Taking a roller coaster ride through grief, humanity and a little Saskatchewan absurdity
by Scott Roos
Ride the Cyclone photo by Nicole Stevenson Photography
There are plenty of ways to get an audience thinking about life, death and everything in between. Apparently, one of them involves a rollercoaster accident in Uranium City, a mechanical fortune teller and six dead teenagers competing for the chance to return to the land of the living. Welcome to Ride the Cyclone, the darkly hilarious, occasionally outrageous and surprisingly touching musical making its way back to Saskatoon, courtesy of Saskatoon Summer Players this Thursday, Nov. 12 through Sunday Nov. 15.
For director BJ Dyck, bringing the cult favourite to the stage has been about considerably more than assembling a cast, learning some songs and making sure nobody misses their cue. It's been an exercise in exploring grief, vulnerability and the complicated business of figuring out what it actually means to live. Dyck has been involved with Saskatoon Summer Players since 1999, although directing is still relatively new territory for him. His previous directorial effort was Rent in 2014, another production that left a lasting impression. This time around, however, he was the one championing the material, submitting Ride the Cyclone as one of his proposed productions. He admits he wasn't entirely convinced the company would go for it.
"Jacob Richmond, who wrote the show, ultimately was sort of dealing with a lot of grief and loss in his life at the time that he kind of was expressing himself creatively on the subject of death and dying and grief (when he wrote the show)," Dyck explained in a recent interview with NSMZ.
Richmond, a Saskatoon native, incorporated some deeply personal experiences into the musical, including the loss of his sister, who was murdered. Dyck says those emotional undercurrents were apparent during the initial read-through. But the show's Saskatchewan connection was another significant attraction.
"Knowing it's about small-town Saskatchewan and thinking about what that means to be exposed to the world at large," Dyck said. "It's sometimes how we feel, hidden, forgotten. It's fun to uplift that."
There's something particularly satisfying about taking a place like Uranium City and making it the centre of an internationally successful musical. It's a little bit of Saskatchewan eccentricity finding its way onto the world stage, and Dyck sees that as part of the show's appeal. Of course, there's considerably more going on here than regional pride and rollercoaster-related misfortune. For Dyck, the emotional foundation of Ride the Cyclone became a central part of his directing process. His background as a nurse and his volunteer work in hospice have given him a personal understanding of grief and the ways people navigate loss. That experience informed one of his more interesting decisions: asking the cast to watch Meet Me Where I Am, a documentary about parents dealing with the death of a child.
"I do volunteer work in hospice myself. So my background is a bit in grief. And I'm a nurse, so there's elements of that that sort of kind of came into understanding what it means to work through some of that process," he said.
Dyck wanted the actors to consider what their characters might be experiencing beyond the immediate circumstances of the story.
"They come at it sort of in the midst of their death experience, because they're placed in this, you know, kind of limbo effectively," he explained. "But in my mind, they had some time to sort of contemplate what was going on."
He introduced discussions about the stages of grief, using them as a framework for exploring each character's emotional journey.
"And so in talking about that and thinking about what that means, sort of, where in those stages or what might your arc look like from an after perspective, and to take some of that stuff on so that it reads on stage."
It wasn't simply about giving the performers a little background reading. Dyck wanted them to understand the people left behind, too.
"I kind of also wanted them to take that perspective from, you know, with the people that they left behind as to what it means for them to be gone, but also how their family might be considering this."
It's an interesting distinction. Even in a musical where the dead are doing the singing, there's an entire world of grief and unanswered questions waiting just outside the boundaries of the stage. Dyck's personal experiences also played a role in establishing the atmosphere of the rehearsal room. He shared the story of losing his own sister with the cast, hoping that a little personal vulnerability would encourage the performers to connect more honestly with the material.
"Actually, when this first started, my sister died. So I sort of relayed some of that stuff, that storytelling that I had from my background, just immediately as a way of creating some vulnerability myself to allow for them to feel like they can connect not only to their human experience, but also some of that stuff around what it means in grief."
That openness became the starting point for a collaborative approach to character development. A script, Dyck points out, doesn't necessarily provide everything an actor needs to create a fully realized, three-dimensional character. That requires digging deeper, talking about motivations and figuring out the personal histories that brought each character to this particular moment.
"What's your backstory? How did you get to this place?" he said of the questions he encouraged the cast to consider.
He allowed the performers to offer up as much as they felt comfortable sharing, using those conversations to develop the relationships that would eventually emerge onstage.
And with a relatively small ensemble, that sense of connection becomes even more important.
"I think that the dynamic of the cast itself, working through and helping each other, supporting throughout the show, is another critical element," he said.
It's also a reminder of what community theatre is all about.
"People are doing this because they love it," Dyck said. "All the hours that they put in remembering lines and working through dialogue and dancing and stuff like that, it's because they want to do it."
He sees that emotional investment as something that can translate directly to the audience.
"It's coming from a heart place and a love place," he said. "Which is really why, and that's sort of what I wanted to project onto them and hopefully they project that back to the audience in some way."
Of course, Ride the Cyclone isn't interested in keeping things solemn for very long. Its ability to take something as fundamentally serious as death and turn it into an absurd, frequently hilarious theatrical experience is one of its greatest strengths. Dyck was initially introduced to the music by his daughter, who is studying theatre. He was immediately drawn to the contrast between the show's darker subject matter and its irreverent humour. He also sees something particularly compelling in the way musical theatre can communicate emotion.
"I think there's great storytelling, obviously, but I think the musical aspect of musical theatre offers up a different emotional connection that you have with an audience that you don't necessarily garner when you're just strictly a stage play."
It's something he believes productions like Hamilton and Rent have helped demonstrate: that great storytelling combined with great songs can create a theatrical experience that resonates well beyond the final curtain. Ultimately, Dyck hopes audiences leave thinking about their own lives, their own choices and the things that sometimes get lost in the daily shuffle. Working in hospice, he says, has a way of reinforcing just how precious life is.
"If you're not living those moments, then you're kind of missing out," he said.
For him, Ride the Cyclone is an opportunity to explore what it means to live a full life and, more importantly, to live your truth. It just happens to do so with a mechanical fortune teller, some spectacularly unconventional teenagers and a whole lot of Saskatchewan weirdness.
And if the audience happens to laugh a little, reflect a little and maybe even shed a tear along the way, Dyck will consider that a pretty successful ride.
Ride the Cyclone runs November 12–15 at the Broadway Theatre, presented by Saskatoon Summer Players. It's been more than a decade since the musical last rolled through Saskatoon. This time, the locals are taking the ride themselves.
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