The Fort Frances Museum will be presenting the play, “Rope’s End,” at the Townshend Theatre on Feb. 7 as part of the Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Regional Tour 2008.
Museum curator Pam Hawley said tickets for the play, which is a fundraiser for the museum renovation project, “would make a wonderful Christmas present” and are on sale now at the museum and Chamber of Commerce office (located across from Canada Safeway).
Tickets cost $20 each, but museum members, Chamber members, and “tour de Fort” passport holders will get $5 off.
“This will be our third production [as a fundraiser for the museum],” said Hawley, noting Dini Petty came here back in January while the Thunder Bay Symphony Orchestra was here the year before that.
“Part of our mandate is to bring cultural experiences to the community and this is certainly something interesting,” enthused Hawley. “Having a professional play come is an opportunity to have something we haven’t had yet at the theatre.
“Hopefully, people will b able to partake and come out.”
The play, written by Douglas Bowie, is described in promotional materials as “a finely-crafted combination of splendid wit, physical comedy, and hairpin emotional turns.”
The plot synopsis is as follows:
“Film critic Toby Boone has reached the end of his rope—figuratively—and perhaps literally. With the threat of suicide in the air, he comes across a photo—the love of his life.
“Maybe she can somehow rescue him and change everything, if Toby can just get up his nerve to contact her. There’s only one small problem. He’s let 31 years go by.
“He last saw her, fleetingly, at summer camp when they were 13. And in 31 years, things change.
“What if she doesn’t remember him? Even worse, what if she does?”
The play will start at 7:30 p.m.
< *c>Exhibits changing
In other news, museum patrons should take note that the exhibits there will change in the coming weeks.
After being there since October, Hawley said the “Count Your Pennies” exhibit (which focused on shopping in the first half of the 20th century, how much things cost, and how people paid for what they bought) will close Dec. 22.
Those who come to see the exhibit in the next week before it closes are encouraged to bring their pennies from home and donate them to the museum renovation fund.
Between Dec. 23 and the first week of January, “Count Your Pennies” will be moved out and replaced with an exhibit of work by local artist Millie Eide-Gladu, who passed away about a decade ago.
“We’ve got the collection from her home that her family has given us because they are preparing to the sell the house,” said Hawley. “Millie was a well-known regional artist who worked in the community for decades and amassed, well, we’re up to 100 paintings.
“So we basically saved them from imminent doom because the family didn’t know what to do with them,” she laughed. “Any overflow will be at the library.
“We might change pictures once a week so it’s gets people to come back in.”
Hawley added there also will be an opportunity for the public to purchase some of Eide-Gladu’s work, so the exhibit also will be a fundraiser for the museum.
Hawley stressed Eide-Gladu’s paintings reflect “quite a variety” of subjects, and that looking at the whole of her works makes for a fascinating look at changes in artistic trends between the 1950s-1990s.
“She’s known for watercolour landscapes, so there’s some of those,” said Hawley. “But there’s also what I would call some surprising pieces—minimalist and expressionist art that people might not know she’s done.
“She entered them in national shows and some of them were exhibited there.”
More details about the exhibit will be announced in the New Year.
Fort Frances Times
Local News from Across the Rainy River District
