Stirling Festival Theatre Awarded Ontario Arts Council Grant!

STIRLING, Ontario - July 16, 2013 - PRLog -- The Stirling Festival Theatre is thrilled to announce the receipt of a $4,000 grant from the Ontario Arts Council - Theatre Projects Development Stream.  The Ontario Arts Council was established in 1963 to foster the creation and production of art for the benefit of all Ontarians.  This season commemorates their success in  ‘Stirring emotion for 50 years and counting!’

The OAC grant will provide funding towards the development and public workshop performance of an exciting new work currently titled, the Stirling Historical Community Play (SHCP).  The SHCP will trace the history of the region from 1600 to present day.

Co-creators, playwright and journalist, Richard Turtle and Stirling Festival Theatre, Managing Director David Vanderlip will write the show based on research from genealogy archives at the local library, and also conversations and ‘soundings’ with the local community and elders.

“I have been passionate about community plays for a very long time now.  There’s something magical about an entire community coming together to share their stories and build a theatrical piece,” says Managing Director David Vanderlip.

“Along with playwright, Richard Turtle, I hope to engage the community in the creation of a play around the various significant historical events that have occurred in the region surrounding Stirling over the last 400 years.  Champlain traveled these shores around 1615 and this area was regularly traveled as immigrants moved from Lower to Upper Canada.”

Says, Richard Turtle, playwright and local journalist, “the protagonist in the story will be a contemporary teenaged girl with big city aspirations and a steadfast resolve for a full-scale lifestyle change. Through a series of ancestral stories, presented as flashback vignettes she will trace and explore the rich stories of the Stirling Region including the Loyalist movement, the women’s movement, our connection to the Riel Story, etc  which dramatically portray the determination of those who carved out a community together in a foreboding and isolated new world.”

Added Vanderlip, “If these stories aren’t recorded, written-down and shared they might very well be lost to the next generation.  Moreover, this next generation might be lost to the region.  Often when young people come of age, they leave the countryside where they grew up for the big city and we have seen an ‘emptying-out’ of our most precious resource – our young people.  By bringing the community together we hope to instill a greater sense of community pride, dedication and sense of belonging to the young people of the region. “

Community members are invited to participate fully in the play, acting side-by-side with professional Equity Actors.  SFT also wants community members to participate behind the scenes assisting with props, costumes, stage management, front of house, publicity and promotion etc.  Additionally, SFT would like to utilize actual descendents of the stories and events depicted in the play, and engage young and old from the community with an eye to incorporating up to 200 community members in the acting company.  A significant portion of the acting company will be comprised of new generation, emerging artists, drawn from our own Young Company, dance schools and college theatre programmes and people of all ages from local drama clubs and church choirs, and seniors groups.

According to SFT Development Officer, Laura Smith, ‘We are thrilled the Ontario Arts Council recognizes the importance of this work to the Stirling community.  Arts are vital to the vibrancy of a community and this is an exceptional opportunity for everyone in the Stirling Region to get involved in a unique arts-in-the community experience. ”  

And David Vanderlip warmly invites the community to become involved, “ If you’ve ever wanted to be part of an exciting and rewarding community experience, please contact the theatre – we need actors, performers, set builders, props, costumes, mementos  -- and most of all – YOUR STORIES.  Come be part of the most exciting thing to happen to us, since Hockeyville.”  

Please contact the theatre, check the website or the SFT Facebook page for audition announcements and calls for behind-the-scenes volunteer notices in early 2014.   The workshop/performance will occur in April 2014 and the full play is slated for production in summer 2015.

Artistic Bios

Richard Turtle, Playwright/Co-Creator

Richard Turtle is a professional playwright and journalist who has lived and worked in the Stirling Region for the last 20 years.  He has written plays for The Blyth Festival, Ottawa Fringe Festival, The Playwright’s Summer Festival (Belleville), the Sears Drama Festival and the Eastern Ontario Drama Festival.  He has also had great success writing original plays for community theatre and the high school tour circuit, receiving productions in Orangeville, Merrickville, Brockville, Lindsay, Campbellford, Quinte and throughout the United States including, Ohio, California, Minnesota, Georgia, South Dakota and Missouri.  His plays have been published by Samuel French, Brooklyn Publishers and Drama.Focus.  He is a winner of the LAPAG Playwriting Contest, was awarded Best Original Script by the Peterborough Theatre Guild for Stranger Still, and Best Canadian Play -- the Kingston Whig Trophy for Lunatic: A Bathroom Trilogy. His recent play Burying the Hangman received the People's Choice Award at the EODL Festivalin Kingston in 2012. He is also the author of Building an Arc:  Ensemble Playwrighting for Drama Students, and the Recipient of the Thomson Newspapers Award of Excellence.

David Vanderlip,  Co-Creator/Director

David Vanderlip studied Theatre at Cornerstone University, Sheridan College and York University.  Since then his journeys have taken him to the Muskoka Festival, the Blyth Festival, Opera Hamilton, the Lighthouse Festival, the Kawartha Lakes Summer Playhouse, Tarragon Theatre, Necessary Angel, the University of Toronto at Mississauga, the City of Brampton Theatre Office, Stage West Mississauga, and the City of Mississauga.  In addition to managing SFT, David is also the Director of the SFT Young Company and directs on average 3 or more productions per year for the theatre.

"We would like to acknowledge funding support from the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.”