Festival entries due by Feb. 22

The 68th Rainy River District Festival of the Performing Arts is getting underway for another year, with entries coming due next Friday (Feb. 22).
“We’re hoping to get a lot of participation this year. It’s such a great opportunity,” noted committee member Carol Lyons.
She explained there are five divisions within the festival—vocal, drama, piano, instrumental, and dance.
However, they are not going to have a competition in dance this year.
Instead, festival organizers are hoping to offer a workshop give youths an opportunity to work with someone of special expertise, although they do not have everything in place for that yet.
The other divisions all will be adjudicated by a professional in the field brought in by the festival committee.
“Each of [the other divisions] has many different classes and categories into which young people enter,” Lyons indicated. “And we’re just really encouraging young people to participate.”
Lyons noted with the piano, instrumental, and vocal divisions, there are a lot of children in the district who take private lessons and will be entered by their instructors as a way of sharing, learning, and improving their skills.
Participation in the drama portion of the festival, however, has been declining over the last few years, she noted.
“Traditionally we depended on the teachers in the classrooms to get the kids ready for the public speaking, poetry, etc.,” Lyons said. “[But] they are so busy now.
“The curriculum is so heavy and there’s just so much going on that a lot of times the teachers just don’t have time to work individually with the kids,” she explained.
Lyons noted some teachers enter their classes with some choral speaking, but they often don’t have the availability to assist individual students.
“So what we’ve done this year is sent a letter to each of the schools to go out with the kids encouraging parents—especially now that the resource manual for the drama is on our website—to work with their kids or get some help,” Lyons said, adding they’re hoping this will get more students entered in the drama portion this year.
“Drama is such a fun thing, and it’s a a good opportunity for kids to do some public speaking.”
Entry forms are available on the festival’s website (www.ff-festival.com), as well as at all schools and libraries in Rainy River District.
Besides an entry form, it is necessary to have access to the syllabus (which lists the classes and categories) and the resource manual (provides poems and readings for drama), which also are available on the website, as well as schools and libraries.
“All of that is downloadable,” Lyons said. “We use to have to distribute the print materials and it was hard to get them out to people. So we’re hoping people will visit the website.”
Completed entry forms can be mailed to the Rainy River District Festival of the Performing Arts, P.O. Box 806, Fort Frances, Ont., P9A 3N1. Teachers or librarians also can turn them in.
In addition, Lyons noted the committee always is looking for volunteers to help run the festival.
“At festival time, we have to have people assisting the adjudicators, working at the door, and taking care of certificates,” she said.
“For each session, we need at least four workers. We do have a long list—we phone people and people are pretty good, but we’d sure like to add some new names to our list.”
As well, the committee meets on the first Wednesday of the month and new people are always welcome to join throughout the year.
Marilyn Allan can be contacted at 274-3893 if anyone has any questions or would like to volunteer.
The dates for this year’s festival are April 14-16 (vocal), April 16-18 (drama), April 17-18 (band and instrumental), and April 21-25 (piano), with the annual highlights concert scheduled for May 10.