You might remember about 25 Years ago, in the early days of the North Frontenac Little Theatre, a production called “Fontenoma” was presented at the high school to much acclaim. It was a motley collection of locally written skits and songs. Those attending that show might remember Zeke from Zealand, The Ladies’ Committee, The Gift Shoppe and more.

Now in 2017, to help celebrate Canada 150 some of these songs and skits, updated for the times, will be reprised in this fall’s production, renamed Sunshine Sketches of Our Little Towns. Aspects of life in Frontenac County; the histories of logging and the railway, cottaging, snowmobiling, local foods, duck hunting season and more are celebrated.

Central to the show is a short play The Wedding, written 26 years ago by Debbie Ibey and Carol Hillier. Set on the opening day of duck hunting season…….. well, you can probably imagine the rest!

Those attending the show at GREC on November 23rd, 24th, 25th, and 26th will recognise a number of the area’s regular actors as well as some new but very familiar faces. Tickets will be available from the Sharbot Lake Pharmacy, the Tip Top Dollar shop, from your local NFLT participants or call 279-2777.
Come sing and laugh along with us- in Frontenac.

North Frontenac Little Theatre will present a local heritage revue entitled “Sunshine Sketches of Our Little Towns” as a final tribute to Central Frontenac’s Canada 150 celebratory year.
The heritage revue is comprised of a series of tailor-made songs and sketches partly resurrected from a 1997 NFLT production, “The North Frontenac Revue”.

The addition of a centre piece one act play, “The Wedding”, written by Deb Ibey, Carol Hillier, and Norma Wood of Plevna, adds a comic touch of local colour to the ensemble.
“The Wedding” came to fruition in the early 1990s through the efforts of Claudia Radfordt who at the time spearheaded the formation of a Plevna writers and illustrators group. Group member Sharel Schonauer of Ardoch came up with the idea – a wedding unwittingly booked for the opening of duck hunting season. Once finished, the group agreed that the piece had to be performed. Locals got together and made the performance a reality, showcasing it in the Clar Mill Hall in Plevna in 1991 to the delight of their North Frontenac fellow citizens.

“The Wedding”, along with other “Sunshine Sketches”, will be presented at the GREC Cafetorium November 23 through 26. Check elsewhere in this paper for ticket information.

North Frontenac Little Theatre (NFLT) President Brian Robertston once again presided over a ceremony to honour long time contributors to the Little Theatre at the former church in Tichborne that serves as a storage area/program space for the group.
This year the honorees included actor Norman Guntensperger, who performed in over a dozen shows in the 1990’s and into the new millenium. Guntensperger, who is also a musician, played in musicals, including Guys and Dolls and Oliver, dramatic productions such as Our Town, and comedies including The Foursome and others.

“I’m glad he moved to Kingston so I could have a chance at some roles,” said Robertson when handing out the award.
There were two recipients in the Youth category. Nic Alarcon-Belanger has been in a number of productions, but he is best remembered for playing Alladin a couple of years ago, a roel he took on only three weeks before the production when the actor who had originally been cast in the role had to back out.
“It was very stressful but exciting learning all those lines nad getting ready for the play,” he said in accepting the award as presented by Robertson.
Tim White, who played The Music Man a couple of years ago and is a choreographer for the NFLT, presented a second youth award, to Gillian Hoffman. His tribute, which including an exhortation to Gillian to continue on her artistic path after performing in numerous productions in a short few years, brought tears to Hoffman’s eyes, and White’s as well.

There were also two community awards this year. One went to Dianne Lake, who ran the cafeteria at Sharbot Lake High School for many years and over saw Dinner Theatre as well as intermssion snacks for dozens of productions. In he presentation, Pam Giroux talked about the dinners that Lake prepared with the help of students, and her ability to serve them and clean up before the play started, and then serve dessert during intermission.
Finally, the Frontenac News received an honour for helping promote Little Theatre Productions over many years, going back to the founding of the NFLT in 1981. In his remarks, award presenter Craig Godfrey took a light hearted approach, talking about how as a producer he learned how to get more coverage in the paper by engaging the community columnists, and about the reviews of his own performances over the years, rave reviews that this writer does not remember seeing in the newspaper.
The next scheduled Little Theatre Production, Sunshine Sketches of our Little Towns, is set for November 23-26.

As part of our Canada 150 programme, the North Frontenac Little Theatre is hosting a theatre camp for youth culminating in a presentation to celebrate our heritage entitled “Skits and Songs for a Summer Evening”. The presentation will be in conjunction with the North Frontenac Community Services annual barbecue at the Sharbot Lake Beach, Thursday, August 17, that runs from roughly 4 pm to 7 pm.

