 |
| The company of Gore Bay Theatre's production of This Is How We Got Here |
Gore Bay Theatre returns to Theatre Ontario Festival as the representative of QUONTA, the northeastern Ontario community theatre association. Last seen on the Festival stage in 2015 in Oshawa when the presented Agnes of God by John Pielmeier, this year Gore Bay Theatre presents This Is How We Got Here, written by Keith Barker (coincidentally our Theatre Ontario Festival Playwright-in-Person.)
Gore Bay is a small town of 800 residents located on beautiful Manitoulin Island. Gore Bay Theatre was established as a community theatre in 1992 with a mandate to produce Canadian theatre (if possible), primarily as a summer venue for the local and tourist audiences. It produced one comedy each summer until 2005, when the present Artistic Director was appointed. Since then, Gore Bay Theatre has produced three to four productions each year including comedies, dramas, musicals and children’s theatre. The summer theatre season now produces a comedy, a drama and sometimes a children’s production. The productions are done in repertory to give audiences an opportunity to attend more than one performance on a weekend.
Simultaneously heartbreaking and heartwarming, This Is How We Got Here follows a close-knit family as they deal with an unexpected loss. The ties that keep a mother, father, aunt and uncle together as sisters, best friends and spouses are strained by grief and guilt. They must learn how to move forward after the trauma and re-learn how to interact with forgiveness, humour and love.
At QUONTA Festival 2019 in Sault Ste. Marie, Gore Bay Theatre received Outstanding Production, Outstanding Direction (Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel), Outstanding Technical Achievement, Outstanding Visual Presentation, and Adjudicators’s Awards for Outstanding Contribtuion (Vern Dorge, Music Composition and Performance) and for Ensemble, with nominations for Outstanding Actress in a Leading Role (Tara Bernatchez as Lucille and Shannon McMullan as Liset), Outstanding Actor in a Leading Role (John Robertson as Paul and Will Smith at Jim), and Adjudicator’s Awards for Stage Management (Andrea Emmerton and Walter Maskel), and Festival Heroes (Bill Viertelhausen.)
Warmest wishes for a thundering good production tonight, my friends. Should you break some legs in the doing, all's in the process, eh?
ReplyDeleteThank you!
Delete