Edmonton Journal from Edmonton, Alberta, Canada • 6

kit'' C8 The Edmonton Journal, Wednesday, December 1, 1993 Alta. channel promises local programs HELEN MET ELLA Journal Entertainment Writer ft jr V- I 'J Theatre intrigues Townshend The Associated Press New York Pete Townshend, at 48 years old a certified rock elder, has come to want more for himself than playing pyrotechnic troubadour. "I'd love to be able to tell myself that all I have to do for the rest of my life is write and perform songs," says the former leader of legendary rock band The Who. "But in music you deal in generalizations the chase, the seduction, the melodrama of relationships and never with the subtleties. As an adult, as I grow, one of the things that excites me is the specificity of theatre, the subtlety that's possible there." The widening I niii 1 John Lucas The Journal From left, Julianna Barclay, Klrsten Van Rltzen and Stephanie Wolfe portray a between-the-cracks generation in The Daughters of Judy LaMarsh Leg5Guififi)Sii7 one step toseir Ian Ferguson dissects three-way friendship in 'LaMarsh' gap between this rock star's past glories and his quest into the unknown is explored in his newest work, which forms the heart of a 90-minute Townshend concert on Great LIZ NICHOLLS Journal Theatre Writer EE Townshend The Daughters of Judy LaMarsh Thtatrt: Union Director.

Ian Ferguson Starring: Julianna Barclay, Kirsten Van Ritzen, Stephanie Wolfe Location: Phoenix Downtown Punning: Through Dec. 12 Edmonton If the proposed Alberta Channel is licensed to open TV stations in Edmonton and Calgary, viewers will get more movies more often and an emphasis on local programming, says the channel's president At a press conference Tuesday, Stuart Craig revealed that his company's application to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission calls for TV stations in Edmonton and Calgary, with repeaters in Red Deer, Drum-heller and Lethbridge. The Edmonton and Calgary stations would run movies Monday through Friday evenings and would each produce 20 hours a week of local news and another 20 hours of locally-produced children's, aboriginal, consumer and arts programming. "That's where we think the application will serve the Alberta market better than the other application or existing stations, especially since we'll be scheduling local production in prime time," said Craig. In addition, the Alberta Channel also promises to invest $16.6 million in programs created by independent Alberta television producers, over the first seven-year licence period.

The Alberta Channel is one of two companies vying to become the province's fourth television broadcasting service. The other is Alta-West Television, owned by Winnipeg broadcaster Izzy Asper, which also wants to open stations in Calgary and Edmonton, with repeaters in Red Deer and Lethbridge. Alta-West would be affiliated with Ontario's Global Television Network. The Alberta Channel would have no affiliation with a network. However, the Edmonton and Calgary stations would be linked by fibre optic cable in order to share some programming.

The two stations would each be autonomously managed and each would employ about 125 people. It would cost about $15 million to launch the Alberta Channel, which would operate out of leased facilities in each city, said Craig. The CRTC hearings begin Jan. 25 in Calgary and a decision is expected some time in the spring. The Alberta Channel is 57-per-cent owned by Craig Broadcast Systems of Manitoba, which owns Manitoba Television Network.

Another 33-per-cent share is owned by Edmonton's David W.G. MacKenzie, a seed venture capitalist who is a major shareholder in Dia Met Minerals of Kelowna. MacKenzie was also an original investor in the Alberta Television Network, the company that lobbied the CRTC to open hearings into new TV licences in this province. When ATN let its application lapse, MacKenzie bought it and re-submitted under the name of Alberta Interactive Multi-media In November, that company joined forces with Craig's. The remaining 10 per cent share in The Alberta Channel is owned by Mid West Television of Lethbridge, which owns CITL-TV and CKSA-TV.

past with the flick of a lamp. "Hey, I thought that lamp was subtle!" cries the exuberant Ferguson. Disillusion set in after Uncle Joe iffy critical response and an iffy production contributed. Ferguson gave up on theatre for a while. He remembers talking to his grandfather "one of my heroes" who told him, in essence, not to be a wimp.

"You wanna be a tough guy, walk tough." It was after that he formed a theatre company. Union, whose HQ is now Chinook. Life, he decided, was way too short not to work with people he liked and respected. And no idea is too crazy to entertain (hence political satire like the Jim Keegstra Diaries, or a 48-hour soap-a-thon now in the Guinness Book of Records). Lasky's Fortune (1993), about a good-time redneck lad and his erstwhile college friends, was Ferguson's "most autobiographical," he says "painfully so." After tackling the autopsy of friendship in Lasky, he undertakes, with typical chutzpah, the anatomy of a three-way friendship among women how they talk and, trickier, how they talk about men.

"Kirsten and I wrote three one-woman shows together (Mad Dog Music, A Closet ful of Navy Blues, Wandering Ivory). The challenge with Judy LaMarsh was to write three together." He's very pleased that his actors "buy the dialogue, especially because the parts were specifically written for them. "It's in real time, no blackouts," he explains. "The lights come up; 40 minutes later they go down and you've seen 40 minutes in the lives of these women." Act II predates Act I by 10 years, but the play isn't so much a narrative as a texture. "There are big issues; I wanted to see how lightly I could touch down on them.