The preparatory youth theatre camp will run from Tuesday, August 8 to Wednesday, August 16 from 1 pm to 4 pm daily (excluding the weekend) at the NFLT Tichborne Hall. Online registrationopens  June 1st through NFLT’s website. We can accommodate between ten and fifteen children, ages eight or nine up to twelve or thirteen years old.

Youth camp activities, under the direction of Brian Robertson and Andrea Dickinson, will include aspects of dramatic and visual arts along with singing and some basic choreography, all in preparation for our culminating presentation of "Skits and Songs for a Summer Evening".

We will also require several camp counsellors between the ages of 14 and 18 years old. Counsellors would help with the organization of materials, set-up and the coaching of participants with their roles. They may even be invited to join in on the acting or singing! Secondary school community service hours will be readily acknowledged.

Registration fee will be $5 per person. Participants will be asked to bring a snack and drink, and to be ready and willing to avail themselves of an outhouse when nature calls as there is no plumbing in the hall!

Looking forward to seeing you this summer to celebrate our heritage and to have some fun!

Happy Canada 150!

North Frontenac Little Theatre’s production of the Canadian playwright Norm Foster’s play, Here Along the Flight Path, went up last weekend at Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake. The play centres around John Cummings, played by Marc Veno, who is a teacher at Harrowsmith Public School.

The title of the play refers not only to the planes that fly over the apartment building in an un-named Canadian City where the play is set, but also to Cummings himself. Although he is a catalyst for changes in the lives of three women who live in the apartment next door at different times over a three year period, he does not act. We get a picture of his changing perspective on the world and his life through the interaction but he is essentially along the flight path of their lives, watching and listening as they eventually fly off to the next phase of their lives, leaving him behind.

The play also has something to say about gender and gender stereotypes. Cummings is 46 when the play starts, a cuckolded divorced man who loves his young children but may or may not be involved in their lives. He thinks about having sex all the time, but knows he wants something more in his life without really knowing what it is or how to seek it. Veno captures all this very well, but he is hindered by the character’s limitatoins. As a playwright Foster sets his characters up to reveal and maybe discover themselves, and then inevitably retreats to a joke, keeping the characters from being too “real” and this also hinders the performances of the actors playing those roles. Veno did a very good job, showing Cummings is a fundamentally decent man who respects, cares about and eventually helps each of the women living next door.

Faye Davidson (played by Ellie Steele) is the first neighbout, a ‘hooker with the heart of gold’, Angel Plunkett (played by Carol Belanger) is a ‘plucky’ aspiring musical theatre actress from the sticks come to make her mark in the big city, and Gwen (played by Barb Matson) is a 40ish woman seeking a new life on her own after her policeman husband dumped her for another woman.

Steele played Davidson as strong, unapologetic, worldly and at the same time sympathetic. The scene just before she leaves for Montreal is a classic slapstick ala the Dick Van Dyke show. She decides to have sex with Cummings before leaving town, and he refuses, leading to a kind of chase scene as they both trip over couches, all the while delivering their lines on cue.

The character of Angel Plunkett is in her early 20’s, too young for John Cummings to pursue, which she makes abundantly clear. Carol Belanger captured a lot of the naivetee of Plunkett, who clearly is never going to succeed in musical theatre, but has a second life as a country singer-songwriter back in Alberta. She appreciates her neighbour, a friendly face in a cold big city.

Barb Matson had more to work with as Gwen, who enters into an affair with Cumming, essentially using him to recover her composure and sense of self worth in order to return home to Vancouver and face her own life. Matson was very good in the role, good enough that her ultimate decision to leave Cummings with no warning takes him, and the audience, by surprise. But the structure of the play is such that Cummings is “on the flight path” not the destination.

In spite some of my issues with the play itself, the NFLT production was very solid this time around, the acting and staging and lighting were all clean, and the subject matter of the play was interesting as well.

North Frontenac Little Theatre presents their spring production, Here Along the Flight Path at Granite Ridge Education Centre this weekend (Friday and Saturday 7:30pm and Sunday matinee at 2pm.)

The Norm Foster written adult comedy also stars Carol Belanger and Barb Matson.

Tickets will be available at the door - $15 ($10 students)

Rehearsals are underway for our North Frontenac Little Theatre spring production under the direction of John Pariselli. The chosen play is is a comedy, Here On The Flight Path by Canadian playwright Norm Foster. This small cast adult comedy is hilariously funny and will keep you entertained from start to finish.

