(M)all the world’s a stage

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This article was published 18/07/2022 (1562 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Matthew Evan Havens is delivering an hour-long monologue about royalty, war, magic and love, not far from where the blouses used to hang.

His stage is in what was most recently a women’s clothing shop on the second floor of Portage Place, a level of the downtown mall with more than half of its units empty, advertised to be leased.

All the maxi dresses are gone.

But for at least two weeks, two of the empty storefronts — one a former Suzy Shier shop, the other a Stitches outlet that perished in the pandemic — have tenants, though what they’re selling isn’t made of polyester and isn’t in direct competition with the Ardene or Dollarama down the hall.

The erstwhile retailers have been replaced by makeshift theatres — complete with lights, risers and more than 100 seats each – to serve as venues for the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, on until Sunday.

Before Havens’ show, King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, opened Thursday, theatregoers lined up outside shops that hadn’t seen customers in months. Inside one vacant storefront, the only sign of recent life was a floor decal informing customers to keep six feet of separation between them — a remnant from a pandemic that has reduced some parts of the mall to near-ghost-town levels of quiet.

“That used to be a candy shop,” one woman told her companion, waiting for the show and pointing at another shuttered store.

It isn’t the first time the fringe has staked its claim to Portage Place: in 2019, the former Globe Theatre was used for a pair of venues because the Pantages Playhouse was unavailable and a space at Red River College was under renovation, says festival executive producer Chuck McEwen.

“So we had to adapt,” he says. “And we’re always looking for vacant, available spaces to give our artists a place to perform.”

When it came time to book this year’s festival, a few other usual venues — the Centennial Concert Hall, the School of Contemporary Dancers, the University of Winnipeg — couldn’t accommodate shows.

Fortunately for the fringe, and unfortunately for the former retailers displaced by the pandemic, a trip to the mall gave McEwen and company many options to choose from.

Already struggling under the normal pressures of downtown commerce, Portage Place — which enjoys steady foot traffic in its food court, and which has a few long-term retailers who do solid business — had many tenants close up shop throughout the pandemic, most of whom were not replaced.

Shopkeepers weren’t exactly lining up. So when fringe employees called the mall’s brass in the winter, they were ecstatic to have a short-term tenant to boost mall traffic.

Inside the former Suzy Shier, risers large enough to hold 150 seats were assembled. And inside Stitches, just past the former cashier’s desk, 100 folding chairs waited for butts. Huge rented trusses were installed. Electrical circuitry was rewired to handle the capacity of the powerful lighting. “It is not an inexpensive task to create a temporary venue,” McEwen said.

As malls, especially urban ones, climb back out of the doldrums, they are increasingly considering short-term leases, or pop-ups, to reinvigorate their corridors. At Portage Place, the mall’s largest tenant, Staples, closed up shop during the pandemic, and in its stead is not another office supplies retailer, but a roving exhibit of Rolling Stones memorabilia, a proven hit thus far.

The beauty of theatre, McEwen said, is that it can essentially be performed anywhere, and Portage Place is positioned to be a natural hub: the Prairie Theatre Exchange, located across the way, is serving as a venue for the festival as it makes its return from a multi-year hiatus.

“Isn’t it nice after three years to be back… back at the mall?” Paul Strickland asked the audience during his and Erika MacDonald’s Thursday performance of Away, Now: The World’s Most Desired Destination.

There are also, of course, the actual theatres: the Globe, which showed movies until the mid-2010s, and the previously-shuttered Imax: in the window of that theatre is a poster for Blue Planet, released in 1990, that says, “Now Playing.”

This is all to say that the shopping mall has seen better days.

But with the addition of the temporary venues, there is a different energy, one audience member at Havens’ performance Friday afternoon said.

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“It’s a better use than empty space,” she said.

For his part, Havens, a Winnipegger and veteran storyteller, was surprised to see the downtown mall’s unused storefronts available as venues for the first festival in three years.

The only reminder of the setting is a tiny ribbon of light pouring in from the corridor, he said.

“Once I’m up there, it feels like any other theatre,” said Havens after the Friday matinee finished, while shoppers hustled by outside. “I forgot I was at the mall.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com

Ben Waldman
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Ben Waldman covers a little bit of everything for the Free Press.

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