The story, by Tim Switzer, begins:

The 18th-century French poet Jacques Delille famously noted that while we can choose our friends, “Fate chooses our relatives.”

More than one family has fractured because siblings discover they have nothing in common with each other … which is exactly what has happened to the family in Marion Bridge, Globe Theatre’s next mainstage production, running Jan. 20 to Feb. 6.

Written by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor, Marion Bridge is set in Cape Breton, where the three MacKeigan sisters have come together to care for their dying mother.

Aside from their last names, they have nothing in common. Theresa (Laura Condlin) is a nun. Agnes (Liz Gilroy) is a struggling actor.

And then there’s the soap opera-obsessed youngest, Louise, played by Judy Wensel, a recent graduate of the University of Regina’s drama department.

“She’s the only sister who still lives in the home where they all grew up,” Wensel explains. “She feels a bit of frustration. They’re in her space. But over the course of the play they find some common ground and they become sisters again. They lost sight of how family is important, and by the end of it they discover that again.”

Read the rest.

It begins:

What could be better than a wonderful Christmas brunch onstage at the Conexus Arts Centre?

How about a wonderful Christmas brunch followed by a performance by the South Saskatchewan Youth Orchestra?

That’s exactly the hard-to-imagine-a-better-than event scheduled for this Sunday. A silent auction and food kick off the event at 11 a.m., with the concert to follow. Conductor Alan Denike will lead the 45-member orchestra, made up of players whose ages range from 12 to their early 20s, in Peter Warlock’s Capriol Suite, selections from Carmen by Georges Bizet, and Leroy Anderson’s Christmas Festival, before finishing up with sing-along carols.

Halfway through the second half of the Regina Symphony Orchestra’s 10th annual The RSO Goes to the Oscars movie-music concert, Maestro Victor Sawa commented on the versatility of movie composers, who may find themselves writing theme music for sharks in one movie and mood music for superheroes in the next.

But it wasn’t just the composers’ versatility on display Saturday night — the RSO once again proved that it can tackle any style of music with verve.

It may have helped that superheroes Batman (on timpani) and Iron Man (on viola) were lending a hand, on a night that also saw a family dressed as characters from The Wizard of Oz win the costume competition at intermission.

It begins:

Mesa, Globe Theatre’s new mainstage production, is the story of a road trip — a physical journey from Calgary to Arizona, and the metaphorical journey from youth to old age.

Which sounds pretty heavy, so let me hasten to add that Mesa, well-directed by Joey Tremblay, is also very funny.

It’s 1998, and 93-year-old Bud (Sheldon Davis), is being chauffeured by his 34-year-old grandson-in-law, Paul (Curt McKinstry), on his annual winter trip to the Citrus Gardens trailer park in Mesa, Ariz. It’s the first time he hasn’t driven himself.

The characters they encounter along the way are played by Ryan Parker, also one of two musicians (with Jeremy Sauer) whose music establishes transitions — and whose rendition of The Tennessee Waltz, with its line “Now I know just how much I have lost,” provides an evocative framing device.

Here’s a bit from the middle:

For Sawa, switching from symphonies to soundtracks is natural.

In a strange way, he says, “we owe a debt of gratitude to the Nazis. Oscar Hammerstein, Max Steiner, Eric Korngold, Bernard Hermann, Franz Waxman — they all came over because they were being persecuted in Europe.

“The entire Hollywood sound was created by the classical composers of Europe.

“When we talk about classical music and how it survived the second half of the 20th century, everyone was going to the movies, they were listening to classical music.

“The snob factor is missing when you go to the movies.”

And today’s movie composers are just as good as those early ones, Sawa says.

“The modern-day ones learned from the best.”

It begins:

The premise of Mesa, which opens at Globe Theatre on March 18, sounds like the setup to a joke: “So this 30-something guy and his 93-year-old grandfather set out on a road trip together to Mesa, Ariz. …”

And sure enough, Mesa is a comedy — but not, says director Joey Tremblay, in a “yuk-yuk, door-slamming” kind of way. Instead, he calls it a “feel-good, bittersweet, nostalgic kind of comedy.”

Read the whole thing.

Until late last year, Madison Kerth was just another fifth-grader at Tchefuncte Middle School in Mandeville, La., just north of New Orleans across Lake Pontchartrain.

But, about the time she turned 11 last October, she left her school to begin living what she describes as “a dream come true” — performing in a touring production of the hit musical Annie.