We are pleased to have back  on stage four actors that have acted previously with NFLT.  Marc Veno (previously seen in Beyond Reasonable Doubt) will play John Cummings; Carol Belanger (directed Miracle Worker) will  play Angel Plunkett, an unemployed actress and singer; Barb Matson (acted in The Miracle Worker) plays Gwen, who is recently separated from her husband; Ellie Steele plays Fay Davidson, a  “consultant” of sorts.  

There will be three performances Friday April 28,  7:30,  Saturday, April 29, 7:30 and Sunday, April 30 at 2:00. So Mark these dates on your calendar and plan to attend.  Watch this paper for further information.

NFLT said goodbye to one of their own with a lifetime recognition award last Saturday evening at a special ceremony at “The Crossing Pub” in Sharbot Lake. Veteran actor and director Doug MacIntyre has sold his house in Verona and will be moving to Vancouver Island for new adventures in life and theatre.

Upon moving to Central Frontenac in 2004, MacIntyre, originally from the Toronto area, brought with him extensive theatrical experience in countless productions with companies that include the Yorkminstrels and Etobicoke Musical Productions. He also appeared in film and television, acting in commercials, documentaries and even a Bryan Adams rock video!

Doug first appeared on the NFLT stage as Ebenezer Scrooge in the 2005 production of “A Christmas Carol”. The following year he jumped into the challenging role of the frustrated director in the zany comedy, “Noises Off”.

He went on to direct three successful shows in Sharbot Lake, including the highly acclaimed “Beyond Reasonable Doubt” where he incorporated a theatre-in-the-round stage effect for the first time in NFLT history.

In 2012, MacIntyre turned his attention to the newly refurbished Bellrock Schoolhouse, just outside of Verona, where he mounted three highly successful dinner theatre shows, including the classic “Miracle on 34th Street”. In 2014 he staged a hilarious comedic version of the fairy tale “Hansel and Gretel” at Prince Charles Public School in Verona.

Passionate about theatre and forever promoting the Arts, Doug has been a tireless advocate of community theatre. In a recent letter promoting NFLT (for which he had been serving as a member-at-large), he stated, “Needles need to sew, hammers need to pound, brushes need to hold paint - voices need to speak and sing. Call now or at least go out for an audition when you see it advertised in the newspaper. See you soon!”

(L to R) Emma Douglas , Jennifer Argyle, and Kora Kamps Sissons play the lead character Tesah Carter at three stages of her life in the original musical Turtle Crossings by Craig Godfrey, which will be   by North Frontenac Little Theatre from Thursday to Sunday at Granite Ridge Education Centre in Sharbot Lake. The three of them were photographed while waiting back stage at the dress rehearsal on Tuesday night as a 4th Tesah, Elly Larocque, was on stage. For details about performance times and where to purchase tickets, visit www.NFLT.ca

Craig Godfrey never thought he was going to write a musical, but a series of events conspired to make Turtle Crossings his first effort as a playwright and songwriter.

“The Little Theatre used the cafeteria of Sharbot Lake High School for all of their productions, and when it closed and the new school was coming in, I approached the executive with the idea of writing a local musical as a collective for the first production in the theatre at Granite Ridge. My first idea was to do a play about a High School band that reunites for the opening of a new school, just as the music teacher is about to retire,” he said, when interviewed this week as the first ever production of Turtle Crossings is just a week away. Opening night is Thursday, November 24.

It turned out that the Little Theatre Executive was headed in another direction, and put on Music Man as the first musical in the new space. In the meantime Godfrey looked at the notes he had prepared for Turtle Crossings and realised he only had a shell to work from.

“I decided that what I should do is write a short story in order to flesh out the characters and add some depth.”

The story that he wrote was about a girl who spent her summers at a cottage in the 1970s, right through her teenage years. There is a major rift between her and the local community as well as her parents and she leaves, only to return 20 years later. In the musical adaptation of the short story, all of this is revealed through a series of flashbacks. The play opens in 1993, at an open mic night in a bar in a big city, just after the protagonist, Tessa Carter, a music teacher, has performed on stage. She tells her friends about a letter she has just received from her estranged father, offering to give her the family cottage. That, and the fact that the job of music teacher at the high school near the cottage is coming up, provides the plot mechanism around which the rest of the play unfolds.

Godfrey ended up writing songs for the play as well, and has been working with director Brian Robertson on changes to the music and script as the production has been developing. Although the play is Godfrey's creation, he has taken a back seat to Robertson during the production. As actors and musicians have come on board to work on the play, he feels the spirit of collaboration, that he originally wanted to see in the writing, has taken hold in rehearsals.

“Turtle Crossings”,will be an exciting and widely anticipated presentation for the entire community.