Final mainstage production from long-running bilingual theatre troupe
By Kayla Trites
It was 1968, a tumultuous year when the old order was being questioned in universities far and wide. At Mount Allison, a young professor decided to try his hand at staging a play he was teaching. Fifty-eight years later, Dr. Alex Fancy says: “I wanted to get students out of their seats and onto the stage where they could better understand the play, enjoy immersive drama and speak their second language with authenticity that was not possible in a classroom.”
Tintamarre, Mount Allison’s award-winning bilingual theatre troupe, began with a risk and continues to this day. Directed by Fancy, the student troupe has staged more than 150 productions of classical and contemporary plays as well as original activist comedies. Three decades of school tours with audience talkbacks have engaged and entertained 150,000 students and their teachers.
Fancy notes, “none of this would have been possible without the goodwill of thousands of students or the generosity of alumni, friends, and sponsors who believed in the value of what we were doing.”
EXIT ’26 will be Tintamarre’s final mainstage production at Mount Allison’s Motyer-Fancy Theatre. Two dozen actors, designers and crew are rehearsing an original script featuring a cast who are rehearsing a play-within-a-play, scenes from Jean-Paul Sartre’s Huis-clos / No Exit, the play Fancy first directed in 1968. Tintamarre staged the play again in 2004, as an all-night marathon that attracted considerable attention. Fancy is also planning legacy projects such as staged readings from Tintamarre scripts, online chronicles, and a history of the troupe.
What is EXIT ’26 about? Three very incompatible people are in Hell for cowardice and capitulation in the face of autocracy. All goes well for the actors until their rehearsal is invaded by characters from previous Tintamarre productions who question the choice of script and raise their own (comedic) hell.
Ella Crowley (Honours English) and Kyah Lockhart (Psychology & Chemistry) are Associate Directors for this production. Lockhart explains that “Tintamarre shows are always playful and edgy,” while Crowley enjoys playing a socially awkward character who understands something very important.“when we exit the theatre, we see the world more clearly than when we entered,” said Crowley
The Motyer-Fancy Theatre will end their season in late March with a double-bill of student-directed work: The Collection by Harold Pinter, directed by Dawson Cormier, and This Is A Play by Daniel McIvor, directed by Skylar Côté.
EXIT ‘26 is now running at the Motyer-Fancy Theatre March 5-7 with performances at 7:30pm and 2:00pm. Running time: 75 minutes. All tickets are $5.00 with the Motyer-Fancy Theatre’s Radical Access pricing initiative.