By Hayley Willner
April 25, 2010

UNITY-First time jitters didn’t seem to be a problem for Davidson’s Senior Drama Club.
“It went really well,” says play director Arlene Low.

"Superhero Sanitarium”, the play that the drama club competed in the Drama Festival in Unity on April 16 and 17, won the award of “Best Visual Production”. The play also walked away with a certificate of merit for their costumes and Vanner McDonnell, a Grade 8 student at Davidson School, and Jasmine Smith, a Grade 9 student at Davidson School, were each recognized with a certificate of merit for their work on lighting and stage managing.

Grade 10 student J.J. Lang, who was known as “Speed Freak” by the audience, was awarded runner up for the Mary Ellen Burgess Preformance Award which Low says marks him as one of the top actors of the festival. Luke McCreary, who played “Kevin”, won one of four acting awards, and “Lois Lancaster”, who is better known as Dana Moskaluke, took home the Spirit of the Festival award. Low describes this award as one that is awarded to the person, without whom the play would not be the same.

Low says that after all of the performances are through, each play and group of actors are given an hour with the adjudicators in a Production workshop. The adjudicators give the students advice on how a particular scene could be improved, and then the students are able to get back up on stage and act out the scene as the adjudicators suggested.

“It’s a great learning opportunity,” Low says. Moskaluke agrees.

“It was a really great experience, especially for our first time there,” says Moskaluke. “My favourite parts were doing our play and sitting in on the workshops because we got great pointers and learned a lot.”

Although they were only given an hour to work on their own play, Low says they were able to sit in on the other schools' production workshops, to pick up more acting advice.

Next year on April 15 and 16, Davidson School will take a turn hosting the Drama Festival. Moskaluke says she plans on acting in the festival again next year and feels she will be even more prepared for the event.

“I think we’ll do even better next year because now we know what to look for,” says Moskaluke. 

Low says the purchase of some new equipment will be needed to host the event.

“We really need some new lighting,” says Low. She also says the sound equipment could use improvement, but lights will be the first priority.
The Drama Club will rely on donations and the money made from previous silent auctions for the purchase of the new lighting equipment.

“It’ll be a lot of work to host, but it will be fun,” says Moskaluke. “I’m really excited about getting new lights and having our school be represented on a drama aspect.”

The leaderonline is a division of The Davidson Leader, Davidson, Saskatchewan, Canada.