Dear Santa coming to stage
Arviat Drama Club tackles ambitious holiday production
Darrell Greer
Northern News Services
Wednesday, November 4, 2015
ARVIAT
The Arviat Drama Club is tackling one of its most ambitious productions to date this holiday season.
Skiffle the Elf (Elsie Gibbons), left, and Piffle the Elf (Annie Koomak) pay close attention as they receive direction from Gord Billard during Arviat Drama Club rehearsals for Dear Santa this past week in Arviat. - photo courtesy of Arviat Drama Club |
The club will be performing Norm Foster's Dear Santa, a play that clocks in at almost two hours.
Foster has been the most produced playwright in Canada for the past 20 years, with his plays averaging about 150 productions annually.
That makes him the most produced playwright in the history of Canada by a wide margin.
Dear Santa revolves around a hardened teenaged girl named Kit Bishop and her attempt to deliver a letter to Santa from her little brother.
Kit stows away on a train, the North Pole Special, to deliver the letter.
She quickly finds herself stranded in the North Pole, and her plan to steal Santa's sled and reindeer to return home are quashed when Santa contemplates the purchase of a new rocket sleigh being pitched by Detroit sleigh salesman Lou Flapdoddle.
At the end of the play, Santa gets to deal with Kit and the heart-warming secret to the letter Kit carries is revealed.
Play director Gord Billard describes Kit as a somewhat saucy and brazen girl, who tends to be very sarcastic and doesn't have much time for all that goes on at the North Pole during this special time of year.
He said the play's subplot revolves around Santa's chief-of-staff, Algernon Gladstone, and his being totally oblivious to the crush Santa's housekeeper has on him.
"That's the basic storyline, and there's a lot happening throughout the play," said Billard.
"Although we will be telling the whole story, I am looking to see if there may be a place or two I may be able to cut it back a little bit.
"We'll have the first act, which runs for about 60 to 70 minutes, then a brief intermission followed by the second act, which I'd like to cut down to about 30 minutes."
Billard said he had hoped to do the play a number of years earlier but the cast he had at the time was too inexperienced to pull it off.
He said he has a bit of an ace up his sleeve in trying to pull Dear Santa together for this December's production.
"There's really only six main characters and I have a strong core of six main actors to take the roles.
"I also have a few more strong performers in this year's club, so we may double up a couple of the characters.
"Innosar Issakiark is in town for awhile before returning to school in January, and both Ramon Kaviok and Andy Evaluajuk are back reading for this play as well.
"They bring major experience to this, and the three of them are going to know these parts without any problems, in my mind."
Billard said the Arviat troupe began working on the play during the third week of September.
He said most of the rehearsals have had a good turnout, with a few new faces coming out to take part in the backstage work.
"With me being away tending to a family matter, I'm a little concerned right now that we haven't rehearsed any for the past two weeks.
"So I have to get them back on track now, but we're still at the reading-the-script stage.
"We're basically just getting to know all the lines and speeches that are in there."
Billard said most of the play takes place in Santa's office or workshop, so there's not really a lot of special effects required.
He said he plans to use the huge backdrop that was used in the club's production of Slapshot Santa Scores Again about seven years ago.
"Our art teacher at that time was Crystal Burgess, and she and her class painted a huge piece of canvass that must be 30 feet by 10 feet.
"It's a beautiful rendering of a cross-section, looking inside of Santa's workshop with the outside shown with the moon in the sky and a few Northern Lights to give it that Northern theme.
"It's a beautiful, colourful piece of work."
Billard said before he had to leave, his optimism meter for having a standout play was hovering around seven.
He said the experienced actors were all ready looking up from the script and getting used to looking at each other, and that gave him a huge boost of confidence.
"Once we're back into it, my hope is my meter will continue to rise steadily until our production date.
"There's no way to change and do another play at this point, so, if this doesn't work, we'll get up and sing songs or something," said Billard with a laugh.
"These kids have never let me down and when push comes to shove, they'll come through on this.
"The next four weeks will be spent solidifying lines and blocking out the stage, and then the final two weeks we'll be off-script and working on the physicality of the play rather than the lines."
