Watershed Festival — Kingston Theatre Alliance

“VOTES FOR WOMEN” read the posters, props, and pre-show backdrop at the Kingston Grand Theatre. The Lancashire Lass is a new musical by composer/lyricist/librettist Leslie Arden. Commissioned by the Dan School of Drama and Music in 2019 and workshopped in 2021 and 2022, the show had its official premiere this year in the Watershed Festival. Directed by Tim Fort, The Lancashire Lass recounts the women’s suffrage movement in 20th-century Britain […]

Leslie Arden is a renowned Canadian composer, lyricist, and librettist. In 2019, she was commissioned to write a new musical, The Lancashire Lass, for the DAN School of Drama and Music at Queen’s University. First shown in an online preview in 2021, and then in concert in 2022, The Lancashire Lass is having its fully staged debut at this year’s Watershed Festival on May 26th and 27th at the Kingston […]

There is a conventional expectation of what a Western opera performer and performance should look like. With expensive sets and costumes and elaborate orchestrations, it is an artform who’s high-brow reputation is the only part I’m familiar with. But Musique 3 Femmes’ presentation of SOLO at this year’s Watershed Festival, the “tour-de-force double bill for solo voice” actively subverted the Eurocentric tradition inherent to opera allowing the songs and stories […]

like a surprising combination to some. On May 27, the Watershed Festival presented award-winning composer and DAN School of Drama and Music’s artist-in-residence Leslie Arden’s latest commission The Lancashire Lass, a full-length musical that will receive its premiere at next year’s festival. 

The Watershed Festival continues to explore how and who exactly are the artists examining and developing music theatre as we know it. The New Works Showcase featured a series of upcoming projects at various stages of development from artists across the country, followed by a live Q & A with the creators. 

In a time of creative and collective upheaval, the inaugural Watershed Festival examines the integration of music, drama, dance, and design as musical theatre or opera, exploring those boundaries in order to revitalize the ways those artforms are practiced and understood.