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WAYNE GLOWACKI \/ WINNIPEG FREE PRESS files<\/p>\n
Departures and Arrivals is set within the old Winnipeg International Airport.<\/p>\n
For director Sara Arenson, the airport is a liminal space that feels both open to possibility and sealed off from the outside world, creating tremendous storytelling potential.<\/p>\n
Featuring a cast of 17, Departures and Arrivals opens Friday at 7:30 p.m., with two shows (2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m.) on Saturday. A matinee performance (2 p.m.) closes the three-day run on Sunday. Admission is $20 or tickets can be purchased via e-transfer to shoestringplayerswpg.com.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn the airport, there\u2019s this quality of timelessness. It\u2019s this sort of existential space where you have time to think,\u201d says Arenson, a first-time director for Shoestring, which has been producing community theatre since 1969.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt makes for a nice background for Shields to tell stories, and what\u2019s really striking is that those stories are so varied. Some are of loves lost, some are of families or groups of people on the go. One of the funniest scenes shows Rachel and Janet, who are both buying insurance for their husbands who just boarded the plane.\u201d<\/p>\n
Who knows whether these vignettes were dreamed up or if Shields witnessed them herself while doing airport lounge reconnaissance. Whatever the case may be, the beloved author of works such as The Stone Diaries and Larry\u2019s Party, who died of breast cancer in 2003, was hardly the first or last artist whose imagination took flight at baggage claim.<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Richard Lam \/ The Canadian Press files<\/p>\n Author Carol Shields penned Departures and Arrivals in 1990.<\/p>\n Brian Eno\u2019s Ambient 1: An unpleasant listening experience at the Cologne Bonn Airport in 1977 led the former Roxy Music member to revolutionize ambient music, creating a soundtrack \u2014 gentle, sustained, unintrusive \u2014 built to support public space and the built environment. \u201cAmbient Music must be able to accommodate many levels of listening attention without enforcing one in particular. It must be as ignorable as it is interesting,\u201d Eno wrote in the album\u2019s liner notes.<\/p>\n Airplane!<\/p>\n Though many of its jokes don\u2019t exactly fly today, this ZAZ Production is surely one of the most influential comedies of all time. Placed 10th on the American Film Institute\u2019s 100 Years\u2026100 Laughs list, the spoof took on the trend of 1970s disaster films and superseded them as an artform, giving the career of Regina\u2019s Leslie Nielsen a second wind that made him a bankable star.<\/p>\n Home Alone<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Paramount Pictures<\/p>\n In Up in the Air, George Clooney flies across the country firing people.<\/p>\n In this nostalgic classic, the McCallister family rushes through Chicago O\u2019Hare Airport without realizing they\u2019ve forgotten one piece of precious cargo at home: son Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin. When screen mom Catherine O\u2019Hara died earlier this month, the third-busiest airport in the U.S. paid tribute on social media. \u201cForever our legendary Mrs. McCallister.\u201d<\/p>\n Up in the Air<\/p>\n A somewhat forgotten hit from 2009, this mid-recession dramedy directed by Jason Reitman follows Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), who flies across the country to do the dirty work of firing workers at downsizing corporations. As he clears security with his potential proteg\u00e9 (Anna Kendrick), Bingham reveals his shrewd, problematic and capitalistic ethos: to get through life with rigorous efficiency and without much regard for those left behind.<\/p>\n Come From Away<\/p>\n A tiny airport in Atlantic Canada is the wellspring of this Broadway smash, which takes place in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, when 7,000 passengers were grounded in Gander, N.L. When it closed on Broadway in 2022, the musical had grossed more than US$206 million, enough to purchase at least four Boeing 737 Max planes.<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t Brian Eno\u2019s Music for Airports <\/p>\n winnipegfreepress.com\/benwaldman<\/p>\n \t\t\t\t Ben Waldman Ben Waldman is a National Newspaper Award-nominated reporter on the Arts & Life desk at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg, Ben completed three internships with the Free Press while earning his degree at Ryerson University\u2019s (now Toronto Metropolitan University\u2019s) School of Journalism before joining the newsroom full-time in 2019. Read more about Ben<\/a>.<\/p>\n Every piece of reporting Ben produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print \u2014 part of the Free Press\u2018s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press\u2019s history and mandate<\/a>, and learn how our newsroom operates<\/a>.<\/p>\n
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