Cemetery Club Moves to Bigger Stage

By Gagandeep Ghuman
Published: May 5, 2012

After entertaining the audience in Squamish, the latest production by Between Shift Theatre is moving to a bigger stage.

Cemetry Club, a hilarious yet poignant tale of love and loss, received two-thumbs up from the Squamish audience in March.

Kathy Daniels hopes it will do the same in Vancouver, where Cemetery Club will compete with plays from four other clubs in the Theatre BC North Shore Zone Festival of Plays.

The festival began on May 3, and Cemetery Club will be performed on May 11 in North Vancouver at the Presentation House Theatre at 333 Chesterfield Street.

Between Shifts first started competing in the north zone festival 1995, and has since taken its productions to the festival 11 times.

Cemetery Club competes with well-funded clubs from West Vancouver, Deep Cove and North Shore.

The challenge is to match and exceed the quality of these very established clubs, Daniels said.

“We are a small club, and we are competing with clubs that have 300-400 members,” Daniels said.

The winner from the North Shore zone will go to one of B.C.’s biggest theatre festival, Mainstage 2012, in Kamloops.

Between Shifts products have won awards at Mainstage before. In 2001, Kathy Daniels won the Outstanding Performance Award for Vital Signs.

Between Shifts has also won five Scene Development Awards at Mainstage for plays as varied as A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee and Private Lives by Noel Coward.

Daniels is fairly confident Cemetery Club will go to Mainstage this year.

The festival experience gives actors and backstage crew the opportunity to meet and socialize with their peers and be exposed to new works. Daniels said.

“We are somewhat worried about funding to get us there and pay for our ongoing insurance and storage costs, but we hope to win,” she added.