For the whole first week of April, Weyburn was treated to the best in live theatre from community theatre groups around Saskatchewan, as the city hosted the provincial TheatreFest 2018 competition for Theatre Saskatchewan.
The week-long festival of plays was adjudicated by a former Weyburn resident, Gordon Portman, who provided some brief comments after each performance each night before doing a full-length adjudication with the cast and crew the morning following each play.
One thing Portman commented on throughout the week was that there seemed to be a subtle theme with a reference to death and dying in some way in each play.
The Crocus 80 play, which deservedly received an award for the entire youth cast, was a sombre one, dealing with the true story of children in a Nazi concentration camp.
In some of the plays which followed, none of which were serious dramas for the most part, did have some serious moments, with characters revealing that they are dying in a couple of instances, and the characters were seeking how to deal with that.
They of course had no way of knowing how death would enter the picture, as the Humboldt tragedy occurred on Friday evening, overshadowing every event in the province, and affecting every family and every person who has ever played hockey or travelled on a bus.
Thus, Portman made some very nice comments on Saturday evening as he went through the awards for the week of theatre productions, and he pointed out that even though he had never been on a hockey team bus in his life, he had in fact travelled on buses innumerable times for school choirs or band, or for travelling to TheatreFest competition, and was able to relate to the tragedy that hit the Humboldt Broncos.
I think this shows that this was not just a Humboldt story, or even just a hockey story — this was something that had an impact on every community, on every family and indeed affected people right across Canada, if one has been watching the national news at all.
The remarkably talented young people who acted in the most serious play out of the entire week were recognized for their talents and their accomplishments on stage, and what Portman was able to point out is they have a great amount of potential and possibility for the future.
This was also part of why the Humboldt tragedy hurt so much, because the loss of the young men who had been hoping to play hockey against the Nipawin Hawks had their potential and possibilities cut short.
In part too, this is why we need to nurture and celebrate the youth and the family we have with us still. We need to appreciate the people in our lives and in our communities, and hold them close.
