Multi-award nominated Tent Meeting returns to Rosebud

Laureen F. Guenther
Times Contributor

 

Tent Meeting, a musical play, will open in Rosebud’s Opera House, June 24. The show has received four nominations for Best Musical and Best Production. Morris Ertman, Rosebud Theatre’s Artistic Director, who co-wrote the musical and is also directing this production, has also won and been nominated for numerous awards. The most recent are the 2016 Critter Award nominations for Best Director and Best Production for both Wizard of Oz and Outside Mullingar at Rosebud Theatre.
This is Tent Meeting’s third time in Rosebud, having toured through the village in 2000 and having been produced at Rosebud Theatre in 2007.
“The show has entertained and blessed people over and over and over again,” Ertman said. “I keep running into people who say, ‘Man, that show just grabbed me. It was so great.’ And they remember it from 16 years ago or 10 years ago.”
The story may be especially pertinent for the people of southern Alberta this year, since it’s set in hard economic times, during an extended drought.
“It’s a story about what to do when your life is falling apart … whether it’s drought or whether it’s a Fort McMurray wildfire and you’ve been driven from your home. How do you not let bitterness get in the way?” Ertman said. “It’s about a husband and wife who are estranged and today’s the day of reckoning … and it happens to be around a tent meeting. The story is a story about a community that gathers around George and Dolly and holds them up, even though their marriage is failing.”
And Tent Meeting points to a brighter future.
“The story is actually a very true-to-life story about how we grow apart from each other and then how we can get that feeling back when we surrender to love,” Ertman said. “It’s so filled with hope and it’s also filled with the notion that divine and wonderful healing can happen. And that we can come out the other side of hard times more whole than we were before.”
Jonathan Bruce is returning to Tent Meeting to play Sam.
“He’s done the production virtually wherever I’ve directed it,” Ertman said. “He embodies the character so beautifully. He’s got a gorgeous tenor voice and he smokes a stogie while singing. He’s like Jackie Gleason with a stogie. He’s just stunning.”
Rosebud’s own David Snider is also returning to the show, as is Seana Lee Wood, an actor from Stratford and Toronto. Actors Declan O’Reilly and Blair Young of Calgary complete the cast.
In tough challenging economic times, it will be good for the people of Alberta to “come to the theatre and hear those glorious gospel harmonies, and to participate in the joy of the music, and the emotional connection of the music,” Ertman said. “That, in hard times, in and of itself, is a wonderful thing to do.”
Tent Meeting will play from June 24 to Aug. 28. Matinee and evening tickets both include a meal. Purchase them from rosebudtheatre.com or 1-800-267-7553.