University of Lethbridge students are going to have fun with food, Nov. 22-26, when Movable Feast takes the stage in the David Spinks Theatre.
“I’ve been over to Africa a couple times. Half the world is obese while the other half is starving.
It’s very hard to make sense of that after seeing starving children in Somalia,” said director and editor Lisa Doolittle.
She noted the students , inspired by a variety of food related projects happening at the University of Lethbridge campus, came up with the idea of doing a show around the concept of food and came up with a 20 minute production.
A year and several rewrites later edited by Doolittle, the production comes to the stage.
The 11 member cast including students and former students, combine acting, dance, singing and a variety of other activities on stage, which while designed to get people to think about their food, is mostly designed to be fun for the whole family.
“We discovered one of the guys can do a double back flip. So we’ve incorporated that into the show. And another can juggle. He’ll be juggling meat, ” she said.
The production is designed to entertain ages 10 and up, though there are some scary moments in the hour-long production.
“There’s a death figure,” she said.
“ The story is told through the eyes of a 10-year-old girl with a very vivid imagination. And like all 10-year-olds she has a well defined sense of justice. She sees what is going on and says ‘ that isn’t right,’” she continued adding the characters are very comical caricatures.
“There is a businessman in a suit and a politician, of course. And there is Carmen Miranda,” she said.
Carmen Miranda, who made fruit famous in the 1920s and ’30 with her banana song, is in the production, replete in a dress adorned with 120 bananas.
“ I think people will get a lot of laughs from it. There is a lot of live music, dancing, there is a big food fight and we cook something on stage — stir fry. It’s a whole lot of fun,” she said.
The theatre is set up as an alley with the audience placed on either side and the action taking place in the middle.
“It is supposed to represent a banquet table,” she said.
The cast consists of a nice mix of experienced performers and newcomers, mostly first and second year students.
“There has been a lot to learn,” she said.
Tickets to Movable Feast are $15 regular, $10 for seniors/students, available at the University Box Office, Monday – Friday 12:30 pm – 3:30 pm, or by calling (403) 329-2616.
