Island artist finds spotlight on international stages

Since graduating from high school on P.E.I. Lucas Olscamp's adventures have taken him to B.C., Abu Dhabi, New Zealand, Australia, and, he's hoping, back to P.E.I. this summer.

"It's been an incredibly privileged and lucky journey that I've been on," said Olscamp.

Olscamp currently makes his home in Melbourne, Australia, where he is part of a creative collective called Tooth N' Fang. The coming together of the collective is directly connected to the path Olscamp's life has taken since he left the Island.

He grew up in Warren Grove, P.E.I., and graduated from Bluefield High School. From there he attended Pearson United World College in B.C. Connections he made at Pearson led him to apply for a scholarship to attend New York University's new campus in Abu Dhabi.

In 2012 he won a $250,000 scholarship to attend the school.

"Ever since then I've been thrown back and forth across the world through these new artistic adventures," he said.

"While it was incredibly exciting and thrilling it was also deeply terrifying as a small town boy to travel to a place that was so filled with new beginnings."

In Abu Dhabi Olscamp met people from all over the world. A handful of them from Costa Rica, Toronto, Chile, Japan, New Zealand came together to form Tooth N' Fang.

The group's inaugural show ran in Melbourne. Julia, a Lesbian, is a comedy that explores tropes of lesbian femininity on the stage. The group wrote their own show to expand on those ideas, a project that turned into Press Play: A Queer Apocalypse. That show will premiere at the Midsummer International Arts Festival in Melbourne next month.

Olscamp and his partner Allanah Avalon spent Christmas in her hometown in Wairarapa, New Zealand, where they held a summer seminar for Tooth N' Fang to brainstorm new project ideas. Olscamp said that community on the opposite side of the world held a strange familiarity.

"Though it is quite a foreign place for me to be in New Zealand it is an incredible space for me to recognize that small communities, whether on Prince Edward Island or in the Wairarapa are so connected," he said.

Tooth N' Fangwill be in Prague this spring to perform at two separate festivals, and Olscamp will be back on P.E.I. this summer and hopes to connect with the community on the Island to develop new project ideas.

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