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Building a Roller-Coaster Ride to the Afterlife

Pine Tree Players takes on a delightfully weird cult musical where six teens get a second shot at life — and the set crew gets a challenge of its own

“Peculiar,” “bizarre,” “macabre,” “delightfully weird” are just a few of the adjectives used to describe Ride the Cyclone, the Canadian musical that opens Nov. 18 in Canmore. 

Photo by Mike Walters

Cast and Band members gather for their sitzprobe.

First staged in 2009, the show follows six high-school choristers who meet their untimely end in a roller-coaster accident. From there, they find themselves in a strange space between life and death, where they are forced to compete for a second chance on Earth.

Led by a fortune teller known as The Amazing Karnak (Melissa Clements), the teens are instructed to come forward, one by one, to make their case for why they deserve to return to the land of the living. You’ll have to see the show to find out who makes the most persuasive pitch when they sing and dance for their lives, but for now, we’ve slipped backstage at Pine Tree Players to chat with set designer Jeremy White and stage manager Tambry Kopp about bringing this eccentric musical to life.

Photo by Emma Mulheran

Moment from the first read of Ride The Cyclone. L-R: Michael Falk, Heidi Ward, Liv Witkowski and Melissa Clements. 

White has built his share of complicated sets for Pine Tree Players. But a roller coaster? One that has to squeeze inside the Miners’ Union Hall?

“Ok,” admits White, “this will be a first. But we’ve had to build complicated sets before.”

Take the 2017 play, Noises Off, in which the entire set had to be reversed twice during the show so the audience would see what was happening behind the scenes in a play-within-a-play.
“To be honest, we were still struggling with getting the platform to spin on dress rehearsal night,” he says.
Then there was last spring’s wildly popular, The Importance of Being Earnest, which featured three acts, each with its own setting.

“We had rotating walls, lightweight portable bookshelves, that sort of thing, which had to be changed on the fly,” White says. “As a builder, I’m sometimes just trying to make everything last long enough to get to closing night.”

Photo by Yash Chhabria

Rehearsal with (L-R) Ally Schuurman, Brian McDonald, Carlos DeLong-Medeiros, Courtney Michele, Kelly Turpin and Jay Bois.

Veteran stage manager Kopp faces a different challenge: helping create an immersive experience that transports the audience out of the everyday world and into the characters’ strange afterlife.

“I want the audience to be able to leave the outside world at the door for 90 minutes, and enjoy this show that the whole creative team has done such a beautiful job in putting together,” she says. “I hope that they can live in the world that has been created for these characters for a while, feel a few things along the way, and leave feeling just a little bit brighter than when they walked in.”

That’s one of the questions at the heart of this surprisingly poignant musical, written by Victoria-based Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell: What does it mean to live life to the fullest?

Photo by Yash Chhabria

Band rehearsal with (R-L) Ryan Stelter, Cheryl Godefroy,
Skyi Yang, Kris Hopkins, Michael Falk and RJ Vargas. 

There’s only one way to find out.

White hopes the set will deliver a little theatrical magic of its own.

“As a theatre goer, I love seeing a set for the first time,” he says. “I hope our audience has that thrill. It might be a bit scarier than they were expecting but I hope they enjoy the weirdness of it all.”

And Kopp’s favourite scene?

“Noel’s Turn — that’s what we named the scene,” she explains, “Watching the cast come together through rehearsals to make this scene come to life has been so much fun. It’s also the show’s first big into a character’s imagination.

“And, as corny as it may be, the final scene of the show. I won’t say why — you’ll have to come see the show for that!”

Meet Ally Schuurman, the director for Ride the Cyclone

Ally Schuurman may be new to Pine Tree Players, but Ride the Cyclone has been living in her imagination for more than a decade. This fall, Ally directs Pine Tree Players’ musical production of the cult favourite show, bringing with her a deep love for theatre that is bold, strange, funny, heartfelt, and just a little bit twisted. We caught up with Ally to talk about the first time Ride the Cyclone knocked her sideways, what she loves about working with actors, and why community theatre matters.

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Ride The Cyclone

November 18 - 28

This hilarious and outlandish story, the lives of six teenagers from a Canadian chamber choir are cut short in a freak accident aboard a roller coaster. When they awake in limbo, a mechanical fortune teller invites each to tell a story to win a prize like no other — the chance to return to life. 

 
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Picture of Deb Cummings

Deb Cummings

About the Author: Deb Cummings is a retired journalist (mostly) who is terrified to sit in the front row of any theatre for fear of being called up on stage. She does, however, have aspirations to be a doo- wop girl (although she can’t sing) and spends a surprising amount of time watching plays or reading books that normalize the mortifying experience of being human.

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