For the past 13 months, a new “theatre project” has been hatching in Whistler, and it will have its first public airing at a workshop performance to be held at MY Millennium Place on Saturday December 19, 2009.
Snow: An R-Rated Whistler Musical has been loosely described as what happens when Peter Pan arrives on the set of HAIR, with half the chorus from The Moulin Rouge along with the boys from Neverland.
A Whistler musical should defy description, especially one developed and scripted by a sarcastic columnist, a ski-bumming herpetologist, a sexperimental New Yorker and an Australian dirtbag forced into an immediate collaboratory bond by the threat of someone from outside of Whistler, with no insight into Whistler, being commissioned to write a play about Whistler.
The creative team drew as much inspiration from AC/DC, the Rocky Horror Picture Show, John Syms’ and Colby James West’s My Friend is a Pro and Steve Casimiro on the Ski Bum as Zen Master as from Rogers and Hammerstein or Andrew Lloyd Webber in their attempt to capture Whistler in a way that would not just ring true to locals, but would lob highly contagious musical memes into the minds of people around the world.
Those who saw the 72 Hour Filmmaker Showdown finalist of Rob Boyd is God will have a small inkling as to what’s in store at the workshop performance on Saturday, which is free and open to the public, and will feature a cast of professional actors who are spending the week workshopping for the performance of original songs and script.
But Rob Boyd doesn’t tell it all… When Yuki, a Japanese pro snowboard athlete, arrives in Whistler for her first season away from home, she thinks her biggest task for the winter will be training to win the Core Games. She doesn’t realise she will also have to survive illicit love affairs, sibling rivalry, staff housing, not enough snow, too much snow, avalanches, Australia Day, wet t-shirt contests and corporate take-overs, all threatening to derail her at every turn. How will she get by? With a little help from her friends – Jesse, Jacko, PY and Hiro. Be they in Whistler from Saskatchewan, Australia, Quebec or Japan for a season, a reason, or a lifetime, they’re all emblematic of the classic Whistler story, the story in which people come to the mountains to party and play and get a whole lot more than they bargained for…