Since the earliest times, man has felt a need to entertain his fellows. It no doubt started around a campfire with one of our earliest ancestors telling of his exploits on the hunting field.
In our time, dinner theatres put on by local amateur theatre groups are becoming a fixture of winter in many towns across the prairies. They are great fun and a way to shorten our long prairie winters for both actors and audience.
While they may be fun, however, a tremendous amount of behind-the-scenes work is involved.
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That work is not just by the cast and crew but as well by a host of dedicated volunteers. Dress rehearsal is held the night before opening night; the cast, doubling as stage crew, sets the scene. By 2p.m. on opening day, the tables have been decorated. By 2:30 the caterers have begun setting the tables.
Down the street, the first cast members have arrived to have their hair styled, something that will be repeated daily for the entire run of the play. Makeup experts are setting out their mirrors and brushes and pots of color.
Makeup starts at 4:30, the maids first as they will be showing the audience to their seats.
Throughout a production, the cast becomes a unit in itself, almost a family, for surely it is only in a family setting that one would go around in casual sweats, hair in pins and rollers.
At 7, everyone is seated, dinner is announced and the maids retire to a downstairs room where dinner has been provided for the cast and crew.
As the audience wines and dines, the cast runs through Act 1, visits, makes final costume adjustments, has make-up retouched.
Finally, it is 8:30 and curtain time.
Things are not always what they seem in the theatre.
The living room walls are of paper, the scenes in the windows painted on.
The flowing panels on the doors are made from green garbage bags, while paper doilies do double duty as the maids’ fancy lace hats.
But none of this matters.
“The play’s the thing,” as Shakespeare said, and for as long as the play lasts, the scenes in the windows are real, the decorated paper is transformed into real walls, the doilies are real lace.
For a time, we are transported out of our own lives. The wind may howl and rage outside, but inside we are all having a great adventure together.
