The very best in community theatre productions will be showcased on the stage at the Cugnet Centre in Weyburn, with the 84th competitive play festival, TheatreFest, set to run from Sunday, April 1 to Sunday, April 8.
The week-long festival will be kicked off by the host, Crocus 80 Theatre, which will bring the play, “And A Child Shall Lead”, to the stage on April 1, featuring an all-youth cast.
Indian Head’s Stage Left Players will present “On A First Name Basis”, written by Norm Foster, on Monday evening. The Moose Jaw Community Players will present “The Melville Boys” by Norm Foster on Tuesday evening, and Regina Little Theatre will perform “Bedtime Stories” by Norm Foster on Wednesday evening.
Yorkton’s PaperBag Players will present “Buying the Moose”, by Michael G. Wilmot, on Thursday evening, followed by Balgonie’s Tumbleweed Theatre performing “Exit Laughing” by Paul Elliott on Friday evening.
The Festival’s final performance will be presented by the Battlefords Community Players, “For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again”, written by Michel Tremblay.
The Crocus 80 play, “And A Child Shall Lead”, is written by Canadian playwright Michael Slade, and is based on real-life records of poems and stories written by children who were interned in a concentration camp in Terezin, just outside of Prague, Czechoslovakia. There were also interviews with survivors and research was done in archives and museum collections in the Czech Republic where journals, poems, stories and drawings by the children were found.
Director Connie Nightingale had worked with many of the young actors and actresses before through the youth theatre program at the T.C. Douglas Centre, and provided them with the assignment of doing research on their characters and on the Holocaust during the Second World War.
