50 years of memories


Art
	50 years of memories Terrace
		by Marianne Weston In 1953, a group of like-minded people in Terrace got together and decided it was high time to put on a play for the community. In 2003, a much larger but just as like-minded group will celebrate 50 years of community theatre. In between, the group has staged more than 130 plays. Today, Terrace Little Theatre has a home in an old building on Kalum Street. It was not always so. For many years, TLT members rehearsed and performed in many different and sometimes unusual locations. Here are some of the anecdotes and memories gathered from members near and afar. Merry Hallsor is a member of the founding family of TerraceLittle Theatre, the McColls. The present building is named after them. Merry’s earliest memories are of:

"My mother (Lorreen) directing and my father (Bud) playing a major role and never knowing his lines. Our household was in a terrible upheaval every time a play was on. We would come home from school and we wouldn’t have living room curtains or a couch - one time my sister Sheila didn’t have a bed for two weeks! Usually my brothers would have parts as well -small, but whenever an extra male was needed. My sister Gail would paint the sets. My sister Bonnie did everything and anything backstage. Sheila and I would sit in the front row and prompt my dad, as we always knew all his lines and cues. "I always think that rehearsing in the local beer parlor at the Terrace Hotel, after closing time and all day Sunday, was one of the best stories. Then there’s a picture of my mother and two friends off to Nanaimo in their hats and gloves. It was a major event; they went by boat. Travel took days and was very complicated. They couldn’t take a whole set so they had to rely on other theatre people in the Nanaimo area to gather some bits and pieces for them." Sharon Lynch remembers: "We performed in the old community centre, a Quonset hut, where George Little Park is today on Park Avenue. Our backstage was down under the stage where weightlifting happened. Our bathroom was a chamber pot in the furnace room. Whoever showed up first on Sunday for the strike had the delightful job of emptying it. Needless to say we were all very late for the strike." Ken Morton joined TLT in 1969. He recounts, "Before we had a place of our own we used to meet wherever we could find space. Then we used the old Anglican Church. That Church building was moved up to the Nass. It was a wooden structure and was heated by an ancient oil heater, which had to be turned on hours before required. I remember one meeting when whoever was responsible didn’t turn it on. It was deep winter and freezing cold. So we held our meeting dressed as though we were going to the Arctic. By the end of the meeting, our breath was freezing — was that hot cup of coffee welcome! More recently, there was the day that the toilets blocked and overflowed onto the auditorium floor. Fortunately the play we were performing (Hooters) was set on a beach. Sue Mehs valiantly stemmed the flow with her feet." Joe Zucchiatti, Jr. started in his teens and became a popular TLT musical actor: "Since I seem to thrive on craziness and adventure, one of my cherished memories of the old days was during The Wiz, when it was decided that the lead singers would have wireless microphones attached to them in the manner of the big musicals down south. I can’t remember if they had to sing over a big pit band or if the music was canned or provided by a piano. Like the government official from a tiny native village who, upon seeing his first refrigerator, promptly placed his shoes inside it, we hayseeds from TLT did not really know what to make of this technology. During Glinda The Good Witch’s first solo number, there were squalls of feedback that sounded like the slaughter of innocents - like Godzilla slaughtering Munchkins en masse while somebody was singing kareoke. Beautiful." Sarah Weston remembers in Brighton Beach Memoirs that: "We all had to sit around a table on stage and eat liver. Well, none of us liked liver. So it was agreed that the stage manager would bake brownies in the shape of liver pieces instead." Sarah also had the unusual task of babysitting a live lamb in Curse of the Starving Class. The lamb was raised with goats and adept at leaping over fences. "My mom played this 14-year-old boy and on the second night of the show, the lamb suddenly jumped out of its on-stage pen and puttered up into the audience. Mom chased it up and down the rows of howling patrons. Yeah, the director had a bigger pen built the next day." When the lamb wasn’t on stage, Sarah would sit in a cubbyhole under the stairs and give it bottles and rabbit treats. "He got so fat he won an award at the Fall Fair for being the biggest 4H lamb!" Brian Koven says: "My anecdote falls under the ‘all producers / directors are a little crazy syndrome’. I’m playing a smooth Hollywood producer / director putting the move on a pretty young doll from Brooklyn. Well, it being one of my early, inexperienced roles, I had not glued on my fake mustache properly. It started to dangle and I was trying to nonchalantly carry on whilst pressing the mustache to make it stick. Of course, nervousness and sweat equaled failure. Luckily, the play allowed me to exit briefly and I scrambled to peel off the mustache and hurriedly applied another temporary, greasepaint mustache. Upon my re-entrance I continued my passionate endeavors and succeeded in planting a full kiss on my scene partner Cathy. My sexy partner now sported a strong, very obvious black mustache of her own! "She was partly facing away from the audience, however, when I noticed her bright cherry red lips and black caterpillar appendage, I lost it. I decimated the cardinal rule of concentration and broke out laughing. Cathy thought I was nuts and I assume so did the audience. I improvised and tried my best to ‘blend’ my outburst into the character’s motivation. Aren’t all producer / directors a little deranged? Off-stage I apologized profusely while Cathy passionately removed the abhorrent smudge." As TLT enters it 50th anniversary season, its members fondly call it ‘the little theatre that could’. From 20-minute skits and big musicals to drama, original scripts, farces and old favorites like Harvey, The Glass Menagerie and even winning Mainstage in 1976 with A Streetcar Named Desire, TLT soldiers on. The community eagerly awaits the breaking of ground for a new building. Yet members will tell you that they love the old ghosts that live in the McColl Playhouse, home of TLT for more than 25 years. Terrace Little Theatre has a full line-up of plays and entertainment for its 50th year. Here’s the run-down. Desdemona, a play about a handkerchief, Sept. 13-14, 20-21, 27-28 and Oct. 3, 4 and 5, 2002. Yuk Yuks, Evenings of comedy Oct. 18 and 19. Ravenscroft, Nov. 7, 8, 9, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22 and 23. Christmas Show, Dec. 6 and 7. Christmas party with Yuk Yuks, Dec. 13 and 14. Yuk Yuks, Evening of comedy Jan. 24 and 25, 2003. The Affectations of May, Dinner Theatre Feb. 7, 8, 14, 15, 20, 21 and 22, 2003 at the Golf Course. A farce by Kico Gonsalez-Rizzo, Mar. 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 29 and Apr. 3, 4 and 5. Speaking In Tongues, festival entry Apr. 24, 25, 26 and May 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10. (Marianne Weston is a long-time member of TLT in Terrace.)
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