A Chilliwack theatre group will be heading to a provincial festival after its show won best production at a Fraser Valley performing arts event last week.
The Chilliwack Players Guild brought its production of The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble to the Fraser Valley Zone Theatre Festival, held May 19-24 in Langley.
After six nights of theatre, featuring a different production each night, the Chilliwack Players Guild was given the award for outstanding production, plus several guild members also won awards.
The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble was written by Canadian playwright Beth Graham.
The play presented by the local guild will now represent the Fraser Valley at the Provincial Mainstage Festival, which will take place right here in Chilliwack in July.
Members of the Chilliwack Players Guild won three other awards. The outstanding set design award went to Graham Archer and TJ MacPherson, outstanding props and set decoration award was presented to Graham and Debra Archer, and Krysandra Wilson received the award for outstanding lead actor in a female role.
The production was directed by MacPherson and produced by Debra Archer. Stage manager is Trisha Knight-Good.
The group now moves on to Theatre BC’s Provincial Mainstage Festival at the Chilliwack Cultural Centre, July 1 to 6. The festival will feature the winning plays from six different zone festivals from across B.C. which represent the best in community theatre.
The festival will also feature a series of workshops presented in partnership with the Arts Club Theatre from Vancouver.
Tickets for the Provincial Mainstage Festival can be purchased through the Cultural Centre website at chilliwackculturalcentre.ca.
For more about the festival, go to theatrebc.org.
About the play:
The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble is about the tricky nature of family dynamics, and the effects of mental illness seen through the eyes of a young woman who’s searching for her own feelings amidst the whirlwind emotions of her family. Iris Trimble is trying to hold it all together. She may very well fly off the face of the earth if she doesn’t hang on to the kitchen counter. At least that’s how she feels after her mother, Bernice, a lively, recently widowed 55-year-old breaks the news that she has early onset Alzheimer’s. In an effort to cope with the stress, Iris makes her mother’s famous Everything-That-Is-Bad-For-You casserole, a childhood favourite. Her siblings, on the other hand, are on opposite sides of the spectrum: Sara, the eldest, irately calls for a second opinion, while Peter, the youngest, seems completely unfazed. As for Bernice, she’s still as vivacious as ever, always up for a good laugh, and, most of all, ready to finally put herself first.
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