Sci-fi thriller The Starling Effect to have world premiere in Calgary

Calgary playwright Lara Schmitz's award-winning sci-fi thriller The Starling Effect gets its world premiere April 30 at Vertigo Studio Theatre

A Calgary indie theatre company is presenting the world premiere of an out-of-this world, award-winning new Canadian drama.

Verb Theatre and Reckless Daughter Creative are presenting Calgary playwright Lara Schmitz’s The Starling Effect, a sci-fi thriller that features memory hopping, body swapping and a beloved bird to tell a story that explores memory, guilt and the limits of scientific discovery.

Schmitz won the 2022 Alberta Playwrights Network Novitiate Prize for The Starling Effect, which tells the story of Ravonna, who tampers with a consciousness experiment leading her into a subconscious journey involving a starling that helps her unravel the mystery of what happened to her late sister.

“The Starling Effect is a brand new play that introduces the rare genre of speculative fiction to the stage for Calgary audiences. This show is a fast-paced, thrilling ride from start to finish that asks audiences how far they would go to save someone they love - or to save themselves,” said Kathryn Smith, Verb Theatre’s artistic director who is also the director of The Starling Effect, in a media release.

The play actually originated at Verb as a conceptual piece called Something In the Mail in 2016, as part of the theatre company’s experiment lab, before evolving, in 2020, into The Starling Effect.

Schmitz, who also plays Ravonna, aid that the title came from her growing fascination with the bird of the same name.

“Once I started researching starlings, I was hooked. Along with majestic murmurations (flocks of thousands of starlings that fly in an almost kaleidoscopic formation), I’ve watched countless videos of starlings mimicking the human voice and it is eerie,” Schmitz said. “It made me wonder: what if a person lost a loved one and then, months later, heard their voice again…coming from a bird?"

The Starling Effect is at Vertigo Studio Theatre from April 28 through May 9. Opening night is April 30.

For more information, go here.