Featuring Joseph Nicholas McManus

Joseph Nicholas McManus is a gifted performer across several fields; his positive and entrepreneur outlook on life has given him great success.

McManus is currently going into his fourth year at the University of Calgary BFA Drama program, a Carolina Crown DCI performer and one of the founders of the Cowtown Collection Performing Arts Association.

His commitment to art and outlook on life is hugely inspiring and a prime example of a beautiful emerging interdisciplinary artist.

We started by asking McManus where his journey with the arts began? 

 He explained that both of his parents were “fairly artsy” growing up. The primary source of this was through the church band that his father participated with. His parents always showed an interest in McManus learning to play an instrument, which led to him in grade 6, starting French horn private lessons, which led to him joining a marching band in Junior High.

For those who may not know about marching band, are you able to talk about what it is and the scene it has? McManus goes on to say, 

“Calgary has one of the biggest and most talented marching band scenes in the country. In Calgary, we got the bands of Calgary, which consist of the Round-Up band, the Stetson band and the Stampede Showband.”

“The Showband is the most recognizable of the 3 with the white hats and red boots, and they travel internationally all the time and do a lot of cool things. And that’s an auditioned group, and you have to be in grade 11, I think it is. They perform mostly for the 10 days during the stampede, but they also do kind of a big field show.”

“The Stetson Band is a highschool level band (non-audition), and I teach there. And I also teach at the Round-Up band, which is junior high level, very introductory. And all of them have a field show.“

McManus tells us that he has done a total of eight years in the marching arts, and he is currently in his second year at the drum core Carolina Crown which takes place in the states and competes in DCI. McManus tells us 

“Which unfortunately got cancelled this summer, but I might be able to do it next summer for my age out experience.” (The marching arts have an age limit of 21, so your final year is called an “age out” year.)

So we’ve talked about your band experience, how did you discover drama?

McManus explains, 
“Going to high school, I was debating my extra option between dance or drama, because I was considering joining Cologuard in marching band and ditching the instrument. But I ended up picking up drama in high school, and that kind of set in stone a lot of my future.”

From that introduction, McManus started doing improve in high school, going to the loose moose theatre, joined an improv club and started to do all of the school’s drama productions. For McManus’s three years in high school, he was able to do all fall and winter shows and still participated in marching band. 

How would you say drama and band has affected you as an emerging artist? 

McManus began to talk about Cowtown Collection Performing Arts Association, an indoor marching band. Cowtown strives to put heavy emphasis on theatrical coherence and entertainment. McManus began creating the group in January 2020 with his friend and partner, Cadence Sullivan.  The friends dream and partnership originated from the fact that both of them are “ageing out” of the band scene, McManus unfolded to us,

“”We are both getting to the age where we aren’t allowed to do marching band anymore, there’s an age limit on the marching arts in a lot of places. Which is 21.” 

“We are both also really interested in designing shows, so we figured we could start an indoor winds group by doing a low budget show with our friends and creating something. And just through the process of creating that we decided to become the Cow Town Collection. We ended up dressing in cow costumes, which had a huge pay off because people loved it, and it was really entertaining.” 

McManus explains that there is a tremendous artistic potential with the marching arts that is often “overlooked.” One of McManus’s main interests in pursuing this form of storytelling was the ability to incorporate drama and develop the different types of emotions a band can portray during a show. 

“There are a lot of different things you can do with the marching arts that can be very impactful.”

One of McManus’s primary goals was to create a show that can be enjoyed by both marching band enthusiasts and people who have never seen a marching band show or even know what marching band is. McManus explains that the majority of marching arts made explore very abstract concepts and can only be made sense of by the musical/marching community. In McManus’s eyes, many shows consist of having abstract plots /stories that can’t be related too by the average audience member, for example, composers and their life stories. He goes onto explain that maybe the audience would understand and enjoy it if they knew all of those references. Still, the general public (who doesn’t study music) struggle to see the story the group is trying to portray. McManus explains that most of the time, you have to listen to podcasts of the designers explain what the show is. Only then can you fully understand it. 

What McManus says is, based off of the last season they had the general public who came to there show, or people watching on YouTube” loved it” “people love it” “and seeing this artistic expression and how entertaining it can be” 

“You should be able to go home to the dinner table and talk about our show, and know what’s happening.” 

To find out more and to watch Cowtown Collections show click the link below:

Take away from your marching band experience? 

“I learned a lot from marching band in the realm of teamwork, and you’re really trusting all of the people around you.” 

McManus goes on to explain that, when you are in a field show, you not only need to know that you are going to be in the right place at the right time and play the right note, but everyone else around you also supports you and the show.

Final Thoughts

When we asked for McManus’s final thoughts of advice to give to other emerging artists, he simply stated,

“It’s about committing to something, getting yourself up and off your seat and saying, what does it take? It’s all about reaching out doing the research and figuring out.”  

Hearing McManus speaking about his drive for the future was breathtaking and commendable. His passion has inspired me to look at my own career as an emerging artist to see how I might “get up” to start creating art in this new world that has been thrust upon us.  

Below you can find links to support Joseph and the Cowtown Collection.

Let us know what you thought of this story, and if it also started a fire to create something new and beautiful. Or if you have story that you would like to share with us next 🙂