Sometimes inspiration can come from the most unusual places. For Annie Dugan, Artistic Director of Firefly Theatre and Circus, inspiration came from the impressive Metropolis Community Centre in Sir Winston Churchill Square. In fact, the presentation of Sky Life was created specifically for the space.

As soon as Dugan saw the venue she enlisted the talents of her rigger Adrian Young. The first thing Dugan wanted to know was if they could fly people in from a 40- to 60-foot drop. Although Young assured her it was possible, it was anything but smooth sailing from there.

While Dugan waited for a structure to be built offsite that would fulfill her imagination, she got to work on an original storyline.

“Initially the story was about the Northern Lights,” she says.

But when the lighting on the final product was so different from prototype, Dugan needed to come up with a plan B and fast.

She took the challenge in stride.

“Artists are always faced with not having what we need – whether it’s time, money, or supply. So, I sat down with John Ullyatt, the co-founder of Firefly, to revamp the production. I still wanted people to come from the sky so we shifted the story to be about constellations.”

The story follows two divisions of people: sky people and the elevated ones a.k.a stilt walkers who all gather for the most spectacular constellation event in recent memory. In order to marry the two storylines, Dugan relied on the familiar storyline of an old classic to weave everyone together: The Ugly Duckling.

Out of all the performers, there is one stilt walker who doesn’t actually have stilts at all; instead, she has buckets. As the sky lights up like no one has ever seen before, the unusual stilt walker comes into her own.  

Tickets for this weekend’s performances are complimentary and available at the door. Shows run nightly at 8 p.m. plus additional performances at 4 p.m. on the weekend. For complete information, visit fireflytheatre.com.

Correction – February 8, 2012, 8:40 pm EST:A previous version of this story contained incorrect information. The names of Annie Dugan and John Ullyatt were misspelled. Metro regrets the error.