In life, I'm someone who kicks and knocks things over. This play is quite delicate. "It's funny, but in a different way for me," says Ferguson. "I've been guilty in the past of detour-ing a mile to get a punch-line." He considers, "maybe the whole punchline format is a male thing. Anyhow, my funniest characters have always been men." This time, it's not a question of jokes per se.

"And yet it's hilariously funny; the humor comes out of character. It's not an epic, it's a gentle slice of life. Warm and funny and sad. These are characters I hope you'll really like." With Union Theatre we're never talking lavish. When he told one reviewer that they spent "five" on Jim Keegstra, he assumed they meant $500.

He meant five bucks, period. Here, "I'm not kidding, the set, costumes and lighting cost us less than $300." "The thing I like about directing is that if you get the right people, it's so eeezzeee, the easiest gig in the world." And, despite the hassle (and the poverty), he finds running Union a gas. "I get way more of a kick out of it when I know that, if things screw up, I'll take the fall. If you don't like the set, or the play, if you think the poster's stupid, blame me." "What would thrill me is to be able to pay people who work for Union what they're worth, to reward them. With every show we're one step closer to being, in that true sense, a legitimate theatre company." Edmonton If you're 28 in 1993 you don't know who Judy LaMarsh was.

If you're younger than that you don't care. Union Theatre's Ian Ferguson is tucked into the corner of an all-night doughnut shop, airing his thesis that this fact is deplorable. He's smoking up a storm, attacking a cruller, waving his arms. And though it's after midnight, he contemplates with his usual gusto four more hours of set-painting for tonight's opening of The Daughters of Judy La-Marsh. It's not that Judy LaMarsh, a feisty, mouthy cabinet minister in both the Pearson and Trudeau governments, figures directly in his new comedy, though "she's the kind of woman I'd be if I wasn't a man: short, fat, grouchy, chain-smoking.

I sure liked her." In fact, the federal Liberal party has bought out every ticket for the last-night performance. It's that there's an age group, which he and his three women characters share, that falls between the cracks. "We're too young to be Boomers, too old to be Generation we don't even have our own music, our own voice. "Frankly, I don't get it A bunch of people whining that they won't have as nice a house as their parents!" snorts the native of blue-collar Fort Vermilion who dropped out of high school and survived literally dozens of manual jobs before he ended up at the of A as an actor. "This is supposed to be a crisis? A bunch of people disappointing their Performances tonight on PBS.

Taped in August at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the set kicks off with Who favorites before turning to PsychoDerelict, a narrowly autobiographical but deeply personal musical play examining the interdependence of performer, fans and media. Staged with Townshend, a band and a trio of actors, the piece includes 11 songs as well as instrumental passages, visuals and dialogue. PsychoDerelict is a fitting companion to the story-and-song rock opera Townshend wrote 25 years ago with Tommy. Last spring, Tommy became a Broadway hit As for The Who, the pioneering rock band was like no other. Rooted in the British working class.

The Who also was boosted by the mystical. The group was an unlikely mix of sunshine and bile, simultaneously devout yet self-mocking, hyperkinetic and searingly vaudevillian. "There was a certain ridiculousness in our presentation," Townshend says, not unproudly. "What allowed us to get away with it was that we were a really great machine, a terrific rock engine." Although that great machine shut down a decade ago, Townshend, balding with grey whiskers, hirs full-tilt in middle age. "Rock is so age-obsessed," he observes.

"It attends to that moment when you first realize that your life is your own, and only your own, and you have to decide where you're going, and how, and what you're going to take with you." "There is nothing I could do, absolutely nothing, that could disappoint my parents. We were so poor, anything I've got is better than what they've had." Of the trio of 28-year-old women friends in his play, two "grew up on wealthy streets." The third grew up poor, on Boyle Street The cottage where they meet for a last slumber party in Act I had belonged to the parents of one of them. It's about to be sold. Ferguson has had to learn about the cottage way of life from his partner Kirsten Van Ritzen, one of his three actors. "People in Fort Vermilion didn't have them," he grins.

Ferguson threw over acting (with a relapse or two) for writing, and more recently, directing. There's been an evolution. "I try to write something differently structurally, every time." Elephant Shoes (1990), which pits a middle-class liberal do-gooder against her blue-collar "project," was his most traditional, he says. "It was chronological; it had a beginning and an end." Uncle Joe Again (1991), a boisterous play about a pair of brothers, one drab, decent and quintes-sentially Canadian and the other exotic, shifted in and out of the Free seats to Best of Banff TV Festival ash Greg Kennedy Talk, talk, talk 8 a.m. Today (Cable 3Shaw, 11 Videotron): author Herman Wouk, home decorator Martha Stewart 8 a.m.

This Morning (Cable 6): skater Kristi Yamaguchi; Gene Sis-kel. 8 a.m. Good Morning America (Cable 7): Sam Neill; World AIDS Day. 10 a.m. Live Regis Kalhie Lee (Cable 3 Shaw, 11 Videotron): Michael Bolton.

