By Barb Brouwer
Contributor
The stars aligned for Shuswap Theatre’s production of Lend Me a Tenor at this year’s Ozone Drama Festival.
The theatre, which hosted the weeklong event, won four awards in competition with six other theatre groups.
Not only did Lend Me a Tenor earn Best Production Runner Up, Julia Body won Best Director, newcomer Chris Iversen was named Best Actor for his performance as Tito Merelli the tenor, and Elizabeth Ann Skelhorne received Best Supporting Actress for her role as Tito’s wife.
Set designer/builder Loretta Shipmaker received Best Doors in a Farce Ever, a special adjudicator’s award for all the door-slamming that never shook the walls.
Adjudicator James Fagan Tait called Shipmaker’s accomplishment a “commendable and rare achievement.”
Tait was equally impressed with the six other productions entered by the other winning companies – Theatre Kelowna, Powerhouse Theatre, South Okanagan Players, Asparagus Theatre, Fred Skeleton Company and Crimson Tine Players.
“These plays are such a diversity and yet there’s an unspoken theme; these are plays that keep you on the edge of your seat for one reason or other,” said Tait, who held two-hour coffee critiques the morning following each play. “It’s been amazing to have an opportunity in coffee to meet all the actors, crews, and to dialogue with the audience.”
Tait also expressed his approval of the goodwill that exists between the companies and the dialogue that was initiated among the members of all the theatre companies
“The buzz about theatre is so exciting to an old jaded hack,” said Tait who is an award-winning actor, playwright and director from Vancouver.
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With extensive experience in professional theatre, Tait has worked as a collaborator and creator in many community theatre projects, including Caravan Farm Theatre and Enderby’s Runaway Moon Theatre. “We’ve been doing it for money for so long (professionally) and the goodwill isn’t there, so it is a thrill for me to witness the excitement.”
An ardent believer in the power of theatre, Tait says it creates its own platform and is free of politics and is, in itself freeing.
“It’s the last bastion of free expression; it’s not a religion, it’s not an education, or government,” he says. “It’s its own safe place, a place to observe human conduct, inhabit a different time and circumstance and learn more about history, gender norms, what used to be taboo, social conventions, love and grief, rage and jealousy, murder and death.”
Tait says he discovered theatre was his own safe place at the age of nine and has never looked back.
For information on all the awards that were handed out last Friday evening, go online to shuswaptheatre.com.
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