberus, the guard dog of Hades; mad, venomous sun-sheep from which Psyche must pluck golden fleece; some very helpful ants; and of course, Dave, the lovelorn underworld monster.
Cupid and Psyche was a wonderful experience for us in several ways. It was our first time in a “Bring Your Own Venue” at Winnipeg Fringe, which turned out to be a very good fit for the show. It was also our first time touring a Fringe play – we all had a lot of fun at Saskatoon’s PotashCorp Fringe Festival, and we made some great contacts there. All in all, a stirring success!
Pictures below the fold.
In just over two weeks, our very own Jessy Ardern and Ariel Levine will present Oedipus the King, an independent production they directed featuring a talented teenage cast!
Oidípous, meaning “swollen foot”, was a mythical Greek king of Thebes. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus fulfilled a prophecy that said he would kill his father and marry his mother, and thereby brought disaster on his city and family. The story of Oedipus is the subject of Sophocles’s tragedy Oedipus the King, which was followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone. Together, these plays make up Sophocles’s three Theban plays. Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual’s powerlessness against the course of destiny in a harsh universe. – Wikipedia
70 Albert St.
Studio 320, 3rd floor
Saturday, February 16 – 8pm
Sunday, February 17 – 2pm and 8pm
Monday, February 18 – 8pm
Tickets $10 general / $8 students
We are pleased to announce that this summer we will finally be taking our show on the road! After premiering Cupid and Psyche at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival, we’ll be coming to Saskatoon’s PotashCorp Fringe Theatre Festival as well!
The Winnipeg Fringe runs July 18-29, and we will be performing at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, located at 91 Albert St.
The Saskatoon Fringe runs August 2-11, and we will be performing at Oskayak High School Gym, located at 919 Broadway Ave.
Full show info and advance tickets: Winnipeg / Saskatoon
Links to the Facebook events: Winnipeg / Saskatoon
We hope to see you there!
This Friday (June 29) at Manitoba Theatre for Young People, we hosting a fundraiser for our upcoming show Cupid and Psyche! There will be a reading of our very first show, Perseus and Medusa, a preview of Cupid and Psyche, and previews of three other shows by our talented Fringing friends:
There will also be refreshments, displays of masks ‘n things from our past shows, finger puppets with which to play, and even a raffle!
The event is titled “A Fringe-mas Carol, or, Gorgon’s Head Revisited, or What You Will, or Four Silly People Take Your Money”. It will take place in Richardson Hall at Shaw Performing Arts Centre (aka Manitoba Theatre for Young People), located at 2 Forks Market Rd. Doors open at 6:30; entertainment starts at 7:00 (but there will be plenty to take in before that). Admission is $10 at the door.
If you like, you can RSVP to the Facebook event.
The Struts and Frets Players will return this July for our fifth Winnipeg Fringe Festival production, Cupid and Psyche! In this Roman story (yes yes, I know, the Romans just stole it all from the Greeks. But this story is specifically Roman), the course of true love never did run smooth for the beautiful mortal woman Psyche, who falls head over heels for…the son of Venus, goddess of love. Oh jeez. No good can come of this.
This year will be the Players’ first foray into the world of “Bring Your Own Venue”: Cupid and Psyche will be presented at the Rudolf Rocker Cultural Centre, 3rd floor of 91 Albert St. (above Mondragon). We are also pleased to introduce our friend and colleague Michelle Arentsen, who will be joining the cast this summer!
As always, more details will be forthcoming as the Festival approaches. We hope to see you there!
Struts and Frets astutely pull together their own special take on Sigurd’s portion of the saga, where pop-culture references abound and a laugh is always around the corner. – Winnipeg Free Press
Sigurd the Dragonslayer was an adaptation of part of the Norse Völsungasaga, the saga of three generations of heroes in the clan Völsung. This is the story that inspired Wagner’s Ring Cycle operas, large parts of the Lord of the Rings mythos, and the Looney Tunes sketch What’s Opera, Doc?.
In the section, our hero Sigurd is trained by his foster father Regin to slay Regin’s brother Fafnir, who has gone mad with greed and turned into a terrible dragon. After Sigurd kills Fafnir, Regin betrays him, and Sigurd kills him too. Now completely alone, he sets off to seek his place in the world. He rescues Brynhild the Valkyrie, and finds first hospitality, then betrayal in the royal hall of the Niflung clan.
