Profile: Bowser and Blue

Bowser (r), Blue (l) with the present owner of Schwartz's Hy Diamond (c)

The Challenge...

“It was more a playful joke where Billy was challenging me to write a musical!”

by Richard Burnett reprinted from Hour with permission

I call Rick Blue the Mick Jagger of Montreal comedy duo Bowser and Blue because he’s the money guy. “And George [Bowser] would be Keef!” Blue cracks. “He’s the junkie!”

Since forming in 1978, B&B have come a long way, from Bishop Street to theatre stages across Canada. And this week they premiere their new play, Schwartz’s: The Musical, inspired by Bill Brownstein’s popular book Schwartz’s Hebrew Delicatessen: The Story.

“It was more a playful joke where Billy was challenging me to write a musical!” Blue says. “It wasn’t serious at first, but then we discovered that everybody seems to think it’s a good idea. So lo and behold…”

The Upstage Interview: John C. Dinning

We can’t, as an audience, be sitting and waiting for something to change in front 

of us. We have to see it morph into something else.

The Upstage Interview, each Monday, is a result of CharPo's media partnership with Upstage: Theatre on Radio on CKUT.

Upstage and CharPo contributor Sarah Deshaies spoke with Set Designer John C. Dinning about Schwartz’s The Musical. Below is an abridged version of the interview transcribed by Estelle Rosen, CharPo Editor-in-Chief.

Deshaies began the interview by thanking Dinning for coming into studio.

Any chance I get to talk about designing for the theatre is always exciting for me because lots of people don’t know what we do.