The Troyanda Ukrainian Dance club invite Lethbridge to celebrate Spring with them, April 28 at the Yates Theatre with a matinee performance for Vesna.
“ It’s our annual celebration of Spring, but this year, we’re trying a matinee at 2 p.m.,” enthused Nicole Stewart, who has been dancing with the group for the past nine years and who has been head of the costume committee for the past three.

The group has three big  annual performances— the Malanka New Year’s celebration, Vesna and their curriculum performance for people studying Ukrainian culture in social studies.

 While the cultural shows, scheduled for April 30 are sold out, there are still tickets left for Vesna, April 28.

“We’re very lucky. We get a lot of community support,” she said.

She noted the group is also lucky to have talented instructors  Dean Mackedenski who is in charge of the adult ensemble and  Anastasia Sereda who leads the children’s programs.

New West Theatre’s new artistic director Jeremy Mason is going to stay the course, building on the success of the longstanding, popular Lethbridge theatre company.
 Mason, who took over the position April 1 from Nicholas Hanson who has left  to pursue other opportunities, is looking forward to the challenge. Hanson not only is a full time professor at the university, but is working on his PHd as well as has a family, so he decided to step down.
“This will be our 23rd year. New West is in a great position now,” Mason said. Their last production of  the season, “the Kitchen Witches,” which brought Mason back to the stage for the first time in a long time in an adult production, was a hit, breaking attendance records. And their musical/ comedy revues are a popular southern Alberta draw.

“We’re the biggest company in Alberta outside of Calgary and Edmonton and we’re  bigger than some of  the companies in Calgary and Edmonton,” he enthused.

 Mason, born in Cranbrook but raised in Lethbridge, has been the troupe’s general manager since 2009. He attended LCI and graduated from the University of Lethbridge with his BFA in 2005. He lived in Calgary from 2007-2009 before returning home to take on the general manager’s job, however he has been involved with New West  Theatre in some capacity as an actor or director since 2003. He has helped implement New West’s popular summer youth camps as well as their Theatre for Young Audience productions for which he has been an actor and a director.

 Several Lethbridge theatre groups are getting ready for the Chinook One Act Play Festival,  March 31 at the Sterndale Bennett Theatre.
“We have a wide variety of plays. Some years it is a challenge to get plays because of the rules,” said Kate Connolly,  taking over as organizer of the festival from Rita Peterson, who decided she needed to take a break. She said it was difficult to find one act plays to perform in previous years, though that has changed.

The rules are pretty simple this year, plays must be between 10 minutes and an hour long, and must be stand alone productions.

“You can’t just take an act out of another play,” she said.
“Now there seems to be a lot more diversity for one act plays,” she continued. A trip to Boston last year for The Boston Theatre Marathon featuring 50 10-minute plays from about the same number of theatre groups throughout the day, opened her eyes to just how many one act plays were out there.
“And they were all very good, there were only one or two that I wouldn’t see again,” she continued.
She was a natural fit for director of this festival.
“Rita Peterson wanted to take a break. And I‘ve been her faithful servant for the past five years, so I was happy to do it,” she enthused. She is pleased to have University of Lethbridge drama department chair Doug MacArthur on board as this year’s adjudicator.

He will give his feedback to to all the performers and give out awards for best play, best male actor and best female actor.
“We‘ve been very happy with our adjudicators. Lethbridge has such a wealth of talented adjudicators that we never have to look elsewhere,” she said.

 This year’s submissions range from the shortest one clocking in at 12 minutes, to a 50 minute production. The others range from 15-20 minutes performed by three local community theatre groups and two from the university.
 Three of them are original works and the others are scripted.