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Taber Players breaking new ground with latest offering
Posted on April 13, 2016 by Taber TimesPoll
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By Nikki Jamieson
Taber Times
njamieson@tabertimes.com
Theatre lovers will be able to see three plays in one night in the next Taber Players production.
“We couldn’t come to an agreement on what production we wanted to do,” said Ron Levagood, executive producer for Taber Players, adding that at the time, they were also thinking about participating in the past One-Act Play Festival in Lethbridge. “It was a group decision, of some of the long time actors and actresses and members of our board of directors.”
While they did take part in the festival due to scheduling conflicts with one of the actresses, the Taber audience will get a three-for-one deal in theatre entertainment.
Starting on April 28, the Taber Players will be putting on a series of one-act farce plays.
The first play, ‘Black Comedy’, is about a young sculptor and his debutante fiancé, who ‘borrow’ antique furniture from their neighbour to impress a rich art collector, coming to see the sculptor’s work, and the fiancé’s father.
Then the power fails, the neighbour returns home early and the ex-mistress makes an appearance. What is unique about this production is that it is performed under black lighting.
“The lights go out because the main fuse blows on the house, and we are going to use black light, for a lot of the production, so that will be interesting. Far as I know, that’s the first time that’s been done,” said Levagood.
“All the cast will be dressed in white costumes, so they will be brilliantly silhouetted on stage in the darkness, and we will be using a special make up as well on lips and eyebrows and fingernails, which highlights and kind of gives it an eerie feeling, if you will.”
The second play, ‘Two Fools Who Gained a Measure of Wisdom’, is about a newly married couple visiting the groom’s obnoxious elderly aunt, who had paid for the wedding, leaving the groom afraid that she will embarrass him in front of his new wife. The play had been translated from Russian to English from one of Anton Chekhov’s short stories from the earlier 1900s.
The final play, ‘Here Comes the Bride… And There Goes the Groom,’ features a cast of seven women, on the shenanigans that occur when the groom bolts from the alter, leaving the bride in tears, the guest bewildered and the two mothers in a purse smack-down.
“You’re getting three for the price of one, if you will. It’s still two and a half hours of entertainment… With the doom and gloom in the economy of Alberta, everybody needs a laugh, and this is a great way of having a laugh.”
As far as he knows, this will be the first time, at least since 1986, that the Taber Players will be putting on one-act plays. They faced unique challenges of getting the cast to memorize more then one play, doing up the promotional materials well as rehearsing and staging all three productions.
One thing Levagood would stress to parents is that the shows have a PG rating, for some language and adult situations, since that wasn’t on the poster.
“Through human error, we failed to put the PG rating on the poster,” said Levagood. “Nothing worse then what you’ll see on TV.”
Tickets for the first show on April 28 are $10 each. Tickets for all subsequent shows cost $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors. Other shows go at April 29-30, May 6-7 and 13-14, with a matinee on May 7. Doors open at 7 p.m. with the shows starting at 7:30 at the Taber Legion Hall, with two 15-minute intermissions. Tickets are available at the Shoe Gallery.
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