One-act plays will be the thing at Guelph Little Theatre starting Thursday night, as the community theatre once again hosts The Ward One Acts festival.
A series of three one-act plays will be staged Thursday, Friday and Saturday evening at the 176 Morris St. theatre beginning at 8 p.m. There is also a 2 p.m. showing on Saturday at the theatre. Tickets are $10 at the door, and also available at Janus Books downtown next to Market Fresh.
The Ward One Acts features short theatrical pieces written by local playwrights.
Canada’s Funderland is written by Parker Manson and directed by Sarah Bannister. It tells the strange story of a recent high school grad who seeks her dream job at an amusement park that has seen better days. It turns out that the best thing about her new job is the fun-loving coworkers.
Behind the Yellow Line, written and directed by Erin Lynn Birdsell, is a darkly funny piece about a border crossing experience that becomes nightmarish. A woman tries to make the crossing between Windsor and Detroit, but becomes stuck at the seemingly impassable yellow line. It’s described as a fast and upbeat farce on the theme of waiting.
And The Four Seasons Summit is a fanciful work about an epic gathering of the incarnations of the four seasons. The four meet to preserve and uphold the delicate balance of the changing seasons, but a stranger of the human type intervenes to try to tip the balance. It is written by Ken Cameron and directed by Rochelle Richardson.
“The plays themselves have a light and fun tone,” said D.J. Thomson, the producer of The Ward One Acts. He described Canada’s Funderland as “a little bit farcical,” while Behind the Yellow Line is more in the range of “absolutely farcical.”
And The Four Seasons Summit has more of a thoughtful, philosophical vibe to it, in its examination of the subject of human choice.
Guelph Little Theatre has done one-act play festivals in the past, Thomson said. It held The Ward One Acts for the first time last year.
“From the community theatre approach, what I love about the one-act format is that you can get multiple shows in an evening,” he said. “You can access multiple community stories, see an entire neighbourhood’s attempt to put stories on stage and share them with the community around them.”
Being able to experience three vastly different approaches to theatrical storytelling, stories that revolve around subjects that are current in the community, makes for an engaging evening of theatre, he added.
“With lots of these plays it is the first time they’ve ever been performed,” he said. “It’s a time to see their shows initially take flight, in what I hope is a very safe environment. It is there to encourage the act of putting on theatre.”
Visit www.oneactguelph.ca to learn more about the plays.
