Yesterday, Jane,
the General Manager of Carousel Players in St. Catharines, Ontario, sent me a
couple of photos of the boat that will be used in their production of my play “Saving
Lonesome George”. She also gave me
some nuts and bolts information that I will now pass along.
The play is a travelling production that has several performances at a stage in the beautiful Grand Theatre in London and several more at the equally beautiful Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre (Carousel’s home theatre) in St. Catharines, but most of the time, the play will be performed on gym floors in schools throughout the Niagara district of Ontario.
The play hits the road on the 22nd of March and has its last performance on May 6th. In the weeks between opening night (or in our case, morning) and the final performance, 9,000 children, aged 4 and up, will see the production.
This is the second go round for “Saving Lonesome George”. A couple of years ago, my friend, Kelly Handerek of the U. of R. Theatre Department, directed a production for Persephone Theatre in Saskatoon that visited schools throughout the province. It was a great hit with the kids. Pablo Felices-Luna, the Artistic Director of Carousel, came out, caught a performance and decided he’d like to mount his own production.
One of the many gifts of theatre is that it gives everyone a chance to revisit a project—to fix what experience has shown needs fixing and to showcase what works. Second chances are rare for writers, and tomorrow I’ll talk about what I’ve done with this one.