Dry Cold Productions was created in September 2000 by Donna Fletcher and Reid Harrison to present musicals that have never been produced in Winnipeg by a professional company.  The productions are dramatically and musically demanding, generally explore serious thematic material, and require actors who sing and singers who can act.  These productions are intended to provide the opportunity for Manitoba artists to tackle demanding musical theatre repertoire.  Dry Cold Productions employs Manitoba talent both behind the scenes and on stage, thereby providing work and training opportunities for established and emerging Manitoba theatre artists, technical staff and musicians.  It is the role of acting as a training and mentoring organization for young performers that Dry Cold has embraced by providing opportunities for such people as Tim Gledhill, Mairi Babb, Jaz Sealey, Sarah Sheps, Matthew Fletcher, Alexandra Frohlinger, Derek Leenhouts, Marc Devigne, Alix Sobler, Samantha Hill and Dorothy Carroll..  In the future the company also wishes to mount original musicals written locally and intended to explore subject matter of particular interest to Winnipegers and Manitobans.   It has moved closer to that goal with a workshop of Joseph Aragon’s musical Lucrezia Borgia which took place in December 2007.

In May, 2001 Dry Cold’s first production, Stephen Sondheim’s A Little Night Music, was presented at CanWest Global Performing Arts Centre.  It featured fifteen of Winnipeg’s finest actors and singers and a small professional orchestra.  The production was a resounding artistic success and drew an audience of almost 70% of capacity, a significant achievement for a new company presenting musicals in a format new to Winnipeg audiences: staged and costumed but with minimal sets and with scripts in hand.  Dry Cold has also produced Into the Woods, The Secret Garden, She Loves Me,  Assassins and Nine with similar success.  In 2008 Dry Cold presented Urinetown, selling out the three performances and demonstrating once again that it is setting the standard locally for the production of contemporary musical theatre.  The response to this past season’s presentation of the Stephen Sondheim/ George Furth musical Company simply reinforced this reputation.

The material – the music, the text, the story – is central to Dry Cold’s philosophy of presentation.  There is a belief that the best musicals are at their best when presented with simplicity, when production considerations aren’t allowed to create obstacles between the artists and the audience.  Canada’s finest designers have created simple unit sets; to date our designers have included Craig Sandells, David Owen Lucas, Brian Perchaluk. and Leanne Foley.  Two of Winnipeg’s (and Canada’s) pre-eminent lighting designers, Scott Henderson and Bill Williams, have created the lighting so important to a presentation that is so simple.  Costumes for all our productions have been provided by Harlequin Costumes of Winnipeg.

With our production of Assassins and with the support of the community and a desire to grow as a company, Dry Cold made the decision to depart from our former practice of performing with book in hand.  For its first four productions, Dry Cold worked within a two-week rehearsal and performance schedule.  With Assassins, several days of rehearsal (and cost) were added to the process and a Dry Cold show was done off-book for the first time while retaining the striking and effective simplicity that marked our first four productions.  However Assassins is a musical that runs one hour and forty minutes, without intermission.  Nine, Urinetown and Company are full-length two-act musicals for which we extended the rehearsal period even further and worked within a three-week rehearsal and performance schedule.  This will be the schedule for Light in the Piazza as well. We have embarked on a new creative path with many exciting options open to us and we seek your help in continuing on our journey as a company.