CITS’ new season reflects economic times

Recognizing the economic realities, the Centre In The Square has pared back its offerings in the 2009-2010 season, details of which were announced this week.

Having expanded into double-digits, this coming year’s series have been reduced to seven, billed as The Magnificent 7 …Read more

There’s no stopping the music

A few years back, Lynn Russwurm’s bandmates decided it was time to put down their instruments and retire, but Russwurm wasn’t ready to sit in the audience just yet.

“They knew when to quit; I didn’t,” he chuckled.

Russwurm got word that a bluegrass band called Crossover Junction was looking for a bass player and joined the group. Now, at 78, he’s producing the band’s self-titled debut album.

Russwurm grew up listening to his father’s collection of old 78s and started playing guitar when his was in his teens. At 19, he moved from the family farm near Hanover to Kitchener, where he got a job at B.F. Goodrich. He formed his first band, the Pine River Troubadors, and played the local bar circuit. At 21, he had his own program on a Kitchener radio station.

In the 60 years Russwurm has been making music, he’s seen a lot of changes in the business. Back in the 1950s and ’60s, he used to correspond directly with artists; that was how his songs ended up on the albums of country stars like the Mercey Brothers, the Lewis Family, Carl Smith and Hank Thompson.

“You can’t get to artists personally any more like you could back then,” he said. “You could knock on doors and go somewhere.”

These days you need connections, the kind of connections Russwurm has built up over the years. When the band decided they wanted to cut an album, Russwurm knew the people to get it done.
…Read more

A short step from bows to bowls

As a professional violin bowmaker, Trevor Ewert is used to working with exotic woods like pernambuco from Brazil and snakewood from Guyana. These days, he’s cultivating a taste for common species like the Manitoba maple.

Ewert is building a business making wooden bowls turned on a lathe. While there are tropical hardwoods that make beautiful bowls, he decided to focus on using local species, which he says can be just as eye-catching.

“When I got into the bowl making, I realized … what we have growing in a 50-mile radius of here is equally beautiful and sometimes even more exceptionally figured than the most exotic, sought-after woods of the world.”

Ewert got into making violin bows 15 years ago, with no inkling of it turning into a career. After finishing a degree in violin performance at the University of Western Ontario, he spent a year studying historical violin at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Toronto. There, he learned about historical instruments and equipment and was inspired to try making his own baroque bow.

His first attempts were clumsy, but soon he was …Read more

It’s time again to get medieval

In another week, Gibson Park in Elmira will be a scene of merriment, some mayhem and plenty of the medieval.

The ninth annual Robin in the Hood festival will see the park transformed into Nottingham and Sherwood Forest, with knights in armour, maidens and jesters.

The brainchild of DJ Carroll, the festival is a family-friendly event offering a glimpse of life in the Middle Ages. There will be games, stage shows, musicians, jugglers, tournaments with knights, birds of prey, siege machines, archery and merchants offering period wares.

Now director of promotions and advertising, Sarah Heppler has been involved with the festival since the very beginning. She was recruited by Carroll because she was a community actor with experience doing interactive theatre. …Read more

Local musicians set to rock all day

Five dollars will get you 12 hours of rock n’ roll at the Central Tavern in Elmira May 9.

Organized by the people behind the regular open jam nights at the tavern, the weekend event is a fundraiser for Woolwich Community Services (WCS) and will feature the music of eight local bands.

“We picked [WCS] because we wanted to give back to the community and we wanted to make sure it stayed in town because it’s been so supportive since we started this,” explained Christina Robinson, member of the headlining act Soul2Soul, and the organizer behind the weekly sessions.

Soul2Soul, a three-piece ensemble playing rock covers, will be joined by seven other bands: Highway, Champagne Social Club, Zed, Wishful Thinking, Cofield, Roehr Trio, and Blunt Truth.

Highway’s saxophonist Vladimir Ragula said there’s bound to be some good tunes next Saturday.

“There’s going to be quite a variety of music,” Ragula explained, noting that there will be musicians young and old performing throughout the day. Each band will …Read more

Students rhyme and have a good time

“After all those years of being stuck on a page, did you ever think you’d see me on stage?”

There will be no question in the minds of the audience, as the Cat in the Hat struts in front of them in living colour and three dimensions.

St. Jacobs Public School is bringing to life the Cat and a troupe of other Dr. Seuss characters in their spring performance of Seussical Jr. The musical is a mash-up of the plots of several popular stories combined with Broadway-style show tunes and dance routines.

“It’s kind of like you took all the stories, put them in a pot and stirred them together,” explained music teacher Lisa Shuh.

