Arts and Culture

College theatre troupe ready to go live after two years

Red Dot Players eager to welcome back in-person guests

  • What is the show about?
  • Why it's important to get live shows back

The last time the Okanagan College’s Red Dot Players took to the stage was back in 2020 with their show, Vanity Fair, the week before the pandemic shut everything down.

Fast forward two years, and the company is eagerly anticipating their return to an in-person audience with their upcoming show, Wonder of the Age, a comedy.

The play was written by Okanagan College English Professor Jeremy Beaulne, which follows the story of Mary Toft, an English peasant who cooked up one of the most notable medical hoaxes that scandalized 18th-century England.

Beaulne said the company focuses on plays based on historical areas and had the challenge of not only building the costumes and wigs from the era, but also the dialogue in that time.

“With this show, we used heightened language. So, the characters don’t speak the way we speak today so that was an adjustment for the actors, but they rose to it readily,” he said.

Beaulne described the show as a comedy which focuses on the themes of power and gender, looking at how those gender roles were defined in the 1700’s.

“In the 18th century the profession of being a midwife becoming taken over by men and we have the rise of the male midwife,” he said. “Part of this play is a bunch of guys all debating what’s happening with this woman’s body. And I think that’s what’s resonated with me that theme of the play.”

During rehearsals, Emily Hardy, who plays Mary Toft, the woman at the center of the play, told Kelowna10 this role packs an emotional journey.

“For me this role even though I have less time on stage, feels much bigger because of the emotional impact that Mary’s character has,” she said. “Everyone is laughing and making jokes and I come in [as Mary] and give a big serious emotional bomb to the audience.”

Hardy whose been part of the last four shows, said while she’s used to the experience over Zoom, it just doesn’t beat performing live.

“It’s not the same as being in-person, being able to feed off the live audience and give back to them that way,” she said. “It’s kind of more two dimensional rather than three dimensional, literally.”

Kendra Holly Grant, who plays Nell Pocket, said having a crowd reacting throughout the show adds value for all the actors.

“You get to hear the laughter as everyone listens to jokes. It makes the acting a lot more real instead of looking at a camera,” she said. “You live the last couple years behind a screen to get back and actually see people in front of you is going to be a big difference.”

The shows runs from March 10 till March 13.

Tickets are available at the Red Dot Players website and at the door.

Published 2022-03-09 by Connor Chan

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