One Yellow Rabbit returns to High Performance Rodeo stage in Dream Machine, a show full of ghosts

One Yellow Rabbit are reviving Dream Machine, which premiered in 2004 in Calgary, as part of the 2026 High Performance Rodeo

There are two different sets of ghosts hovering around the stage at rehearsals of One Yellow Rabbit’s Dream Machine, which makes for some complicated memories for the show’s original creators.

The 2003 musical, an oratorio or song cycle that is partly a love letter to the Beats of the 1950s such as Allan Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs, is being remounted at the 2026 High Performance Rodeo, which kicked off Tuesday night and runs through Jan. 31.

Back in 2003, Dream Machine featured lyrics by Blake Brooker, music by David Rhymer, choreography by Denise Clarke, musical direction by Richard McDowell and artistic mischief by One Yellow Rabbits Michael Green and Andy Curtis.

The first group of ghosts are those Beat poets such as Ginsberg and Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Brion Gysin, a poet and painter who grew up in Edmonton and actually created a Dream Machine, in 1958.

“The structure of the piece is an oratorio,” Brooker says. “So (that means) a song cycle about a religious topic.

“It assumes the Beats – and I think it’s an OK assumption – that the Beats, if observed by aliens at that time, would have constituted a kind of mass, a group of people who had certain beliefs, certain faith – a faith in experimentation – multi-cultural smorgasbording. In food, faith, literature -- "

“Sexuality, intoxicants,” Clarke adds.

“So the oratorio is not characters, not plot, not costumes, not set,” Brooker says.

“The quality of the writing on this show is so exquisite,” says Clarke. “It’s such a thrill to say these songs, both for the music which is very unusual and beautiful, and what we’re saying is top-drawer writing anyway – it’s quite an experience to revisit it and see how it’s holding up."

Now, 20 or so years later, sitting in a cafe at the foot of the stairs that lead up to the Big Secret Theatre inside Werklund Centre, Clarke and Brooker recreate the process of remounting a production that they premiered in Calgary, then re-mounted twice in Toronto (at Theatre Passe Muraille), once in Ottawa (in 2006 at NAC) and the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.

What’s changed over the course of the past two decades is that those original Rabbits have dwindled down to a precious few, creating a second set of ghosts who inhabited the original productions.

Sound designer McDowell died first in November, 2014. Then Michael Green, in a February 2015 car crash on a back road in Saskatchewan. Then In November 2019, John Murrell, a Rabbits-adjacent Calgary playwright. Then, in May of 2024, Rhymer, the melody-maker of the group, gathered much of the Calgary theatre community together on Salt Spring Island, off the coast of Vancouver Island, for one final concert featuring his compositions – and died from cancer the next day.

The Rabbits had already scheduled a revival of Dream Machine for its 2023-24 season, but Rhymer’s death sent them reeling for both emotional and logistical reasons.

“That was not good,” said Denise Clarke. “It was such a shock.”

“David was intensely musical,” she added. “He was absolutely fearless about melody.”

Recreating Dream Machine

What Rhymer wasn’t so hot at, however, was writing those melodies down on paper so they could live forever.

Rather, he kept an archive of everything inside his head.

“He was a funny guy. He was very quiet,” Brooker said. “With probably a somewhat chaotic private life.”

“He didn’t trauma trip,” Clarke says.

“David was more comfortable with history and myth than he was with – he would talk about goddess culture. Isis and Osiris and Egyptian mythology,“ Brooker says. ”He knew all the Emperors of Rome in order. He’d know how many wives they had, he’d know the names of their favourite dog – and so I’d love talking to him."

Now, what’s left of the Rabbits -- Brooker, Clarke and Curtis -- along with a cast of newcomers are re-mounting a version of the last time they did the show, in 2006 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.

“We have recordings,” Brooker said. “We have a video from whatever was happening in 2006 (at the) National Arts Centre.”

“Ricky (sound designer Richard McDowell) set it up,” Clarke says.

“Watching this (edition), the characters come out and they’re like ghosts,” Brooker says. “They emerge from the past and sing their songs and then go back.”

“Watching it (now), it’s like characters from that time, looking for structure, and comfort and meaning trying to find that when you couldn’t find that in Eisenhower’s (1950s) America if you were gay and didn’t want to be like everyone else – the air-conditioned nightmare, they called it," Brooker says.

“That was Henry Miller,” Clarke says.

“All these guys (literary legends of the 1950s) rubbed off on one another and it was a monoculture back then,” Brooker says. “Anyways, watching it now, it’s like those are the Beats -- but I’m feeling the other ghosts, as well.”

The 2026 edition features Clarke, Curtis, and Calgary’s first poet laureate, Kris Demeanor, Geoffrey Simon Brown and Allison Lynch. Augustine Yates is taking over the piano and Jonathan Lewis the violin.

That new generation of Calgary artists bring energy and a fresh way of presenting Dream Machine but Clarke says the ghosts of Rabbits past still inhabit the stage for her.

Rhymer’s presence continues to be felt, Clarke says.

“I communicate with him deeply,” she says. “I feel him a lot. The other day I was so overwhelmed with his sense I had to take a little breather. It’s just so overwhelming.

“Richard was very important to me,” she adds, “(and) Michael was (forever) onstage.

“Michael’s always there when I’m performing,” she says. “If he was in a show and I’m re-doing it – his physicality was so inspiring to me that I always see his body when I’m doing things.”

Dream Machine at the 40th High Performance Rodeo, Jan. 14-24. For more information, go here.