11 a m. Geraido (Cable 22Shaw, 19 Videotron): rape allegations involving teens. Noon Maury Povich (Cable 7): Patients of a doctor jailed for molestation, and his wife who says he's innocent 1 p.m. Shirley (Cable 2): vegans the ultimate vegetarian. 4 a Donahue (Cable 3Shaw, 11 ideotron): school dress codes.

5 p.m. Oprah Winfrey (Cable 2, 6): parents of troubled children, 5 p.m. Sally (Cable 3 Shaw, 11 Videotron): women with controlling husbands. Midnight Late Show: Sam Donaldson. 12:35 a.m.

Tonight Show (Cable Cable 3Sbaw, 11 Videotron): Linda Ronstadt Dick Van Dyke. 1:33 a.m. Late Night (Cable 3 Shaw, 11 Videotron): actor Juliette Binoche. service, vocal, instrumental, dance, band, acting and specialty performance. The 15th category, The Terry Fox Award, is given to an individual or group who best exemplifies the dedication, determination and spirit for which Terry Fox is remembered.

For information on application forms, please call 141 6-534-6565, ext 988. The deadline for submissions is Dec. 10. (If the long-distance is a hassle, you can call or leave a message at 429-5578, and we'll steer you towards one of many local contacts who can provide you with an application form.) Let's nominate those special teens who have made a Now you can enjoy a night out and watch TV at the same time! That's progress! Admission is free to view the best of the Banff Television Festival tonight and Thursday at the Princess Theatre. Screenings will begin 6:30 p.m.

each day. A diversity of comedy, drama, children's programs and documentaries have been selected from Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Japan, New Zealand, the U.K. and the U.S. to appeal to a variety of interests. For complete details call the Princess or consult its latest program guide.

Celebrating its 15th anniversary in 1994, the Banff Television Festival annually draws more than 500 And it's hard to beat f-r-e-e admission at this super-friendly Whyte Avenue theatre. For shame. Alberta! A hush-hush source in Toronto tells me that to date, no Alberta nominees have been put forth in the search for young achievers in The 5th Annual YTV Achievement Awards. Winners cop a statuette and a cool $3,000 honorarium in a nationally televised ceremony next ApriL YTV pays the airfare and expenses to Ottawa. Categories hungry for nominees, who must be 19 or younger this year, include: bravery, entrepre-neurship, innovation, writing, environment sports, visual arts, public On TV The Tube Tonight entries from more than 30 countries.

The competition is keen, and the programs featured in the Best of Banff are exceptional. Many of them are unavailable to Canadian viewers except for special screenings such as this. GREAT PERFORMANCES (11 p.m., PBSCable 13): Former Who guitarist and songwriter Pete Townshend showcases his newest work, PsychoDerelict It melds mu sic, actors and video into a biting commentary on the music industry and media, chronicling how a reclusive rock star's career is revived due to scandal-generated publicity. Roughneck, Wildcats, and Doodlebugs 7x nzLTjjx axmi xaii3 aimyu pm I am aaa ftfl mm ttum mm ftiraq 2 Home Improve. Hockey: Philadelphia Flyers at Edmonton Oilers.

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Teltord. Hands Rock 'n' Roll 1 1 i 1 f- 9 J2, Marilyn Enter autres tie Telejournat te Point Sous un ciel variable 'Enjeui Ce sow Courts 313, MacNeilLehrer Newshour i Scientific American Frontiers American Eiperience ISade Great Performances 53 21 Wusie City Tonight Club Dance Country News Proudhesrt iMusic City Tonight 1 1 26 (6 30) Raceline Boiing Sportsdesk Inside Sports 'For the Love ot the Game 'Sportttihing TJ3 2Z Larry King Live News jSporls Tonight Moneyline 'Newsnight Showbii Today Larry King Live 3 2. American Justice Our Century: Combat at Sea Investigative Reports Civil War Journal American Justice r7l (8:00) Sinatra. Minnelli Davit Liia Minnelli Lrve! ICotta Laugh. Gotta Sing Sinatra.

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'Movie FAM MisiionTop African St'es Mxkey Mouse Anniversary j'" Penny Serenade (191) Cary Grant. Irene Dunne. Bums Allen joyl'sPoor TKS (6 05) Movie: amondt Are Forever (1971) Live and Let Die (1973) Roger Moore. Jane Seymour. Movie: Contgher WGN (6 00) Movie: Vendetta II News ght Court Penegade I Come Peace (1990) Dolph Lundgren.

I LA Full Home FtmHy Manert Family Mailers Cheers A Treasure- S'an Chambers News Vf rus: I trlii Edmonton Symphony Orchestra I IijKiI Tinbill Twir kirl M. linteir: Iror kflh (W I kin" Ijim Siim December 3 4, 8.00 pm Jubilee Auditorium Call 428-H14 for tickets! 6 CKUA AAVFM Journal EWGMC RCBUIDERS LTD.