OUT OF THE BLUE THEATRE

Out of the Blue Theatre Company November 2024 News!

Drama Club:

Historically, drama clubs were designed to explore theatre beyond the experience of attending performances. Their origins are difficult to identify, but, essentially, it is safe to say, that for as long as there have been theatres producing plays, there have been groups of individuals coming together to explore themes, methods, and influence of Drama in the world. The Evan Hardy Drama Club invites interested students to participate in the attendance and discussion of theatre in Saskatchewan. This will include attending live theatre performances in Saskatoon. After each performance, Drama Club will move to a local coffee shop near the theatre to meet for an hour to discuss the performance. Discussions will centre on the acting, set design, lighting and sound, and costume. It will also prompt students to discuss the play’s themes, context, and execution. Drama club is not about identifying which plays are good or bad, but about understanding what makes theatre in a deeper, more meaningful analysis of the experience.

This club is led by Mr. Person with assistance from students. Drama club is completely coordinated through Remind – Mr. Person sends out information about when the plays are happening, how much they cost, and any additional information. Students are to respond if they would like to attend by a specified date for each performance. We meet at the venue, watch the show, then we find a place after to discuss what we just watched! Students learn to lead these discussions and everyone is encouraged to share their thoughts.

We have already attended one play this season! It was titled The Anger of Ernest and Ernestine produced by Two Bees Productions as part of the Live Five Season at the Refinery. We had a great time laughing through the entire performance and even got the privilege of speaking with one of the artists after the show!

Last year we had lots of artists thank us for supporting their shows with large group bookings as we usually end up with around 15-20 tickets per show. This means we accomplished our goal of supporting local theatre productions!

Musical:

Out of the Blue’s production of Disney’s Newsies is all coming together and the students and staff involved are working very hard to make this show one you will not want to miss! We are exploring what it means to Seize the Day, to have Something to Believe In, and that there is strength in numbers!

Every year with the musical it is astounding how many people come together to put on this colossal art instalment. We have around 90 students involved with both performance, set, backstage crew, and technicians. The grandness of this production is outstanding, both with how many people are involved, and how many production elements are required. We have had lots of support and contribution to help make this show happen.

Tickets went on sale November 20th, they are in-person sales only. We sell them at noon hour every day! Anyone is welcome to come to the school to purchase advanced tickets. We recommend this as our seats are limited for each performance. If there are any remaining tickets for performances, we will be able to sell them at the door. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $12 for students/seniors, and free for 3 and under.

We were lucky to preview a small part of our show at the November Pep Rally! We had a lot of fun putting that presentation together.

The show runs from December 13th – 15th at 7pm each night and closes on December 16th at 6pm. We have also opened our doors to some of the neighbouring schools for student matinees on December 11th and 12th. We always look forward to showing our musicals to the elementary students.

We hope to see you there! Please consider bringing cash to the performance to bid on our Encore fundraiser we will be running to help recover the cost of the musical this year!

Drama Travel Club:

We have already had our first fundraiser for this trip: The Halloween Karaoke Night! Thanks to the approximately 60 attendees for supporting our fundraiser and having fun singing with us. Also special thanks to the parents who contributed in a large way to the event.

We will be accepting applications in the coming weeks! Stay tuned for more information.

The travel dates this year are April 11-14, 2024, and after much deliberation with the travel committee we have decided to stick with traveling to Vancouver this year! We enjoyed it so much and wanted to explore it some more.

An abridged version of last year's itinerary can be found on the Drama Trip page here. This will give you an idea of what this year's itinerary will look like.

Student Directed One Acts:

We will be partnering up with Walter Murray Collegiate again this year to put together a festival of student directed One Act Plays the week of April 22 - 27th, 2024!

We will have 3 generalized workshops with the adjudicators. More information on schedule and location of plays will be on the One Acts Page here in the coming months. (This information becomes more thorough by semester 2)

It's been great getting to develop friendships with other drama students in other schools! It's nice to see such a strong community! We have also had the opportunity to showcase multiple original works!

Drama Class:

The Drama 10 class in Semester 1 has been developing their acting skills with our wonderful teacher candidates: Hunter and Mr. Mykytyzyn! We have been able to explore traditional storytelling, improvisation, and some prop design!

The Drama 20/30 class in Semester 1 has had a deep dive into improvisation and then performed original monologues and scene work on design elements such as costumes and lighting. We have been lucky to work with Kyle Kuchirka who came in and encouraged us to think about lighting in ways that are equitable for all actors, as well as creative and practical.

Stay tuned on our social media page @outofthebluetheatreco for more information about the classes and when we are going to produce our original shows!

The theatre is to the brim with projects, creativity, and original content. We cannot wait to show you all of the fun things we do here, and how much it impacts the lives of the students who participate. If you have any questions about any of the above programming, please do not hesitate to contact me via email.

Dillon Person
Teacher Leader of Out of the Blue Theatre Company

persond@spsd.sk.ca