One act pressure cooker

If theatre is big on your radar, check out Stage Struck 2012 running at Walterdale Playhouse this coming Friday and Saturday.

It is the Alberta Drama Festival Association’s biggest annual one-act play festival in support of adult community theatre. It gives amateur as well as professional actors, directors and playwrights an opportunity to show off their best.

Awards are being presented in five categories. Not only are entries competing for bragging rights and trophies, but the production receiving the outstanding production award wins a berth at the Alberta Drama Festival Association provincials on April 13 and 14 in Camrose.

This year’s offerings are eight works that tackle a range of subjects from our DNA and murder to family dysfunction and of course everyone’s favourite topic – love.

The plays are scheduled in blocks of three and each play’s running time varies from 20 to 60 minutes.

That’s not much time to present the dilemma, set up the action, solve the problem and affect a resolution. One-act plays can create a pressure-cooker atmosphere, but it’s exactly this kind of environment where former St. Albert Children’s Theatre alumna Catherine Wenschlag (Much Ado About Nothing) thrives.

Wenschlag carries one of the lead roles in Death Comes to Auntie Norma, an over-the-top comedy set during the excess of the 1980s, an era that fostered big shoulder pads and Madonna.

Wenschlag’s character Sheila is a very unusual mother of three. She’s an independent career woman who has set up three phone lines in her house. The first is as a sex worker. The second is as a telephone psychic and she’s just recently installed a third line as suicide prevention help.

“Her one big goal is to get on a TV series – Family Feud. It was a popular game show,” says Wenschlag.

In the middle of this dysfunctional family is Michelle (Crystal Jean), the only member who wants to go to university.

“She wants to make a difference in the world, whereas the rest have a me-me-me attitude. It builds to a point where Norma dies and life takes a turn no one expected.”

Another former St. Albert resident, Barbara North, presents her one-woman stand-up comedy piece My Bollywood Best Friend’s Wedding. North lived in St. Albert for several years before moving to Toronto work as an intern writer for Air Farce. Returning to Edmonton several years ago, she developed a niche for herself and is one of the area’s most sought after female comics.

Most of these productions are too off-the-wall for main theatre companies, but are perfect festival showcases. Pest Control brings together the scientific relationship of mice and men while Maud Gonne Says No the Poet melds a marriage proposal and the 1916 Easter uprising when 13 Irish activists were executed.

Ed Loves Nancy reveals the detours love makes and Boy Meets Girl is about a quirky Internet romance. There’s an even quirkier story in A Hate Story when Venus, a burlesque dancer and her son Cupid receive a visit from an old friend – St. Valentine.

Below is a complete schedule of plays:

Friday, Feb. 24 from 7 to 10 p.m.

• Pest Control

• Death Comes to Auntie Norma

• My Bollywood Best Friend’s Wedding

Saturday, Feb. 25 from 1 to 4 p.m.

• Ed Loves Nancy

• Boy Meets Girl

• A Hate Story

Saturday, Feb 25 from 7 to 10 p.m.

• Maud Gonne Says No to the Poet

• Four in the Crib

Awards will be presented in five categories including Outstanding Production, Outstanding Performers, Outstanding Director, Outstanding New Work and Outstanding Technical.