Saturday, January 1, 1994

1994: Spring Season

We won't be opening our new theatre until the fall, but that's not stopping us from doing plays, let me tell you! Six, count 'em, six plays from February to May (well, some people insist on calling our Murder Mystery Fundraiser a play - others of us have more stringent definitions...)

We're starting this theatrical avalanche with a revival of the most popular show we've produced - Cotton Patch Gospel. I don't suppose there's a show that would better embody the heart of our theatre company than this. It's "the greatest story ever retold" - the life of Christ set in modern Georgia, backed by a hot bluegrass band. Cotton Patch is an energetic, funny, dramatic, irreverent and profoundly Christian piece of theatre that thrills audiences whether they come willing to believe the story or not. Ron Reed and Allen Desnoyers, co-founders of Pacific Theatre back in 1984 and members of our 1990 cast, will be featured, along with Tim Dixon, who'll be part of PT's Rep Company this fall.

Following its Easter Week run in the Holy Tirinity sanctuary (just upstairs from our eventual theatre home), we're taking the show on the road to local churches until May 7. Nothing could be better for a community outreach, a fundraiser or a dinner-theatre setting. For tour booking information, call Karen Elgersma.

In mid-April we'll be showing you another side of our work - Community Shows, where professional company members work with non-professional casts and crews to create fine amateur productions. Daddy's Amen, the story of a young woman coming to terms with the death of her minister father, was the first play ever comissioned by Pacific Theatre and, while we have presented it as a public reading (to overwhelming response), the piece has never been fully performed. Private Moments is also a Premiere, the highly personal story of three very different music students whose need to perform and excel proves costly. Outstanding non-professional casts under the direction of Artistic Director Ron Reed and Church Resource Director Cindy Hopkins will bring to life these touching dramas from the pen of Jennifer Morison.

Then in May you'll see another professional production, a Workshop presentation of two quirky, comic one-acts with a bit of a punch. Scott Hafso's The Ranger Ned Story was the hit of the Edmonton Fringe a few years ago: the host of a long-forgotten kids' TV show appears one morning in a yuppie living room to help sort out the career crisis of a former Junior Forest Ranger. Ron Reed's The Top Ten Thousand Of All Time is an evocative one-man-show about a late-night disc jockey with an unusual audience demographic...