The Edmonton Journal profiled six emerging Canadian talents from their local theater scene, the young playwrights and actors who are on the cusp of carving-out their careers.
Among the six Canadian theater geeks is stage designer Daniela Masellis, who spent 2007 in Milan at Teatro alla Scala as a backstage apprentice, and worked on the new Luca Ronconi 2008 Puccini Il Trittico production that OC bravely suffered through.
Ronconi's LSD-induced vision of Suor Angelica(literally a gigantic papier-mâché nun that served as a catwalk for the cast) clocked in (along with Gianni Schicchi & Il Tabarro) at $1.2 million dollars (USD). Ms. Masellis details:
"The scale is so huge," she says. "There's so much space and time. Preparations a year in advance, huge warehouses; the paint shop is bigger than most theatres." For Il Trittico, the Puccini opera on which Masellis interned, the set materials alone ran to some 800,000 euros ($1.2 million).
The market price of papier-mâché must have peaked in 2007 when they were building the sets. Now we know why Ronconi didn't show up on opening night to take his curtain call punishment: He took the money and ran!