Springtime is play time in Elk Point, with the five performances of this year’s Elk Point Allied Arts spring dinner theatre winding up just under two weeks ahead of the first of four performances of the Elk Point Theatre Project, when Elk Point’s youngest performers hit the stage after a four-year absence.
The two-week gap doesn’t leave much time for the younger group to get accustomed to the Allied Arts stage, which currently portrays and golf resort’s reception area and accommodation, once it is turned into the set for ‘Matilda’. Although this story is over 35 years old and the play and movie versions have been around for 15 years or so, I’ve never read Roald Dahl’s book or seen the show and have absolutely no idea what kind of sets this would require, but judging from the Theatre Project plays of the past, I’m reasonably sure it won’t be a quick and easy switch-over.
Producing plays, whether for adult or youth performers, takes a whole lot of work by a large number of people, and when it’s at a local level, that work is done by volunteers… many, many volunteers. There are those who coach the actors and actresses as they learn their lines and perfect their movements on stage, but as important as their role is, that is just a beginning.
A really huge part of every play is the setting, building backgrounds and gathering the furnishings and props needed. ‘Whose Wives Are They Anyway?’ has a golf resort lobby with French doors on one side, an office door, doors to the terrace and one of the suites, and that’s before action moves over to two suites with two doors each and a connecting door. That’s a whole lot of doors, and anyone who has helped to hang a door, anywhere, anytime, knows that is not a simple process. And in this one, the set builders even had to build a bed with access to a hiding place underneath… not your typical hotel room, for sure.
The sets for youth plays have included everything from a forest to castle parapets to ocean waves, all created by ambitious and talented volunteers, including some who have since passed away and are no longer around to create more sets.
Along with building sets and gathering props (Will the giraffe that appears in virtually every Allied Arts play show up in the junior version?), there are costumes. The adult versions generally have costumes that are regular clothing, plus on occasion, some nuns’ habits and a cowboy hat or two, but youth plays can have anything from a large furry dog costume to a mermaid tail to a medieval shirt that rips apart to show off muscles. Those don’t come from department stores, or from costume shops, they are made by volunteers to fit the performer and the occasion.
Then of course there are posters and programs, formerly ordered from printing companies, but now more likely to be one more task for volunteers, computers having made that creative task easier to accomplish, although finding low cost photocopying still isn’t easy.
One behind-the-scenes task that probably never enters the theatregoers’ minds is that all those performers have to be fed during or after the practice sessions. Nutrition is necessary to keep performers at their peak, and we all know that kids need snacks to keep going… Adults do, too, although they may not admit it, but put out the snacks and they will disappear surprisingly fast.
The youth theatre project has traditionally been carried out at as low cost as possible, allowing families to attend the performances at an affordable price. Food costs keep rising, and even pre-pandemic, the trend was to have volunteers involved in preparing brunches and dinners for the show. There are those who wouldn’t have any idea how to feed crowds of that size, but fortunately there are those who do, some of them the same people who routinely spearhead the feeding of Canada Day pancakes to 700 or 800 people every July 1. A hundred people for brunch or dinner? No problem! Round up the volunteers - more the better - and bring it on!
It’s showtime, people! Enjoy!
