By Kevin J Sabo For the Advance
The lights have gone dark for the last time on the 2019 Castor Little Theatre season. This year’s play Jack of Diamonds, written by Marcia Kash and Douglas E. Hughes, is the 37th annual production put on by Castor Little Theatre and community support was again great for this year’s performance.
The 2019 play, Jack of Diamonds, was a farce used under licence from Samuel French Inc and focused on a group of seniors in a retirement home who had been scammed out of a significant sum of money by an unscrupulous investment adviser.
When that adviser fakes a medical condition and ends up in their retirement home for his protection, the seniors seek revenge on the scam artist with often hilarious results.
“Tickets were about 80 per cent sold,” said Castor Little Theatre member and sometimes actor, Don Sisson, who played the investment adviser Barney Effward. “The only real sellouts were for the last two nights.”
Attendance for 2019’s production was 1180 tickets sold, up a small margin from 2018’s show.
Funds raised from the ticket sales do stay in the community through various arts scholarships and community hall upkeep, as well as paying the local caterer for the dinner theatre performances.
In what has become a tradition for Castor Little Theatre, a local volunteer or student group operates the coat check for the run of the production and this year the Theresetta Knights sports team raised over $2,000 for their program.
Castor Little Theatre typically runs for eight performances in February, however the production begins in earnest in the previous October. With two to three days a week committed between October and the end of the show’s run in March, with a couple weeks taken off around Christmas, the amount of time and dedication that the volunteers put in to bring the show to life is huge.
From set design and construction, lights and sound, makeup and direction, the coat check, and front of house management, it takes a small army of volunteers to make the show happen.
This year’s director, Rob Nichols, is one of the driving forces of Castor Little Theatre and is already hard at work reading potential plays for Castor Little Theatre to bring to life for their 2020 production.
Information about casting and volunteering for the 2019-2020 theatre season will be announced in the fall.