SCA takes Beka Lamb to the Bliss Stage
Have you ever wanted to go to the theatre to see your favorite book come to life? Well here’s your chance. It’s Beka Lamb on Stage. The Saint Catherine Academy is taking on that task and bringing the well known novel, written by Zee Edgell who happens to be an alumnus of the Academy; Class of 1959 to the stage. In two shows, on Friday and Saturday, students and invited dramatists will converge on the Bliss stage and fill the shoes of some of the novel’s well known characters; Beka and Toycie. It is an adoption of the novel and a fundraiser to aid with the monies needed to complete the construction of the high school’s multipurpose building. News Five caught up with the young dramatists as they prepared for their debut on Friday. Director and co-writer, Melissa Espat says this fundraiser has been a year in the making.
Melissa Espat, Director/Co-Writer, Beka Lamb on Stage
Melissa Espat
“We started off last year March. We met with Misses Edgell and we had asked her to permission to use her novel to have the rights to go ahead and write a script. And she gave us creative rights to go ahead and reconstruct her novel and bring the characters to life. What is genuine about this play is that the students themselves are helping with the directing. The y have read Beka Lamb and so they know the content, they know the characters, the settings, the themes, and so whenever they are on stage and they see something that is not going too correct or not the way they read it, they would refer back to the novel and this is not the way this character is supposed to be. So that is what is very important for the audience to know that the girls themselves had a lot to do with the preparation of the play—the script was just the beginning. It is actually bringing it alive on stage. Beka Lamb doesn’t really have one set genre. It’s everything: it’s comedy—we’re gonna have tears, we’re gonna have laughter, we’re gonna have a little bit of excitement, everything because we are combining all the themes that students study for C.X.C.—we are just bringing it on stage. And so really it is a call for students, specifically—especially those who are studying Beka Lamb—it is a part of the CXC curriculum and we are also inviting women because it has a lot to do with women in politics, those historians, all those fascinated with history culture, everybody.”
The show takes place this Friday and Saturday at the Bliss Institute for the Creative Arts at thirty dollars for reserve and twenty dollars for general admission.
