The much beloved modern Canadian classic play, Jake’s Gift, which tells the story of a veteran confronting the ghosts of his past on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, is making its landing on a Lunchbox Theatre stage this fall.

That play, along with three other productions that are uniquely tied to the history of Calgary and Southern Alberta, are making up the 50th anniversary season for the company.

The goal for this Lunchbox Theatre milestone was to do more Canadian plays rather than just revisiting some of the best-loved plays from the company’s history—with the exception of Jake’s Gift, said Artistic Director Bronwyn Steinberg,

“I want to honour our legacy as a place where we do new Canadian plays and to do that by doing more new Canadian plays rather than doing ones that were new the first time then. So, we ended up with a mix, where Jake’s Gift is something that we’ve had at Lunchbox,” Steinberg said.

“Often people speak about it when I ask them what was your favourite Lunchbox show. They remember Jake’s Gift, I hear about it all the time, and I just know how beloved it is,” she said.

This year marked the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and Jake’s Gift, last performed during the 40th anniversary season for Lunchbox in 2014, celebrated the 70th.

“With most veterans from the Second World War getting quite old or passing, it’s a really nice time to remember them again. So that piece felt like such a great fit, and it did a little bit of that retrospective, remembering where we came from, but then for the others, I was like, ‘OK, now we can get under the new stuff,'” Steinberg said.

The show, which won a Betty Mitchell Award for outstanding performance by an actress in a drama and was nominated for outstanding production in 2012, will be running from Oct. 29 to Nov. 17 in the studio at Vertigo Theatre at the base of the Calgary Tower.

Christmas collaboration is a surefire hit for musical theatre lovers

For many Calgarians, the ending of the long-running Naughty… but Nice! ending last season a bittersweet finale of a long-standing Christmas tradition.

For the 2024-25 season, Forte Musical Theatre will be collaborating with Lunchbox on Joe Slabe’s new Christmas show Twelve Days.

Steinberg said that one of the reasons why Lunchbox was able to get Slabe’s new production, which had been developed through the Stage One Festival of New Canadian Work, was because of the ending of Naughty… but Nice!

“Holiday programming is like such a beloved thing in Calgary. But [Twelve Days] just really doesn’t feel like anything else I’ve ever seen in a holiday musical, even though it totally is a whole musical. It’s got its own unique thing, especially in that the four performers that are the actors are also the musicians—all the music that happens in the show will be performed live by the actors in character, which is really cool,” Steinberg said.

“Joe Slabe is, well, I would call him a national treasure. But he’s a local Calgary musical theatre creator and he’s just so good. He just had a show, Buy Me a Drink, Joe that has just gotten all kinds of award nominations.”

The show follows music student Anton, stuck at school for Christmas, wanting to make it a special one for fellow student Donna who has big musical career dreams of her own.

The production takes the audience through the unique musical gifts given to Donna by Anton as they count down the 12 days to Christmas, all while trying to keep Donna from taking up Anton’s rival Robert’s offer to sweep her off to his family’s mansion in Toronto for the holidays.

“Hopefully you know the Naughty… but Nice! loyal audiences that he has want to come and see this Lunchbox show, and see a different side of his work,” said Steinberg.

Twelve Days runs from Dec. 5 to 21.

Channelling the spirit of ’88

Coming in 2025 from Jan. 28 to Feb. 16, is a show that captures what is now a forgotten sport that was previewed at the Calgary Olympics: ski ballet.

Go For Gold, Audry Pham tells the story of unfortunate ski ballet athlete Audry, who isn’t able to be accommodated at Athletes’ Village and has to take residence with Birchwoman, the Wicked Witch of West Kensington.

“We see a young person who is trying to strive for success in an athletic arena and to meet her parents’ expectations, but she’s also a bit of an oddball. She’s quite quirky in terms of her … sense of humour,” said Steinberg.

“The person that she meets in Calgary, Birchwoman, is also a total oddball but is a few generations older. So there’s this interesting inter-generational women friendship that happens between them, and I love those stories.”

She said that writer Camille Pavlenko has been a great comedy playwriter, and that comes through with the connections between the two characters and the nostalgia of the ’88 Olympics.

Part of the humour will come from the ski ballet itself—which will be making its debut on a Lunchbox Theatre stage, albeit in puppet form, Steinberg said.

“I’m looking for some really clever design tricks, that feels like it fits into the quirky oddball comedy, but also is theatrically amazing to look at. We don’t want to just go to a video projection of actual ski ballet. That’s just like, that’s too boring,” Steinberg said.

Longtime visitors to Kensington will likely recognize some of the inspirations for Birchwoman’s shop and how that relates to the current version of the BIA.

“There’s that sense to for Birchwoman, she’s been in the neighbourhood for decades, and people have attitudes about her store as things are changing in the neighbourhood. And I think we can all relate to those old stories. Like we either still love them, or we’re like, why is that still here?”

Marking the end of the VHS era

The final production of Lunchbox’s 2024-25 season is Return to Empire Video, which runs from March 25 to April 15, 2025.

The play tells the story of two friends, Cass and Owen, as they try to deal with their surly video store coworker Thomas and survive their shift long enough to go to an advanced screening of The Matrix Reloaded.

The new comedy by James Odim Wade is pop-culture reverent and referential and is a throwback to the heady days as the movie rental business saw the end of the VHS cassette and the rise of the DVD.

Steinberg said that she didn’t consciously consider the play as a segue from the end of the 1980s to the end of another era, but there were some similarities in Return to Empire Video being a coming-of-age story.

“It makes me think of the hours that I’ve spent in video stores trying to figure out what I what I’m going to watch. It’s a slice of life piece, but picture the kind of people that are drawn to work in these kinds of stores,” she said.

“I love nerds that just are OK with sharing their nerdery, and so it’s a great homage to those kinds of characters. But then there’s also—I don’t want to give away the twist—a bit of a twist in this show that suddenly makes it much more meaningful and emotional than you expect it to be.”

She said that the play ends in a way that is both gut-wrenching and uplifting and leaves people watching it connected to the characters.

“Certainly the choice of it being The Matrix, being what they’re going to see that night… I think is a bit of foreshadowing for the audience that not everything is not quite what it seems,” Steinberg said.

Early bird pricing for tickets and Lunchbox Theatre’s PlayPass is available ahead of the 2024-25 season at www.lunchboxtheatre.com.

On the PlayPass, Steinberg said that it was the most flexible pass for theatregoers in the city.

“You can use them in any way. One ticket for each of the four shows, or four tickets for one show, or any kind of mix and match.”