Volume 26 Issue 7 - May and June 2021

MUSIC THEATRE
Synchronicity and
Innovation in a
WATERSHED
Spring
JENNIFER PARR
New Works Showcase at Watershed – Afarin Mansouri’s Zuleykha (Loose Tea Music Theatre)
ALAIN VIAU
Ever since I began writing this column four years ago,
I have searched out and championed companies and
artists exploring and breaking down the barriers
between musical theatre, opera and dance. Imagine my
delight when I discovered a new festival debuting in the
last week of May this year dedicated to the same goals, to
“reimagining the future of music theatre” and to building
a new community of artists, scholars, journalists and
students from across genres and generations.
The Watershed Festival, given
this name to symbolize the
coming together of these many
streams of interconnected art
forms, is helmed by prolific
Canadian composer Dean
Burry, now also an assistant
professor at Queen’s University
in Kingston, where the idea of
the festival was born. Burry
has been a friend of mine since
I directed the world premiere
of his opera Pandora’s Locker
at the Royal Conservatory of
Dean Burry
Music’s Glenn Gould School in
2008; I got in touch to find out more about both the inspiration
behind the festival and how the pandemic might be affecting plans
for participants and attendees.
One thing that is clear right away in speaking to Burry about
Watershed is how closely the goals of the festival align with his own
belief in the need to break through the long-standing walls between
the worlds of opera and musical theatre: in both the professional and
academic worlds. As he told me, “I feel as though this is something
that my heart has been in for a very long time. I work a lot in the
opera field, but never did think that opera had to be one boxed-in
thing. I have had some professional musical theatre shows, as well,
and I’ve found that as much as we all try to be open, a lot of people in
those two fields have strong feelings about what ‘opera is supposed
to be’ as opposed to what ‘musical theatre is supposed to be’. The
reality, though, as far as I am concerned, is that they are all on the
same spectrum; both are methods of storytelling that use every art
form: drama, literature, music, movement and design.”
Timing is sometimes the essence of alignment. Burry was just
finishing up his doctorate at the University of Toronto, and Queen’s
was looking for the right person to take up the reins of the new
festival. In 2016, Queen’s had taken the unusual step of merging
their previously separate drama and music schools – a move that
still surprises many people – and inaugurating an academic program
that integrates drama and music in a program focused more on an
overview of creation than on learning specific technical skills. With a
large donation (five million dollars) that followed shortly after from
the Aubrey & Marla Dan Foundation, this became the Dan School of
Drama and Music. “When I came to Queen’s,” says Burry, “there was
a real desire to capitalize on the gift and to really explore the concept
of what music theatre is.” The Watershed Festival is, in effect, the
spearhead of this mandate.
Opera and music theatre creation programs abound, especially
at the company/collective level – Tapestry Opera, the Musical Stage
Company and Loose Tea Music Theatre come readily to mind – but
14 | May and June 2021 thewholenote.com