An Okotoks playwright felt out of his element writing a romantic comedy for this spring’s one-act festival.
“I’m not a romantic,” said Reg Gothard, who goes by the pseudonym Kelvin D. Hatch.
Okotoks actors Haley Gray and Keigan Fisher requested Gothard’s playwriting expertise.
They felt confident in his abilities considering his one-act play Act III, about three ladies struggling with their husbands’ retirement plans, won best original script at the Foothills Regional One-Act Play Festival last year.
Gothard set to work creating Trail Mix and Chips, a story about a young couple who run out of gas in the middle of nowhere. His wife Sue is directing the play.
“They have to get to know each other a little quickly,” explained Gothard of his play’s characters. “She is a backcountry gal and he’s a city boy. She has to take charge of things. There’s a little bit of Reg humour in there.”
Trail Mix and Chips is one of four plays Dewdney Players is taking to the Foothills Regional One-Act Play Festival April 29 and 30 in Canmore.
Public performances will take place at the Rotary Performing Arts Centre April 21 to 23 at 7:30 p.m. with a Saturday matinee at 2 p.m.
Actors and directors Fiorentina Maione and Stephen Buoninsegni are performing Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen, Brad Snowden is directing Anything For You starring Melanie Tokarchuk and Hollie Darel and Dewdney newcomers Kelly Madeiros and Shanna Hedley of Calgary are directing and performing Batbrains.
Dewdney Players producer Ed Sands said Dewdney has entered anywhere from two to five plays to the regional festival each year for more than 10 years and is confident this month’s performances will stand out.
“I think we are going to do quite well, but there is a couple of other strong theatre groups there as well,” he Sands.
“One acts just give an opportunity to do something slightly different and not necessarily commercially popular. The one act you can be a little edgy if you want to.”
Many of those heading to festival are seasoned pros, most of whom received awards in previous festivals, Sands said.
“We have some extreme talent on the stage,” he said. “These are folks who know what they are doing. I don’t know what to expect from the other groups at the festival. In terms of the competition, we will represent Okotoks as best we can.”
Group theatres typically enter from High River, Strathmore, Cochrane, Canmore and Claresholm, said Sands. The length of the plays must be between 10 and 60 minutes.
“You’ve got a half an hour to develop your characters, develop your plot, come up with a climax and get to the finish,” he said. “Because we’ve been doing it for so long people look forward to it and if they want to get involved in it they know they have some latitude to do it on their own.”
Another unique feature about the one-act plays is that each is like its own production group, arranging its own royalties, building its own sets and doing its own technical work, said Sands.
“You think this is a short one, this won’t be too hard, but if there is only two of you sometimes you are on the stage the whole time,” he said. “They focus on the actors and there is usually minimal sets.”
Sands said the theatre group benefits greatly from participating in the festival year after year.
“The attraction of the one-act festival is an outside adjudicator comes and gives us some professional critiquing on our work,” he said, adding they are often professional directors, writers and drama professors. “We want to have the ability to perform them before the public to hone them before we go to adjudication.”
For Gothard, entering the festival is almost an annual event. He wrote his first play in the 1980s - a British pantomime for the theatre group he was part of while living in England. He wrote his first one-act play for Dewdney four years ago.
His expertise has since been in high demand.
For Trail Mix and Chips, he is confident in Gray and Fisher’s performances.
He said the real-life couple does a great job of portraying the awkwardness two people have when they don’t know each other well.
“Haley is quite a strong actress – she’s in the theatre program at the Comp,” he said. “Keigan has got a bit of a comedic slant to him. He can bring out the comedy in things.”
Gothard remembers being in a similar situation several years ago in England.
“Sue and I had to do the same things when we first joined the theatre group,” he said. “We were married, but had to do a play where we didn’t know each other well.”
Tickets to see the one act plays cost $20 for adults and $15 for students and can be purchased at www.okotoksculture.ca or at the door.
The plays contain mature subject matter that is not appropriate for younger audiences.
