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Hamilton Spectator

Theatre CBS takes three awards

Theatre CBS's first appearance at the province's Annual Provincial Drama Festival last month was an impressive one, as the troupe racked up nominations for eight awards and received three. Their play, Duckish, won awards for Best Production, Best Lighting, and Best Set. Not surprisingly, the people behind the troupe are pretty pleased with the fast progress they've made in such a short time. One of them is Susan Bonnell, vice president of Theatre CBS' board of directors. Bonnell has been involved with theatre most of her life, but drifted away a bit once she got married and started a family. She returned to theatre in 2015. 'My husband actually said to me, 'You know, Susan, I don't think you're as happy as you could be, and you should try and get back into theatre,'' Bonnell recalled. She did just that, first auditioning for a role in a production by Shakespeare by the Sea. 'It's been nonstop ever since,' she said. In 2021, Bonnell received a call from Vicki Greenslade, who wanted to form a community theatre group in Conception Bay South. Bonnell met with Greenslade, Gord Billard, and Jacqueline Cook at Greenslade's home that summer, and Theatre CBS was born. The troupe put on a show that Christmas and have done a couple of shows a year since then. It should be noted that Theatre CBS is not limited to CBS residents. The group has members from Holyrood, St. John's, Mount Pearl, and Paradise. A couple of years ago, Theatre CBS decided to apply for inclusion in the Newfoundland and Labrador Drama Society. They were accepted. Last year, they attended the provincial drama festival in an observer's role. 'The drama society wants you to observe for a year before you compete,' said Bonnell. So, this year, when the provincial drama festival was held at the Corner Brook Arts and Culture Centre, Theatre CBS got to compete and perform Duckish. The play is Bonnell's adaption of the fairy and ghost stories of Tom Dawe, an internationally recognized poet and author from CBS. 'One of our mandates for Theatre CBS is to celebrate the shore and all things Conception Bay South, so we knew we wanted to do something to honour Mr. Dawe, and this is what emerged,' said Bonnell. Theatre CBS first performed Duckish at the Manuels River Centre in March 2024. The play was presented in the round, meaning the actors were in a circle in the middle of the audience. 'We were trying to create that sort of campfire vibe of telling ghost stories sitting around a campfire, or in a kitchen party, that kind of an experience for the audience,' said Bonnell. They reached out to Veronica Nugent who at the time was a teacher at Queen Elizabeth Regional High. She got the school's art club to help create a set. 'The audience walked into a forest and they were on the inside of the set,' said Bonnell. At the drama festival, the group had to perform on the Arts and Culture Centre's main stage. 'So, the first thing that I had to do was rewrite the show,' said Bonnell. 'We had to adapt it for the stage because performing in the round and performing on a proscenium arch stage is a really different experience.' The group also had to thin out the cast. In the March 2024 performance, the Duckish cast consisted of over 20 people, including children. The theatre group could not afford to bring so many people to Corner Brook and so narrowed down the cast to nine. They also used puppets to represent the fairies and tell some of the ghost stories. For the March 2024 performance, they worked with professional puppeteer Baptiste Neis, who did a workshop with the cast and created a couple of puppets for the show. 'So we used that experience of working with her and we created a bunch more puppets,' said Bonnell. 'We had shadow puppets, and we had some creepy doll puppets that the audience loved in Corner Brook.' Susan's husband, John Bonnell, created a new lighting plot for the show's Corner Brook performance, which won the festival's Best Lighting Award. The music also went through changes. Maureen Chafe was the play's music director in March 2024. 'We used her soundscape and then augmented it, enhanced it with some other original pieces,' said Bonnell. Bonnell's niece, who is studying music in Michigan, wrote a piece for the play that was nominated for a sound award. Duckish was also nominated for Best Costumes, and Brad Jones, who played the character Tom, was nominated for Best Actor. Bonnell said directing is different from acting. 'I've mostly been an actress over my life, and certainly in the last 10 years since coming back into theatre,' she said. 'But, as an actor, you certainly understand and know, appreciate, what it is that you like in a good director. So, I tried to embody all the things that I always look for in a good director.' Bonnell said she enjoys bringing texts to life, taking something from an idea all the way to a finished project. 'I was certainly very, very proud of what we brought to Corner Brook,' she said. 'So being novices at the drama festival, it was a very rewarding experience for everybody involved.'