ZUPPA: Still Flying High At 27

Last night St. Andrew’s United Church was filled with friends and extended family of Halifax’s own ZUPPA [Circus/Theatre], for Birdsong!, a celebration and fundraiser for the company ahead of the debut of their new show The Final Recordings of an Almost Extinct Bird, which is the Mainstage performance at Eastern Front Theatre’s Stages Festival running June 4th to 8th at Alderney Landing Theatre.

The Zuppas, as they are known, have been creating theatre here since 1998 when Co-Artistic Director Ben Stone teamed up with Sandy Gribbin to create their own work in a theatrical landscape where it was a daunting task to be hired for anything in the theatre straight out of university. Co-Artistic Director Alex McLean and Susan LeBlanc (now the Chair of the Board, also the MLA for Dartmouth North) joined the next year and together they built a way of creating theatre projects together based on collective collaboration, and chasing their own curiosity. Through Stone, McLean, and LeBlanc’s ties to both Dalhousie University’s Theatre Department and later Armbrae Academy the Zuppas have influenced generations of theatre artists here in Halifax. Stewart Legere, the company’s Associate Artistic Director, also joined the company after graduating from the Dalhousie’s Acting Program at what is now the Fountain School of Performing Arts. ZUPPA also includes producer Sophie Schade.

The host for Birdsong! was Mary Fay Coady, who has also been working with the company lately in a producing role, and she captured what I feel is a universal experience for the elder Millennials in the theatre company here, myself included, who were introduced to Zuppa when we were in our late teens or very early twenties, still in University, by watching productions like Uncle Oscar’s Experiment (2003) or Open Kitchen (2005), in which Ben Stone famously squatted on a table and ate a raw onion, and this forever expanded our concept of what the theatre could be. Especially at that impressionable age, for many of us who had only really ever seen plays at Neptune before, this was a strange and sometimes confounding theatrical experience that left us with vivid lasting memories and images that remain in our minds to this day. As Coady said, referencing another early Zuppa moment: “… eating a spoonful of mayonnaise: that was disgusting.” They are literally seared into our brains and they are part of the oral history of theatre in Halifax that we pass along to younger generations and those who have since joined us from elsewhere in Nova Scotia, other provinces, and beyond. Eastern Front Theatre Artistic Director, and fellow Dalhousie Theatre grad Kat McCormack said her reaction to seeing her first Zuppa show had been a revelation, expressing that her professors at Dal had “not been fucking teaching us this!” Going back even further Coady mentions that she has heard folks say of Nosferatu (1999) “I’ll never forget what you did with that ladder.” Which sounds so ominous, but the audience never forgets.

In Birdsong! we were, perhaps unsurprisingly, treated to ten musical acts, each one presenting a song that referenced birds in some way: an apt theme for an event in early May. The evening started with Richard Taylor reading a poem he wrote which imagines his mother as a hummingbird and his father as a frog and chronicles a rich and poignant love story between the two. 

Many of the musicians who performed really capture the same spirit of the Zuppas. In Blue Lobelia, the “contemporary classical solo project” of Rachel Bruch, I heard her make sounds with the violin that I had never or very rarely heard before. She mixes the gorgeous mainstream classical tones and musicality of the violin with these more whimsical moments, that also challenge what we understand to be the confines of the instrument. waants, singer, musician, and producer, also creates his own unique electronic music, using the synth, and he performed a brand new song he wrote specifically for the fundraiser and also performed his own rendition of Leslie Feist’s “The Redwing.” His singing voice has beautiful range and power. Kim Harris also wrote a new song for the occasion, a love ballad to a real ruffed grouse friend of hers (her son), affectionately known as “Big Fat Bird.” This was, truly, one of the evening’s showstoppers. Harris has such a powerful, gorgeous voice and this song, and the story that set it up, was filled with so much heart, charm, and complete hilarity. In a similar, but completely different, vein Terra Spencer, also bursting with charm, heart, and humour, treated us to “Bees and Birds,” her “cheeky take on The Talk,” which chronicles a mother’s meandering attempt to explain to her son where babies come from. This was another of the evening’s showstoppers, which also captured the essence of both silliness and play that is inherent to Zuppa. 

There were also lovely performances by Cactus Flower, Armbrae Alum Dilshan Weerasinghe, and The Heavy Blinkers. 

Stewart Legere brought down the house with his absolutely stunning rendition of Anne Murray’s iconic song “Snowbird,” which he sang while accompanying himself on the piano. Legere then joined Coady, McLean, Stone, and LeBlanc singing a short Italian song in lovely harmony a cappella without much context before sending us off into the night, and, really, it doesn’t get much more Zuppa than that. 

Many of the special guests last night referenced how important storytellers are, especially during tumultuous times like those we are living in now, and how Zuppa’s works that are so unique, so creatively driven, so willing to be bold and to explore telling stories in brand new ways and pushing against the boundaries of what theatre is and can be, are needed in the world we find ourselves in twenty-seven years after this company was founded. If you would like to support Zuppa by making a one-time or monthly donation visit this website to find more information on how to do so.

Happy Belated Birthday, ZUPPA! May you never grow up!