Michael Green
It’s hard to put into words just what Calgary lost on a cold Tuesday morning in Saskatchewan when a car and a truck collided. A pillar a visionary a mentor a revolutionary… there are so many words and all of them seem somehow lacking or clichéd.
Michael Green co-founder and co-artistic director of One Yellow Rabbit was an integral part of Calgary’s arts community. He was the man behind the month-long madness of the High Performance Rodeo and he helped move this city from its quiet stages peppered with fake British accents to one with mad naked people alternative venues and out-there ideas. One can’t overstate what Green and the Rabbits have done for culture in this city and beyond from their performances and their determination to make Calgary home to their regular Summer Lab Intensive which trains performers from around the world.
Green was one of five people killed in an accident on wintery roads outside of Regina involving three vehicles. Saskatchewan artists Michele Sereda and Lacy Morin-Desjarlais as well as Albertan Narcisse Blood a First Nations filmmaker teacher and elder who worked with Green on Making Treaty 7 also died.
One Yellow Rabbit started as a rag-tag group of creative lunatics that were out to shatter Calgary’s preconceived notions of what theatre and performance were all about all swagger and punk rock with a healthy dose of nudity on the side. The High Performance Rodeo which just celebrated its 29th edition has grown to be an enormously well-respected international performance festival which brings unique acts and performers — big names and relative unknowns — to Calgary. Green was the driving force behind the festival’s creative success. He was also the creative producer of Calgary 2012.
Green’s death comes just three months after the sudden death of another Rabbit Richard McDowell.
Our thoughts are with Green’s wife and child friends and colleagues as we join Calgary’s arts community in mourning the passing of one of its contemporary founders.
