Thorold Community Theatre has kept its stage dark for two full years. Now, with pandemic restrictions easing, the theatre troupe is finally getting ready to raise the curtain on a new play.
“There’s a lot of people that haven’t had the opportunity to go out and share a good laugh with strangers,” says the play’s director, Jack Miroslav Beneš, in an interview with ThoroldToday. “We’re hoping to deliver that to patrons so everyone has a good time.”
The upcoming play is a romantic comedy, written by Norm Foster, called Self Help.
“It’s about two down-on-their-luck actors that decide to create a self-help empire,” Beneš says. “They sort of grow apart as far as their love goes. The husband returns home one day and finds his wife about to have sex with the gardener. Unfortunately, [the gardener] has a heart attack and dies. Then it sort of spirals downhill from there, but in the process they rediscover their love.”
Beneš has a long history as a lighting director with the theatre company, but Self Help will mark the first time he sits in the director's chair.
“There is that anticipation,” he says. “It’s one of those things where it’s a love-hate relationship with yourself. You love it, you hate it, at times you want to pull your hair out, and at times you want to jump for joy.”
It’s that joy that keeps Beneš coming back for more.
“When people go to see the theatre it takes them out of their world and drops them into this imaginary world where they are entertained,” says Beneš. “My job is to make them laugh and feel good. It is an exciting thing. The downside is that it’s a lot of work from a director’s perspective. It becomes your life for almost half a year and beyond.”
In fact, the play has consumed Beneš’s life much longer than that. Preparations for Self Help started long before the pandemic.
“At this point I’m almost relieved,” he explains. “We were just a few weeks away from actually putting it on two years ago but we got shut down because of COVID. We had a couple of cast changes, our leading man and lady both had to be replaced. Now it’s getting it all back together. It’s a good crew, we got some really experienced actors. Everybody is just sitting there saying, ‘Yee-ha, let’s get this thing going.’ ”
The theatre group is aiming to have a spotlight on the play by the end of April, but they still have their work cut out for them.
“Right now we’ve just finished the blocking, so the actors know where they have to be on the stage,” Beneš says. “At that point in time, it’s now my job to sit there and smooth out all the rough edges so that it looks the way I have envisioned the play in my own little head.”
Keep an eye on Thorold Community Theatre’s Facebook page for any updates regarding dates and ticket sales.
