Morning coffee queue at The Banff Centre’s Maclab Bistro, and the line-up consists of the usual suspects: a poet with a post-yoga glow, a sculptor in a postparty funk, and a conference suit with a pre-caffeine twitch. At the front of the line, two girls in knee-high boots, sequinned silver skirts, and massive, winged fur coats wait for their skim lattes. I sneak a glance at the taller one – her brown hair teased into an electrified madness, one glittering oversized eyelash peeling away from her face. The girls/women/amazons look …

The Sundance Theatre Lab is a unique experience. It has some similarities to The Banff Centre’s Playwrights’ Colony, but it stands on its own as a creative hothouse.

There are days when it seems as though there is a new opera behind every door at
The Banff Centre.

This past summer, no less than three new productions were in active development at Banff — Lillian Alling — commissioned by Vancouver Opera, and co-produced by The Banff Centre, Air India — co-produced by the Centre, Ireland’s Cork Midsummer Festival, and Vancouver’s PuSh Festival, and The Last King of Scotland, a new work based on the award-winning novel and film about Idi Amin.

The Centre’s vice-president of programming, Sarah Iley, says there is a simple reason why the Centre acts as an incubator for so many new works — contemporary opera is an expensive and risky business, and the Centre is ideally positioned to help.