Acting up

The Award winning Northern Lights Theatre Company is taking on challenging new roles in their third season running.

The Labrador West company pushing for even more success with their performance of Whose Line Is It Anyway? on Feb. 12 and are set to perform Margaret Edison's Pulitzer Prize winning drama, Wit on March 11-13 at the Labrador West Arts and Culture Centre.

In their first performance they will play games of Improv where the audience gets to choose random topics for them to enact.

"This was quite a stretch for a group which usually uses scripts," said Peter McCormack, the director of Wit and member of the Northern Lights Theatre Company. "I was shocked how many people from the group showed to try it."

Although some members of the theatre company have done Improv, he added, they don't really know what the audience will want them to do.

He does know, however, that when they tried Improv in rehearsals, it resulted in a lot of laughter.

One of the funniest games that they will play is Party Quirks, said McCormack, in which the audience chooses what characters the guests will play unbeknownst to the host who will try to guess who they are.

In rehearsal, he said, they had an incident where one performer went around shaking the guests rear ends like an 8 ball, which resulted in hilarity.

He admitted that one of the most challenging games is the question game where they try to enact a story-line only using questions which is difficult because people usually speak in statements.

Wit is quite a shift from Improv and is theatre company's entry into the Newfoundland and Labrador Provincial Drama Festival held in Corner Brook, Apr. 4-10.

They will be defending their title after winning last year eight out of the sixteen awards for Dancing at Lughnasa, including best presentation of a full-length play and the audience appreciation award.

A description of the Wit says that it is a play about Vivian Bearing, an English professor who comes to terms with her life in both a humorous and profound way when she is diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

McCormack said that the main character, played by the theatre company's Wendy Chambers, comes to the realization that she wants to be treated in the hospital the same way her students want to be treated by her.

He recalled that when he read the play he knew it was the one because it was so engaging.

"It is a beautifully layered story, compassionate and brutally human," he said.

He added that cancer has touched everybody's lives and the main character speaks directly to the audience with whit and a sharp tongue.

He said that the bald caps have arrived for the main character, but if Chambers finds them uncomfortable, she might consider shaving her head.

They will be selling armbands on the night of the play, McCormack said, in exchange for donations going to the local hospital.

He has found directing an absolute joy and said that they are a lot further in their rehearsals than he expected.

He added that, although the play deals with a weighty matter, he is a firm believer that everything has humour.