Iqaluit (May 03/04) - Audiences in Iqaluit were treated to Everybody's Got to be Someplace, a performance of seven short plays last Thursday and Friday at the Francophone Centre.

"The point of it is to introduce a type of theatre that hasn't existed here before," said Erin Brubacher, one of the directors.

Half of the cast members had never acted on stage before. Brubacher and Odile Nelson worked with the casts to get them comfortable performing. For convenience of scheduling, the casts of each play rehearsed separately.

"We recognized that people in this community are overextended," said Brubacher.

It also meant the cast got a pleasant surprise when complete rehearsals began. Up until the week before opening night, the cast members of the different plays hadn't seen each other perform.

"It's a good process for this kind of production," said Brubacher.

The cast of one play acted as crew for another, so ultimately everyone ended up working together.

The play was made up of six scenes, one of which was performed twice, so a total of seven skits were performed. Some were dramatic, others were comical. The scripts were adapted to reflect Iqaluit.

"There's one scene originally called The Philadelphia," said Brubacher. "We changed it to The West 40."

The West 40 was a surreal comedy where a man has a very strange day.

"He goes to the KFC and they don't have chicken," she said. "A cab driver refuses to take him to the West 40 but offers to take him to the Apex."

On a more serious note, one of the monologues addressed the issue of bullying among teenage girls in schools.

Demand for tickets for last week's performances were so high, Brubacher was considering adding a third performance, if the cast members' schedules could accommodate it.