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About Gas & Light

Gas & Light Productions was formed in the spring of 1998 and mounted their first production that fall. The company took a gamble and opened with a play based on a book by the very popular comedy/fantasy writer, Terry Pratchett. The play, Wyrd Sisters was based extremely loosely on Shakespeare’s Macbeth. The first season concluded with the well-known farce See How They Run, by Philip King. The 1999/2000 season opened with another farce, John Chapman's Holiday Snap, coupled with a spring production of Any Number Can Die, a comedy thriller by Fred Carmichael.
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Deciding that comedies were definitely the way to go, G&S 2000/2001 season saw a return to the silly world of the Terry Pratchett canon with Mort, a story of a boy who became Deaths apprentice until he let a pretty face distract him from his duties, unleashing a series of potential disasters. Not satisfied, the company then mounted their most ambitious production to date with Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, complicated somewhat by using the less well known four act version of the play. The gamble paid off with the best box office results that the company had experienced.

The spring 2002 production saw a move from the Burns theatre in Fort Calgary, to the Joyce Doolittle Theatre at the Pumphouse. G&S's first offering in their new home was Neil Simon’s Fools using for the first time, a guest director. This too was a financial success and fully justified the move to the better known theatre space. The next season saw another Philip King farce, Pools Paradise followed by Paul Runick's hit Broadway comedy I Hate Hamlet, with the ghost of John Barrymore haunting a young actor. A successful run at the Pumphouse continued with the Restoration comedy She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith. G&S then decided to dip into the darker comedies with The Dresser and Smash. While both successful, the company decided to offer the gentle classic tale of Little Women in 2005, another smash hit with audiences.

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They capitalized on their success with the re-mounting of The Importance of Being Earnest, and the wildly popular Pride and Prejudice in 2007. The company stretched to the French farce An Absolute Turkey by Georges Feydeau in October of 2008.The company decided to return to mounting two plays a year, but with a twist. In August of 2009 they presented their first show at the Calgary Fringe Festival, their own Tereasa Maillie's Crystal Ball. The fringe productions were not only profitable financially but also artistically.

Their mainstage in April of 2010 was another departure- two one act comedies by Oscar and Tony-award winning playwright Tom Stoppard- The Real Inspector Hound and After Magritte. 2011 saw the mounting of the very irreverant comedy Hamlet 2: Better Than the Original, with the most minimalist set the company has ever done! 2012 was a banner year for the company, as they presented a world premiere adaptation of Jane Austen's Emma. It was nominated for five CAT Awards and won three- best lead actress for Rachel Kane as Emma, Best Production and Best Script.