The play is a one-act version of a Broadway show that debuted in 2000 and spawned two national tours. The original version incorporates 18 Seuss books, including Horton Hears a Who!, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Oh the Thinks You Can Think! and The Cat in the Hat.

Shuh said fans of Seuss will see a bunch of their favourite characters, including Horton the Elephant, Gertrude McFuzz, Mayzie La Bird, Jojo, the Grinch and of course the Cat in the Hat.

The plot is loosely centred around Horton, who discovers the people of Whoville living in a speck of dust and attempts to protect them.

It’s been several years since St. Jacobs PS put on a play, simply because of the work involved. This year, the teachers felt …Read more

ETC ready to set the stage on fire

For the next couple of weeks, there’ll be no place safer than the Elmira Theatre. That’s because you can expect to find a sizable contingent of township firefighters taking in The Fire Inside, which runs Apr. 23 to May 9.

The play, written by Baden’s Teresa Brown, is a two-act drama about volunteer firefighting in a small town.

The plot follows the rookie John McConnell (Joe Brenner) over the course of one year as a volunteer firefighter. He joins not knowing what he’s getting into, and indeed soon discovers that the job is not entirely what he expected. Increasingly, John is torn between excitement and boredom, triumphs and frustrations, camaraderie and horror, and he begins debating whether he’s “got it in him” to do the job.

For the Elmira Theatre Company’s Deb Deckert, whose son is a third generation firefighter in Linwood, the script had an immediate resonance. When reading it, she laughed at times in recognition of how true-to-life the scenarios are, situations that will be recognized by firefighters and their families.

The reality reflects the fact the playwright’s husband is a longtime volunteer with the fire department in Baden.

Taken with the story, Deckert was a little hesitant about the technical requirements of staging the play, but eventually overcame those concerns. Audiences will experience the drama of the rescue calls through radio dialogue as images flash on the back wall.

It’s the first time ETC will be using this kind of projection, she said, adding the productions she directs are known for taxing the technical and acting range of the company.

“I always want all the bells and whistles,” she chuckled. …Read more

At Breslau PS, they’re off to see the Wizard

Breslau P.S. wants to take you over the rainbow and down the yellow brick road. The school is staging the Wizard of Oz for their spring musical and with less than two weeks til showtime, rehearsals are ramping up.

Auditions were held before Christmas break, and the cast has been rehearsing almost every day since the new year began.

Music teacher and director Kennah McMillan always wanted to do Wizard of Oz and the play allowed them to have a really large cast. The entire school is involved in the performance; there are 70 students in the cast, the junior and intermediate students are making sets and props, and the primary grades are making bricks for the yellow brick road.

With such a large cast, rehearsals can get a bit chaotic, but McMillan said the students are quick learners.

It’s a full musical, with songs and dances, solos and group numbers. This is only the second musical Breslau has staged; two years ago they put on a performance of Annie Junior. The school does a musical every other year because of the amount of work involved.

This year, “it all just seemed to fall into place,” McMillan said.

There were a few tense moments trying to find costumes, but they appealed to other schools and creative teachers and parents helped create what they couldn’t scrounge.

Justin Atkins, the Grade 7 …Read more

Medieval romp planned for EMSF

A student falls asleep over her history homework to find herself transported back to medieval times, where she goes on a knight’s quest, learns about ladies and princesses and meets a magician.

“All in 30 minutes – it’s like a soap opera,” quipped DJ Carroll, director of the children’s play that will be presented at this year’s Elmira Maple Syrup Festival. Maxine’s Medieval Misadventures is a magical romp combining comedy, magic tricks and improvisation.

Where a show is usually rehearsed for months, this one has come together in a few weeks. When the syrup festival committee approached him to do the children’s play, Carroll called up a handful actors who are veterans of the Robin in the Hood Medieval Festival. Many of the routines are things they’ve done before, so it’s a matter of stringing them together and fitting the pieces in. And there were more than enough costumes from the festival around to outfit the cast.

Carroll said he knew he could count on the actors to rise to the challenge.

“We could get together Friday night and put it on Saturday,” he said. “They’re all really good at improv. And because of Robin Hood, they’re all really good at interacting with kids.”

Julie Ingriselli, who plays the title role of Maxine, said the interaction with the children in the audience is what she likes about the production.

“It gives us more chance to use our improv skills because they’ll throw anything …Read more

A comedic ode to the theatre

Light, happy entertainment may be just the tonic needed in these recessionary days. The Drowsy Chaperone, billed as a musical inside a comedy, is the right recipe, taking us back to a simpler time, one before even the era of the “D” word.

The critically acclaimed musical – it received more Tony Awards …Read more

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