A seven-year-old girl with a love of the spotlight has her lines and actions down pat for a minute-long monologue she’ll perform in a festival this weekend.
Cadence Normandeau is one of 11 Okotoks youths signed up for the inaugural Foothills Youth Short Play and Monologue Festival hosted by Goodger-Pink Family Theatre and Alberta Dance Academy March 2 at the Rotary Performing Arts Centre.
Normandeau said she selected a scene from the movie Matilda for an opportunity to perform publicly. She is a student in Samantha Bell’s weekly afternoon youth drama class.
“We’re going to be in the same place where The Wizard of Oz was where I got to see my teacher (Dayna Coles) play Glenda the Good Witch,” she said. “I just like performing and I have wanted to do it since my teacher was doing The Wizard of Oz.”
Normandeau will also perform in a suspenseful group play called Going on a Bear Hunt with fellow drama students.
“I get to do something that I don’t get to do very often,” she said. “I’m pretty excited. It’s my first time being on stage and there will be lots of people there so I’ll get lots of attention. I’m hoping that they say that I did super good and that I need a couple things to work on.”
Also gearing up for the festival is 17-year-old Samantha Mead, who wrote a short play about a guy in a dental office waiting room who hits on a cute girl.
Mead, a Holy Trinity Academy graduand who plans to pursue a career as a drama teacher, said it’s the second script she’s written.
She’s currently writing a third one.
“I thought it would be a great way to get my scripts into the world,” she said. “It will be an awesome experience to perform outside of a school setting.”
Bell, founder of Goodger-Pink Family Theatre, organized the festival after coming up short in her search for a drama festival for her students to gain stage experience.
“I know how hard drama students work on monologues and short plays, they usually only get to showcase it once or twice,” she said. “I thought let’s take it out to the community in a festival setting.”
The festival will be adjudicated by Okotoks Film Festival director Katie Fournell and The Eagle 100.9 host Logan Coutts, and will run from 12:30 p.m. to about 5:30 p.m., Bell said.
“They have lots of experience in all sorts of different creative outlets – theatre, film, radio,” Bell said. “I thought they would be a really good duo. I want this to be a really positive support experience for these kids.”
Bell said she’s excited to give students across the Foothills who are interested in drama the opportunity to perform in a public setting while getting pointers from professionals.
“It takes a lot of courage for them to even get up on that stage,” she said. “I want this to be really encouraging. There’s going to be constructive criticism as well as positive feedback.”
Bell plans to make the festival an annual event and potentially a competition.
The festival is open to the public to watch at no cost.