CANMORE – Vampires are looming in the dark and ice queens are looking to kidnap at Canmore’s Centennial Park.
Back for a seventh year, Pine Tree Players are taking over the Stan Rogers Memorial Stage with two shows for its summer theatre starting on Thursday (July 11).
Diving into the dark world of vampires the non-profit theatre group will be showing Dracula: A Feminist Revenge Fantasy by Kate Hamill – loosely based off Bram Stoker’s Dracula – which has been heavily expressed is not for kids.
“I’m super excited to put this one on because I’ve never been in a play like this before, and it’s such a different atmosphere,” said Lily Burden, who has performed over 10 times with Pine Tree Players.
“I’ve been in a lot more lighthearted shows, maybe there’s been stage combat, but there hasn’t been blood and death and gore, so it's a different emotional place to play from.”
A challenge for Burden in the intense and gruesome vampire performance as she’s never acted in a show with the use of fake blood.
“I’ve never dealt with that in the show before and it’s a very interesting challenge,” said Burden, who is playing Mina Harker in Dracula as well as the Queen of Spring and Grandma in The Snow Queen.
Families can find solace The Snow Queen by Charles Way – based off the 1844 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen – which follows the journey of a young girl who must brave the four seasons to rescue her kidnapped best friend.
“Every show is a matinee, so it’s a lovely thing to come to in the afternoon,” said Irene Poole, who is playing Cei in the kids show, and is the assistant director and Drusilla in Dracula.
“The story that [Disney’s] Frozen is based off is The Snow Queen. So, there’s some familiarity with it, but it is a fresh take on the story. We’ve got some beautiful like choreography and it’s very whimsical,” Poole said.
For a full schedule and tickets visit https://pinetreeplayers.com/events/list/. Theatre goers are asked to bring their own seating.
On Saturday (July 13), Pine Tree Players will be providing live audio description for both plays.
With most of the actors in The Snow Queen being younger, set designer and builder Anna Leslie adapted their set building to be easier for the young ones to move as the scenes flow from one to another.
“There’s a lot of quick transitions in that show from season to season,” said Leslie. “The priority of that one was pieces that could easily be moved and transferred, especially by younger people who might not be as strong, so everything has to be very durable, very light and very easily on and off.”
One of those ways was to use wooden dowels and baseplates to allow set pieces to change efficiently.
“There is a tree that slots into the dowels, there’s a town that has a brick wall slots into the dowels, smokestacks, stuff like that,” said Leslie.
Leslie, whose building sets with Pine Tree Players for the first time, was excited to reveal The Snow Queen set to the young actors as they remember admiring the set builds as a kid in the audience.
“Yesterday, the kids from the cast of The Snow Queen saw the full set for the first time and it was so exciting to see them be as excited about the set I created as I would have been as a kid in the audience watching,” said Leslie.
However, being outside without the use of heavy lighting, Leslie faced a difficult challenge in Dracula.
“There’s a lot of moments in the script where a character suddenly appears or suddenly dies, and in a traditional theatre, like an indoor theatre, that would be achieved per blackout,” said Leslie. “Without that, the challenge of an outdoor stage has been trying to design a set in which characters can vanish and disappear and you can get people off stage and onstage without the audience knowing.”
The community has been a helping hand for Leslie and the theatre group with their donations of materials and design elements.
“So many people from the community have helped. We've gone to so many different businesses and got donations,” Leslie said.
