At this Nova Scotia theatre festival, all the plays are unfinished

While the Early Stages festival started in 2023, the seed of the idea for Early Stages Theatre Festival was planted in event creator Kat McCormack's mind years ago. 

"Here's the truth of it," the artistic director of Eastern Front Theatre says, before laughing. "I was EFT's front-of-house manager at Neptune [theatre] for almost 20 years. So, I was the one working the door at The Stages Festival. But what happened was that people would get confused. They would come out of a play reading, and they would say: 'Well, are all the plays going to be unfinished?'" 

The whole point of the long-established Stages Festival is, as McCormack explains, "work from artists at all stages of their career and work at all stages of development" — meaning that those bewildered audience members back then might have watched a staged script reading, say, instead of a fully-formed production. In a sense, though, Early Stages, a separate winter festival, is a chance for McCormack to give a belated, hearty "yes" in reply. 

"I can't lie," she says. "That's part of it: I really wanted, as we push Stages Festival further and further into really exciting and polished work that's coming out from around the province and the country, and — dare I say — the entire world, I still wanted to have space for all the work-in-progress."

This year's edition of Early Stages is a four-day event which features experimental theatre that also features workshops, artists talks and more.

"So what we've done is we've kind of split it: We still have work-in-progress showings at Stages in June, but Early Stages is really a chance in the dead of winter to get together and to read stories together, and to share work and to have a reason to come out when it's cold," adds McCormack. "These aren't polished things. Though your experience is still quite polished, and depending on what stage, dare I say, the piece is at, you're getting a really nice insight into not just the piece, but also the process behind it."

But beating the winter doldrums through the fire of creativity isn't McCormack's only motivator in creating Early Stages Festival as a freestanding, off-season offshoot of Stages Festival. 

"I'm kind of out here to prove that anything can be theatre: As long as there's an audience to experience it and it's live," she explains. 

Knowing McCormack's resumé — cutting her teeth at the experimental Halifax theatre company Zuppa and now turning Eastern Front Theatre  into Dartmouth's destination for innovative live art — makes both her views of what theatre can be and her decision to push the medium's edges with Early Stages feel like the most fruitful of foregone conclusions.

In practical terms — or to answer the query of those long-ago audience members a bit more fully — the shows at Early Stages will be a mixed bag: Playwright Lara Lewis, a staple of the scene, will be delivering a staged reading (a performance where actors stand and read a script aloud) of the script for her new work, Weltamultiek. Local musician and theatre-maker Stewart Legere will perform music with a roster of special guests at the candle-lit cabaret Open Hearts. And then there's the collaboration between Early Stages' artist-in-residence Leslie Ting and Dustin Harvey of Halifax theatre company Secret Theatre. 

"I always would love, somehow, to share a bit more artistic process with people. I think a lot of work happens away from the audience. And then, you show the quote-unquote, final product — even though it probably, honestly, evolves all the time," Ting says. 

At Early Stages, she'll be collaborating with Harvey on Secret Theatre's play-in-development HOLIDAY, working on the music for the piece. (HOLIDAY's premise stems from a retro slide-viewing party, a midcentury relic where people would throw a gathering at home to show recent vacation photos on a projector.) 

"It's like the third entity. It's not you and the audience, and you dragging them along," Ting says. "It's a bit more, like: Okay, there's this third thing that you're both looking at and in conversation with, but you are sharing it" — making the audience's input an invaluable source.

Aside from Ting, who is based in Toronto, Early Stages is almost entirely comprised of work by Atlantic Canadian artists.

"I'm interested in connecting with artists in and around Halifax and Dartmouth, and understanding how people work and converse and talk about the arts and what the questions are outside of Toronto," adds Ting. "Swimming in different waters: I'm curious what that would do for an artistic practice."

But highlighting homegrown talent isn't the only way Early Stages acts as a scene incubator. The festival also has a conference component, where those looking to break into theatre can get professional headshots, learn how to make an acting resumé and more. McCormack sees it as a way to give equity-deserving and underrepresented people (or even just those looking to make the leap from community theatre to a career) more of a roadmap into the industry.

"The other big exciting thing for me about Early Stages is that the best part about doing any play is the first day of rehearsals when you show up and everybody reads the play aloud for the first time," says McCormack. "And it's low stakes, but it's magic, and it's electric because it's the first time it's happening... So I just really wanted to open the doors on that and to bring the community in, because, believe it or not: There are people that love theatre out there."

Early Stages runs from Feb. 12-15 at the Eastern Front Theatre (2 Ochterloney St.) in Dartmouth, N.S.