Love Child is RSA student’s final project
By Laureen F. Guenther Times Contributor
Dale Clark, a graduating student at Rosebud School of the Arts (RSA), is producing and performing the play Love Child as her final project.
Love Child, by award-winning playwright Joanna Murray-Smith, will be performed from Aug. 24-27 in Rosebud’s Akokiniskway Gallery.
This play, Clark said in an email, is “the poignant and powerful story of a young woman in her early 30s, who meets her biological mother for the very first time … (and) explores our universal need to love and to be loved and what that looks like through the lens of an unusual mother-daughter relationship.”
Clark is performing the role of the mother, Anna, while RSA graduate Cassie Garbutt performs the role of her daughter, Billie, and RSA instructor Jeany Van Meltebeke is directing the show. Also helping is RSA graduate Shayleigh Sihlis as sound designer alongside theatre professional Elizabeth Shieman as lighting designer assisted by RSA student Lacey Cornelson.
The crew rounds off with several other RSA students, such as Claire Cech and Koayla Cormack as stage manager and assistant stage manager, and Hayley Rosenau managing props.
Clark herself has designed the set and wardrobe.
“This play reveals the tremendous power the icons of each age have in the decisions of its youth,” said Clark. “It’s important for all of us to realize we are products of the age and societal influences we grow up in. It’s also important because this play digs deep into the profound importance of a mother-daughter relationship and that there is more than the biological ties that binds them together.”
Clark, who will graduate with her Fellow of Rosebud School of the Arts (FRSA) in September, is a mature student who had vast experience working with children in music and theatre before she came to study at RSA.
“Producing Love Child has been an exciting and wonderful time for me as this is what I love to do,” said Clark. “The close interdependence that theatre demands in telling stories makes it all worthwhile. Yes, it is work, but it is the most rewarding kind of work there is, at least for me. The huge challenge for me and vulnerability, is in placing myself on stage as one of two main actors.”
Tickets for Love Child are available on Eventbrite. 100 per cent of ticket proceeds will be disbursed to the RSA students and graduates who are donating their time to the production.
Love Child will be performed on Aug. 24- 25 at 10 a.m. and on Aug. 26-27 at 3 p.m. Coffee by Rosebud Cottage Coffee Company will be served before each show. Shows are timed so that guests may purchase a buffet meal in Rosebud’s Mercantile after each show.