For this production, we were joined by our very clever and talented friends Michael Ostry and Hailley Rhoda. Stylistically, we continued to mix and match various design and writing elements: full-colour, translucent plastic shadow puppets; story theatre; our house blend of corny jokes and pathos. Script-wise, we really wanted to focus on the relationship between Sigurd and Brynhild, as well as Sigurd’s personal growth over the course of the story, building on our success with writing the character of Gilgamesh the year before.
For our efforts, we were rewarded with the Best of Fest honour for the third time in four years, and Ariel and Jessy jointly won the Harry S. Rintoul Memorial Award. This is an award given out every year by the Winnipeg Fringe Festival for the best new original script by a Manitoba author. Huzzah!
Pictures below the fold.
Every year, Athens shall send seven young men and seven young women by ship to Crete to be prey for the Minotaur. – Royal Decree of King Minos of Crete to His Subordinate, King Aegeus of Athens
[T]he production never overwhelms and comic relief in the form of visual gags and clever wordplay is always elegantly timed to keep the story moving forward. [4 stars] – Winnipeg Free Press
King Minos has a terrible secret. His stepson, the Minotaur, is a half-man, half-bull monster, born of a curse incurred for trying to cheat the sea god Poseidon. Every year he collects a blood debt from the nations he has conquered to feed the Minotaur, but this year is different. This year, Theseus, a brave young man from Troezen (“Treason?!”) has taken the place of one of the prisoners, and he intends to put a stop to the blood debt. He’ll have to deal with a diabolical king, a flesh-rending bovine abomination and a girl with an obsessive crush to do it, but by Zeus, do it he will.
Our company’s sophomore production premiered at the 2009 Winnipeg Fringe Festival. It incorporated a lot of the same techniques as Perseus had; story theatre, masks and puppets. Doing this allowed us to begin solidifying a distinctive “style” in the minds of our audiences, many of whom had seen us the previous year as well. But we did attempt to stretch ourselves somewhat as well. Perseus was a very comedic, family-friendly show – it was, after all, part of the Kids’ Fringe. Theseus, on the other hand, is a more tragic story, so we had to strike a balance between comedy and drama.
Whereas the designs for Perseus had been drawn from Greek vase paintings (flat and black – perfect for shadow puppets!), Ariel designed flat, wooden puppets for Theseus, to be manipulated live on stage, based on Minoan frescoes, which are far more colourful. (Pictures below the fold.)
Theseus and the Minotaur was well-received by both audiences and critics. It helped us gain a wider audience and demonstrate that we can bring off comedy and tragedy alike. By all accounts, it was another success.
When Al Rae approached us to write a piece to present at the media launch of the 2012 CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival, he gave us two guidelines: 1) do your thing for 5-10 minutes, and 2) the theme is “Mayan legend and the 2012 ‘Apocalypse’”.
Vucub Caquix and the Hero Twins was the result.
It’s based on a Mayan legend about Vucub Caquix (woo-koob kuh-keesh), a demon macaw who steals the crown of the Sun. The Sun hides in shame, and although the crown continues to produce light, Vucub Caquix cannot provide the nourishment that only the rightful Sun can. With everything going to hell in a handbasket on Earth, the Moon asks heroic brothers who look absolutely nothing like each other identical twins Hunahpu and Xbalanque (hoo-nach-pu and shball-an-kay) to slay the demon and recover the Sun’s crown. Should be easy, right?
Featuring a bo-staff-versus-two-obsidian-studded-paddles fight and the only pun we’ve ever made that was so bad we actually apologized for it live on stage, Vucub Caquix and the Hero Twins was ten minutes of pure excellence, if we do say so ourselves.
Pictures below the fold.
As we mentioned before, we will be presenting a short piece at the media launch of the 2012 CBC Winnipeg Comedy Fest. With “Mayan legends” as our theme, we chose the hilariously harrowing story of the heroic (but terrible at horticulture) twins who must defeat the demon that usurped the crown of the Sun. Come for the puns, stay for the bo-staff-versus-obsidian-studded-paddle fight.
The event will take place Wednesday, February 22, 11:00 AM at the Gas Station Arts Centre on River & Osborne.
EDIT: Please note the change of time! The launch will take place at 11, not 10.
Hello everyone! We are delighted to announce that we will be presenting a short piece at the media launch of the CBC Winnipeg Comedy Festival. The theme is Mayan legend and the 2012 “end of the world”. Or era. However that’s supposed to be translated.
The event will take place Wednesday, February 22, 11:00 AM at the Gas Station Theatre on River & Osborne. More details about our piece will follow.
