A World Premiere Musical.
Nightingale Alley is a musical performance based largely on the lyrics of anonymous 19th century underground poets and minstrels - not the poetry of the refined and delicate, but the slashing and humorous words from the streets and alleys, distant echoes found in subversive broadsheets and pamphlets hawked in every London market place.
These lyrics are over 200 hundred years old, at the dawn of capitalism, yet they speak with a curiously modern voice and from a disarmingly compassionate female perspective. They stare deep into the erotic. They evoke the pleasures and delight of human sexual appetite, but also its perils. The songs gaze - eyes wide open - on the clash of social values, of heartache and despair, and the darker, more disquieting aspects of an emerging and rather brutal sexual economy.
Composed by David Rhymer.
Directed by Blake Brooker.
Performed by Denise Clarke, Andy Curtis, Grace Fedorchuk, Jamie Konchak, and Allison Lynch.
With musical accompaniment by David Rhymer and Jonathan Lewis.
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Also Featuring:
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Blake Brooker
Blake Brooker is an award-winning writer and director. He has created or collaborated on such productions as The Erotic Irony of Old Glory, Tears of a Dinosaur, Serpent Kills, The Land The Animals, Dance Freak, Breeder, Permission, Alien Bait, The Ugly Man, Conniption Cabaret, Mata Hari: Tigress at the City Gates, and many others, which have been presented throughout Canada, and in Europe, Australia and Asia. In 2015, Blake was made a Member of the Order of Canada.
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David Rhymer
David Rhymer is a multi-award winning writer and composer and frequent collaborator with One Yellow Rabbit. His work - a combo of cabaret, salon and art-song, have toured internationally to critical and popular acclaim.
They include Mata Hari In 8 Bullets (which premiered off Broadway in 2013,) Songs From Nightingale Alley, Why Freud Fainted, Wreck Beach and Something Wicked This Way Comes! With long time associate poet/playwright Blake Brooker, he created the impressionistic oratorio on the Beat Generation Dream Machine, and the notorious Ilsa Queen Of The Nazi Love Camp which toured Canada, the UK and Australia and was made into a feature movie.
In 2007 he was honoured with the Greg Bond Memorial Award for Outstanding Contribution to Musical Theatre in Calgary
Jonathan Lewis
Jonathan is known for his work in sound design, composition, and as a live musician. He has performed at, and/or designed shows for Alberta Theatre Projects, the Old Trout Puppet Workshop, Theatre Calgary, Theatre Junction and Vertigo Mystery Theatre and more. His most recent projects include a 65-minute soundtrack for COU A Circus of Unity (Green Fools), and the music and sound for Jabberwocky (Old Trout Puppet Workshop).