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Tabula rasa resumes

Second annual Blank Slate Theatre Festival returns to Whistler with a roster of talented actors and directors at the helm
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What: Blank Slate Theatre Festival

When: Wednesday, Sept. 1 to Saturday, Sept. 4, 8 p.m. & 9:15 p.m.

Where: Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre

Cost: $20 each, $35 double feature

Attendees of the inaugural Blank Slate Theatre Festival probably recognize the woman in the photo posted above: Cara Yeates was the lead (and only) actor in the premiere of Leah Bailly's Some Reckless Abandon last year.

Yeates was awarded the Joanna Marratta Award at the Vancouver Fringe Festival this year in recognition of her contributions to the industry. But this actor is also a producer and writer. She grew up in Victoria and studied performing arts at Dalhousie University in Halifax, where she had the opportunity to work with Danny McIvor, a very well known actor, writer and director in Canadian film and theatre.

"He came and directed one of our shows and his big word of advice was to do the Fringe," Yeates explained.

So she spent the summer in Edinburgh at the "grandmother" fringe, working as a flyer girl mixing and mingling with a range of amazing acts from around the world, including the Flight of the Conchords (in their pre-HBO days).

"That was a really inspiring summer and by the end of it I saw things that blew my mind, I saw things that were absolutely horrific. I thought, 'Well, I could write a fringe show!'"

Her first effort, Knee Deep In Muck, a solo show about tree planting, was a big success. She toured with that show the following year, then wrote another play, Bye Bye Bombay, which is about a young girl who travels to India and gets sucked up into Bollywood culture. She ended up taking that production to the Hollywood Fringe in L.A., and is considering taking it to Edinburgh next year.

"I did my first two and then I really wasn't sure if I was going to do another one. Then I was approached by a girl that I know, who is a brilliant writer, with the third one I did."

That writer was Leah Bailly and the show was Some Reckless Abandon, which was one of the two productions brought to the stage at the Squamish Lil'wat Cultural Centre last summer.

"I was so honoured to be asked to do somebody else's piece and I read it and it was so different from my voice, I just thought I couldn't give up that opportunity."

She was drawn to Bailly's "poetic" writing and her similar "fish-out-of-water" storyline of a non-religious girl who goes to an evangelical bible camp in Honduras. She ended up touring North America with the show.

"By the end of the summer, I was like 'Oh god, I'm done!'" she laughed. "... And then right away, Brendan (McLeod) approached me with the idea of doing The Big Oops."

The somewhat controversial comedy centres around the character Sammi Sam, a "bright and cheery" children's entertainer who gets knocked up, and needs to decide if she wants to keep the baby or not.

"I was like, 'I don't know,'" she laughed. "A sock puppet and a play about abortion?"

She read over the script and decided to take on yet another one-woman show.

"I'm so glad I did because, once again, it's really been a totally different voice and style, and I've been able to grow so much as a performer from doing this work.

"It's a really fun challenge for me as a performer because as the drama starts to come and the reality starts to rear its ugly head in the middle of her perfect little life, the cracks in the façade start to show more and more."

Yeates staged the show at the Edmonton and Winnipeg Fringe already this summer, where it has largely been met with a warm response from crowds.

But Yeates isn't the only industry player from the Lower Mainland who has gotten on-board with Whistler's new grassroots theatre festival, which is being organized by local resident, Lilli Clark.

Sam Trounce is a bit of a jack-of-all-trades in the performing arts industry. The UK-born actor and classically-trained singer is also an editor, camera operator, visual effects artist, writer and director. Next weekend, he'll be wearing his director's hat, presenting Ethan Coen's Almost An Evening, a series of three one-act plays, to the Whistler audience.

"They are separate stories: the first one, Waiting, is about a businessman, sort of an 'everyman' sort of guy, who's... basically waiting to be processed in the afterlife," he hinted.

The second play, Four Benches, is about an English spy who accidentally gets a member of the public killed during a mission. Finally, the last play is a complex debate between two types of gods: the gods from the Old Testament and the New Testament.

"It gets to be quite a heated argument," Trounce laughed.

While there are three separate plays within the production, there is a common, existentialist thread that runs through all three.

This will be the Canadian premier of Almost An Evening, which represents quite a coup for the grassroots festival.

"I thought primarily it's a great opportunity, now, to put this play on that's only been performed, as far as we know, in New York..." he explained.

"It's a fantastic opportunity for us to have a name like Ethan Coen behind the production. Hopefully that will just be more of a draw for people, and especially for this festival, where part of the rush now is that we want to get more people out to the theatre, even if they haven't been before."

While Whistler has a thriving arts scene, there's room for improvement - or rather, additions - in the theatre department. Trounce can relate: when he moved to Canada in 2007 he spent a season working as a ski instructor in Fernie.

"Even in the city, there isn't a huge amount of theatre comparatively to, say, the UK and London especially. And when I think back to my summers going through school and university, and a little bit after university, we'd always go up to the Edinburgh Fringe and take productions up, and that was such a nostalgia for me.

"When I moved over here I found myself craving those same things. And so this is the perfect opportunity to do that kind of opportunity where you can take greater risks than you maybe can with the Vancouver Fringe."