Art Norris - theatre - stage manager

On Thursday afternoon I had the pleasure of meeting Art Norris, who lives here in Cochrane and works as a stage manager at the Jack Singer Concert Hall in Calgary.

Art is another of these creative people I am meeting who has a passionate desire to see something special done for and with the arts here in Cochrane.

His primary interest is the theatre, so we talked about places he has been, communities that have their own theatre venues, what would be needed in a theatre facility, what would be needed to make one successful, and so on. He certainly has lots of good ideas - with the experience to back them up. In fact, when I asked for some of his ideas, he borrowed my notebook and proceeded to write out two pages of notes. So this is not just something he thought about that morning - he's had time to put together a good vision of what this could be.

I know he's not the only one here in town with well thought-out ideas. It is really exciting to see the kind of passion and ideas that people have, and gives me great hope that we can accomplish something special here.

But Art is not just a theatre person. He is also a musician - plays the guitar - and a songwriter. One of his songs, "I Am No Dancer", was recorded by Lindsay Jane, a singer-songwriter, formerly from Cochrane, now in Manitoba.

And he is also a writer. I found his book "Succession" in our local library (it is available at Westlands Books) and proceeded to read it through. Set in the Bearspaw area between Cochrane and Calgary, it is a story about the changes that come to people and the land they live on. I particularly enjoyed his artistic descriptions - like this one "Al was at the wet point of some calligrapher's pen, trailing a Celtic scroll across a twenty-four acre patch of wrinkled earth." Kind of liked that one because I'm a calligrapher, so I knew just what he was talking about.

Thanks, Art, for the visit and the great ideas."