Starting this column with a huge shout-out to the staff of this newspaper for all of the great support they give to the arts in our region. Firstly, they give me space to brag about all the amazing performers that the Flin Flon Arts Council brings to Flin Flon and each of the terrific visual artists the NorVA Gallery features throughout the year.
Tonight the Flin Flon Youth Arts Council, which is made up of students from Hapnot Collegiate at this time, presents Speed Control, a rock trio from Whitehorse, Yukon at Johnny’s Social Club. The band consists of Graeme Peters, who has two degrees, one in education and one in jazz performance, from the University of Toronto. He is a multi-instrumentalist and has backed up the likes of Ingrid Jenson and Tanya Tagaq on their tours. Then we have Graeme’s brother Jody Peters, who holds a degree in music education from the University of Alberta. He has performed most every role in the music business, from performing to adjudicating at music festivals to band management and administration. The drummer of this ensemble is Ian March, who studied music at Capilano University and has worked extensively in the jazz idiom. He also works as a substitute teacher during the band’s downtime.
They play pretty straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll and are appropriate for all ages. The students will have the opportunity to work with the band in master classes during the day, but the evening is all concert, at Johnny’s Social Club. Doors open at 6:45 pm and music starts at 7 pm. Cost is the usual $20 and $10 for students. Folks who participated in the master classes attend free!
On March 15 the Central Canada Film Group is offering Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story at the Dorothy Ash Theatre in Hapnot Collegiate. This film details the real life story of the movie bombshell Hedy Lamarr, an astonishingly beautiful actor in the 1930s and ’40s who also invented a secure radio guidance system for torpedoes during World War II. She was born in Austria in 1915 to a Jewish family and was forced to escape Nazi persecution by coming to America. She lived a totally glamorous movie star life, complete with six marriages and divorces, but died an impoverished recluse in 2000.
The film is directed by a woman, Alexandra Dean tells Lemarr’s story in Hollywood at a time when few if any even considered gender as an issue. It costs $10 and it starts at 7:30 pm.
Ham Sandwich Theatre will present its spring production of Regrets Only on Friday and Saturday, Mar. 16 and 17 at the RH Channing Auditorium. Show time is 7:30 pm. The play is a modern take on a drawing-room comedy by Paul Rudnick, a Broadway playwright. The author has the reputation of being the best “one-line quipmeister of the Broadway stage” (New York Times review, 2006).
The play is set in an Upper East Side apartment, inhabited by a wealthy couple. The wife, Tibby, is a vacuous socialite with a gay best friend, fashion designer Hank Hadley. They are forced to confront issues around being gay when Jack, Tibby’s husband is drafted by the President of the United States to write a law banning gay marriage.
The cast consists of Alain Lachapelle, Katrina Windjack, Evan Quick, Dianne Therrien, Stacy Hyndman and Wendy Cordon, and the play has a first-time director, Sheri Pearson. Tickets are available at Northern Rainbow’s End and there will be a surprise Manhattan Gift Basket as the fundraiser.
