Lampman School’s drama club is heading back to the Saskatchewan Drama Festival.
The school took top spot at the Region 1 Drama Festival at Oxbow Prairie Horizons School on March 31 to advance to provincials. Oxbow Prairie Horizons, Arcola, Moosomin and Rocanville schools also entered a play at the festival, while Gordon F. Kells High School in Carlyle had two productions.
Lampman will be one of 12 schools competing at the provincial festival, which runs from May 4 to 6 at the University of Regina.
The Lampman students performed Circus Fire, which was penned by Janet Munsil, who is a long-time friend of Lampman School drama teacher Christine Branyik-Thornton.
“We had a pretty strong collective piece, with lots of good acting and lots of good technical stuff, and it was a very strong physical movement show,” said Branyik-Thornton.
A total of 16 students were involved with the show. Four of them were core actors, five were supporting performers and seven served as crew members.
“It was a monolithic undertaking,” said Branyik-Thornton. “The movement alone for the piece was months and months of rehearsals.”
The script was selected in November and the first rehearsals occurred in January. Branyik-Thornton estimates she dedicated at least 200 hours to the show, and the students spent even more time.
Lampman School also won numerous awards at the regional festival. Cassidy Ross won the Marry Ellen Burgess Outstanding Acting Award for the second time. Adrianna Raynard was named the unsung hero, Donavon Andrews won the tech medallion award, Landon Vinck and Jacob Krautz won technical certificates, and Anna Raynard was recognized for her script research.
They also won for the best visual production.
Carter Branyik-Thornton was a runner up for the Burgess Award, Brandon Miller was a runner-up for the Bob Hinnett Technical Excellence Award for his work on sound, and Hayley Dechaine was a runner-up for best stage manager.
Lampman School was also a runner-up for best technical production.
Branyik-Thornton said there were some great productions at regionals this year, including a student-written production from Moosomin called Nameless about a young man acting as a designated driver, who is killed in an accident.
Branyik-Thornton noted that all the plays presented at drama festivals across the province this year had to be either written by Canadians or set in Canada, in honour of Canada’s 150th anniversary.
Circus Fire was written in 2003 by Munsil, who Branyik-Thornton described as an excellent Canadian playwright.
“I’ve had the play in my desk for a long time, but this has been the first year that we thought ‘Maybe we could do this play,’” said Branyik-Thornton.
The show is based on a true event – a fatal fire at a 1944 Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey big top circus. A total of 167 people died, the majority of them children, including a girl who was nicknamed “Little Miss 1565” at the morgue because nobody said she was their child. She is a key character in the play.
Branyik-Thornton noted there was a mystery associated with the fire.
“At that time with circuses, it was a common practice to waterproof with paraffin and kerosene, so they think that someone just threw a cigarette, although there have been some rumblings about it being arson, but at any rate, as you can imagine, the tent went up quite quickly,” said Branyik-Thornton.
The four main performers in Circus Fire portray the majority of the characters, including the aerialists, animals, tent riggers and audience members.
There is the spectacle of the circus in the show, a comedic element to the play because of the presence of the clowns.
“There’s quite a hilarious clown turn … with a fire brigade, which, of course, is foreshadowing for the end event of the show,” said Branyik-Thornton.
The show also ends on an upbeat and entertaining note despite the tragedy of the fire.
Branyik-Thornton noted she wrote shows with Munsil 25 years ago at the University of Victoria, and it was great to do something penned by Munsil.
“There was a sense of responsibility to the show, not only for the characters it was portraying, but also to Janet’s work,” said Branyik-Thornton.
The drama club performed Circus Fire before a sold-out crowd at the school on March 28. Branyik-Thornton said they’ll have an encore showing at the end of April before they go to provincials.
