New West Theatre is celebrating the “Soundtrack” to summer this week, with their new show, running until July 25 at the Yates Theatre.

“Soundtrack features some favourite songs made famous in film over the past 50 years.

“It’s an original production of songs from films. But we’ve created an original show concept connecting the songs with original pieces of comedy,” said director Nicholas Hanson, emphasizing the song choices were based on movies which provided nostalgic memories for a wide variety of audiences.

“We focused on songs from famous movies. We started with 500-600 of them and we narrowed the list down to create a good balance of songs that the audience would recognize,” he continued adding there are also a few surprises thrown into the show as well.

“And we’re always mindful of the specific talents of the actors and band members as well,” he added. There are some familiar New West faces on stage. Jessica Ens returns as does Erica Hunt. Other familiar faces in the cast include Mark Nivet and Grahame Renyk.

But there are a couple new faces too— U of L fine arts student Jocelyn Haub makes her debut with New West in “Showcase” and Saskatchewan born Duff MacDonald joins New West after stints in theatre groups all over Eastern Canada.

They are all doing double duty, performing “Showcase” at night and rehearsing for New West’s August production “Celebration” during the day. They take Mondays and Sundays off.

“We receive a significant amount of résumés and applications. We have a commitment to build an artistic community in Southern Alberta. The new people are fitting in really well. We have a great set of extremely hard working and positive people who make this a great fit,” he continued, adding the show has been a lot of fun because it takes the audience on a time travel journey through some of the eons through film.

—Richard Amery, L.A Beat editor