By Tony Butticci
West Ferris Secondary School will be hosting the new National Theatre School of Canada (NTS) Drama Festival.
After the loss of the Sears sponsorship NTS, along with other sponsors, have come together to allow the high school drama festival to continue.
District festivals have been happening across the province since February, and now it’s time for the Nipissing area festival.
Eight productions from seven local schools, École Secondaire Catholique Algonquin, Almaguin Highlands Secondary School, Chippewa Secondary School, F.J. McElligott Secondary School, St. Joseph Scollard Hall, West Ferris Secondary School, and Widdifield Secondary School, will be performing hoping to be invited to the Northern Regional Festival in the end of April and the Ontario Showcase in May.
The festival will take place from April 5th to 7th at West Ferris Secondary School starting at 7 p.m. each night. Tickets will be $10 at the door.
Starting on Thursday the 5th FJ McElligott will perform Bags. Following will be Widdifield‘s Exorcising Restraint which is a collective creation by Widdifield students, teachers, and alumni that focuses on violence against women through events including the Brock Turner rape trial and Montreal Massacre that claimed the lives of 14 women.
Closing the night will be West Ferris’ Of Mice and Men, based on the classic novel. The play follows two friends, George and Lennie, as they drift across California during the great depression. Both land jobs at a local farm, but trouble brews when the giant child-like Lennie falls for the owner’s wife.
Following on Friday, the 6th will be Almaguin Highlands’ Halifax: 1917 which is a collective researched and written by Almaguin’s Theatre Production class.
The play tells the story of the historic Halifax Harbour Explosion which occurred on December 6th, 1917, just following the event’s 100th anniversary. It focuses on the build-up to the explosion, the aftermath, and the legacy the disaster left within Canada and the World.
Following will be Algonquin’s Parc-en-ciel.
Finishing the second night will be Chippewa’s Ladies of the Tower. The Tower of London provides the setting for this provocative play. Two cleaning women come to scrub down a forgotten room and are visited by the spirits of the ladies who met death inside the dark walls. Each is doomed by her own bitterness to walk the Tower. In a brief overlapping of the present and the past, there is a touching scene of communication and understanding that sets the embittered women free of their bondage to the past.
The final night will begin with Almaguin Highlands’ Charlie Foster; A Play About Swimming and Theatre The play gives you an insight behind Charlie, who had a difficult and short life. The play expresses what Charlie’s life was like in many different aspects, and it leads us to our own questions and conclusions about his life, how he was treated, and who really knew him. The final show of the night will be Scollard Hall’s Deliver Us Not, an entertaining comedy about three fetuses coming to terms with their impending birth. After their performance will be an awards ceremony highlighting individual achievements, technical highlights, and the productions that will move on to the Northern Regional Festival in two weeks which will again be held at West Ferris.
Each night following all of the shows there will be a public adjudication of the shows by adjudicator Paul Tessier, who is an award-winning actor, director, and producer with strong ties to Northern Ontario. His appreciation and love for the theatre first blossomed in his teenage years with the Sears Drama Festival. Upon graduation from the Ryerson Theatre School in 1988, he performed from Montreal to Victoria, wrote musical scores for several productions and directed an eclectic mix of theatre from farce to tragedy. He has adjudicated high school drama competitions and taught acting workshops at the International Thespian Festivals. To this day, Paul continues to collaborate on creative projects that attempt to stimulate the soul and illuminate the human condition. Beyond theatre, he has nurtured his inexplicable love for accounting into a thriving tax practice in Toronto.
The public is encouraged to come out and support over 200 students and teachers by attending this year’s festival. Again each evening will begin at 7 p.m. and tickets will be $10 at the door.
