A DEAD body, seniors looking for fun, a girl with a rampant imagination and men with giant letters – some of the characters in this year’s plays at the Northwest Zone Drama Festival, hosted here by Caledonia Secondary starting tomorrow and running through Saturday.
Adjudicator Steve Keitzmann will give his opinion on each of the nine plays, one of which has the chance to go to Vancouver for the provincial drama festival.
He will spend 70 minutes critiquing and working with each cast the day after their performances.
Joining Terrace on the stage with two plays are Smithers and Prince Rupert while Houston, Hazelton and Kitimat stage one play each.
Caledonia offers up A Man of Letters, a two character play where the letters they’re putting up on a building become the third character; and A Mother In My Head, where the characters go about their lives never far from their mothers’ advice.
Houston drama students offer up The Great Nursing Home Escape, in which the characters’ plans don’t go quite as expected.
Hazelton presents Magic Fairy in the Microwave, where a young girl uses her imagination to create herself a new life.
Prince Rupert’s Mr. Winkler’s Birthday Party shows the comedy and drama of what happens when people don’t listen to each other or pay attention.
The Chair Play, one of two plays put on by Smithers drama students, addresses societal questions of whether the “haves” owe anything to the “have nots,” ownership and entitlement through the use of chairs as an analogy.
Members of the public are invited to come watch the plays during the three days of the festival.
Terrace last hosted the festival in 2009.
The locations change from year to year; last year Cal students travelled to Smithers to take part in it.
The annual Northwest Zone Drama Festival takes place at the R.E.M. Lee Theatre Feb. 21 to 23. For more details, see City Scene on page 25.