Copyright 2000 by Edward Willett

A thousand softly glowing lights in every colour of the rainbow bob through the trees and glitter off the ripples on Wascana Lake. It's a magical scene; it's Lanterns on the Lake.

Saturday, August 26, the third annual Lanterns on the Lake festival is being held, once again under the auspices of Regina's Globe Theatre.

Artistic Director Ruth Smillie originated Lanterns on the Lake as a celebration of "art, beauty and community," as the festival's web site puts it. " It was conceived to be a small, modest event," Ruth says, adding that they anticipated maybe 1,000 people would attend the first one.

Instead, several thousand attended. As a result, last year they planned for 10,000--and this time between 15,000 and 17,000 showed up. "We didn't ever imagine it like this," Ruth admits. All the same, she says, "It's very gratifying to be involved in an event that has such enormous public appeal."

Success has bred problems. One is financial. As Ruth puts it, "porta-potties are expensive!"

Or, to put it another way, "With this enormous popularity comes increased infrastructure. It's something we love to do, but it's taken a fair bit of infrastructure creation to make it a safe event and one that is accessible to all these people who want to attend it."

The necessity of promoting the event, running workshops, and dealing with enormous crowds put the festival in danger of falling victim to its own success; Globe Theatre, like all other arts organizations, doesn't have a lot of excess money lying around. Fortunately, the Regina Arts Commission came through with a grant. "Without that support it would have been difficult to sustain that event," Ruth admits.

Another problem the event has run into is that its sheer size has made it difficult for the procession of lanterns to proceed smoothly. Last year, for instance, the tail end of the procession got tangled up in crowds of people starting to leave.

To mitigate that problem, this year the procession will be split into three, each starting from a different place: one setting out from near Darke Hall, one from the bandstand area, and one from Speaker's Corner. Ruth estimates there will be between 1,000 and 1,500 lanterns in each procession. When the starting signal is given, all the processions will start off at once and proceed in a triangle from place to place: the Speaker's Corner procession will move up pathway between the lake and the Royal Saskatchewan Museum toward Darke Hall, the one from Darke Hall will move past the swimming pool and by the playground down toward the lake, and the one from the bandstand will move toward Speaker's Corner along the lake.

Along the way, the processions will pass installations from many of the other arts organizations involved in Lanterns on the Lake, so that everyone carrying a lantern will still be able to see everything else that's happening.

The other participants are Curtain Razors, the Dunlop Art Gallery, New Dance Horizons, the Regina Symphony Orchestra, Saskatchewan Filmpool Co-operative, the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, the MacKenzie Art Gallery and Takwakin.

As the processions process, the Regina Symphony Orchestra will be playing in the bandshell (a warm-up for their performance on Sunday, August 27, at Mission Ridge), New Dance Horizons will be performing their Pelican Nocturne choreographic piece at Speaker's Corner in collaboration with the Curtain Razors and Takwakin theatre companies, and the Saskatchewan Film Pool will be showing film loops on the side of a giant "lantern" close to the bandstand.

Between Speaker's Corner and Darke Hall, processions will pass through the Dunlop Art Gallery installation, created by Christine Shaw. This installation is a long tunnel of plastic with five smaller tunnels into it and five out of it. The procession will split into five to enter, join together to travel through the tunnel, then split again to exit, their lanterns lighting the plastic tunnel from the inside. The whole thing is more than 200 metres long, and should be spectacular.

This year's version of Pelican Nocturne is a more extended choreographic piece than in past year. "It's a choreographic work that is a response to the natural setting of Lanterns on the Lake," Ruth says. "Using pelicans as the motif, it is an evocation of a beautiful creature that is endangered, sophisticated and beautiful."

The Saskatchewan Writers Guild's contribution includes readings in the afternoon on the outdoor stage, which will also see a number of musical groups performing, and "poetry lanterns," lanterns with snatches of poetry written on them, which will be included in the procession.

The Mackenzie Art Gallery, meanwhile, has been running lantern workshops for children as part of their Sundays at the Gallery program. Globe Theatre has been running its own lantern-making workshops all through August--balloon workshops, rattan workshops and advanced workshops using wire. "There's going to be some pretty spectacular lanterns," Ruth promises.

If you've never been to Lanterns on the Lake, you owe it to yourself to go this year. It's a remarkable celebration of the arts, and falling as it does at the end of August, it also feels like a farewell to summer and a greeting to autumn.

As Ruth puts it, "It's a gorgeous thing."

Posted March 9, 2004