The Pied Piperz at Provincials

The Pied Piperz at Provincials1

Back in February, Parkland's puppet club presented our version of the Pied Piperz at the Kootenay Zone drama festival here in town and were chosen to go on to the provincial festival held in Vancouver. This is the first time that Parkland has brought a play to the provincial festival and we, the cast and crew were all very excited. Our group of fifteen people involved with the play, including the actors, and stage crew had been working hard rehearsing twice a week after school and a couple of lunch hours since then to get the play up to top quality. On May 21 we left for Vancouver with a group of drama students going to watch the festival and returned late on May 25 after riding a bus for twelve hours.2

At this festival, each day brought workshops, and many opportunities to meet other people from different cities across B.C. all with an interest in the theatre. The workshops included technical theatre, stage combat, mask/movement, monologues, and acting. Each night, everyone gathered at the theatre to watch the three plays being performed that night, one by each of the schools participating. The plays ranged from a story of a young man with a collection of glass cocktail stirrers, to a story of a girl in a mental institution who can travel in time and has hidden her father's last manuscript in the future so that her sister can't find it. There was a play about learning disabled kids, another play was a comedic remake of Shakespeare's "Macbeth", and of course, we performed our version of The Pied Piper. There were musicals, comedies, very serious and dramatic stories, and stories that warmed the heart. The audience was very supportive of all of the plays and always gave the appropriate reactions with lots of enthusiasm. Everyone there had an appreciation for the theatre that really showed in their support throughout the long five days. As well as the three plays each night, a contest had previously been held for aspiring playwrights and four of the six plays chosen for the anthology were performed on Saturday May 24. 3

We stayed at the University of British Columbia, sleeping for as little as six hours per night at the dorms after really long, exciting days. Plays went until 10:00 PM or later and there was usually something to do afterward to meet students from the other schools. The last night, there was a dance for all who attended the festival, which was a lot of fun and definitely a great way of ending the exciting week.4

While there, we all got a chance to see the Vancouver Aquarium as well as walk around the UBC campus to the various different buildings, and take the Vancouver city transit, very unlike our own transit system. We got a feel for getting around in the big city and a feel of what a university campus was like. We also got quite used to cafeteria food, as quite a few of our meals were eaten there.5

We did our performance on Thursday, May 22 and the next day we had a meeting with the adjudicator who had a lot of praise about our performance. She said she could tell a lot of work went into it and that the hard work really came through. She also said she enjoyed the creative use of puppets, and that we did an awesome job moving them around, making the puppets look so alive.6

Our directors are Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Hackett, with Brenna Johnson as the Village idiot, Kyla Bishop as the British bullfrog, and Kelsey Leiterman as the Barber. Kayla Hart plays the mayor, and Aaron Laidlaw plays Killer, the dog. Sarah Hogg, Launny Lowden, and Myles Shepherd play the rats; Charlotte, Harriet and Mellow (Mellow Yellow) and Alex Wright and Chad Maag play the "The Pied Piperz". The lighting is done by Ben Thorp, the sound by Sarah Senakovicz and the stage crew consists of Jonathan Saule working backstage, and Tegan Kaun and Jaclyn Bowman working with the spotlights. All of us from the Parkland Puppet club would like extend a huge thank you to anyone who came out to support our production at lunch hours or when we presented it for the city on Thursday, May 15.7