Whose are the twisted minds behind our Telephone Madness event? Let’s meet our organizers.
Sophie Twardus
Sophie is a KW native that learned French and Polish before ever learning English. This gave her an early start in opportunities for miscommunications. All her favourite board games are communications board games as they tend to be easy to teach but difficult to master. She helped create Telephone Madness as a desire to create space for people in the KWLT community to create and connect during the pandemic.
Melinda Mah
Mel’s past involvement with KWLT includes: producing shows (Venus in Fur, What Happened in Vegas); assistant stage managing (Bat Boy: the Musical); and Front of House/Trivia Corner (Battle of the Bards). Her catchphrase is “I listened to a podcast episode about that!”. She is extremely good at Boggle — if you challenge her, you will lose. Mel finally gets her turn in the spotlight… of her monitor, running the livestream behind the scenes.
Michael L. Davenport
Davenport is one of the organizers for Telephone madness. As a lover of creative reinterpretation (KWLT’s March Madness wooooo!), he’s stoked you’re all here for this event. Davenport is also very excited to emcee a KWLT thing, because he thinks emceeing is one of the best jobs in the world. (People Are Different. 🤷♂️ )
I’m sorry to announce the resignation of our newest board member, Rachel. Rachel did some great work in getting our Communications Team up to speed and operating well, so the absence of a Communications Director for now is more easily mitigated. Rachel brought us some great ideas and great expertise; unfortunately, the demands of the role were too much, and she realized that she did not have the time required to dedicate to it. The Communications email will still be monitored and the Communications Team is ready to fill the gaps in the interim.
For me, this again highlights the difficulties that we experience retaining Communications Directors. For those of you at our AGM this summer, you know that this was a hot topic, and one that the board was discussing at length before Rachel joined. It was our hope that Rachel would be able to help shape the role to make it more manageable and sustainable. The Communications Team is a great step in that direction since there is more than one volunteer’s worth of work involved in ensuring that our messages are going out on all the platforms with reasonable frequency. Spreading the load among several people makes that slightly easier. However, the number of platforms has grown, people’s attention has fragmented, and the “all-powerful” algorithms punish posts that are arbitrarily deemed “not engaging enough.” It’s become harder and harder to effectively spread our message and harder and harder to serve in this role. This is all coupled with our typical tension of power between productions and the Communications Director, making the role a trial by fire.
A little more context on this tension…when I was Executive Producer for several years, and indeed when I served as producer for individual productions, this is something that I came to understand very well. In my experience with our theatre (going on 7+ years now), the power of productions versus the power of the board has been in an uneasy flux. On the one hand, productions are the lifeblood of the theatre – no productions, no theatre. Directors of productions especially have held a lot of power over every aspect of their production even down to promotions. One of the great things about KWLT is the artistic freedom afforded directors, which isn’t the case at a lot of theatres. On the other hand, the business of the theatre has an interest in ensuring that its funds are spent appropriately, productions are making money, and the public image of the theatre is retained. The theatre needs to make sure that we’re getting the word out, but the director wants to have control over how that happens. In an ideal world, the director and their team collaborates with Communications and their team to create promotions and put them out. In volunteer management, however, we rarely encounter an ideal world. There’s a lot of work here and a lot of unclear ownership over that work that changes person-to-person, production-to-production.
It’s no wonder that Communications Director & Producers are our hardest roles to recruit for and retain. Several years ago, I tried to solve the Producer problem via a Producer Committee. The committee worked for a while, but with the lack of new people coming onto the committee, it just turned into the group being Producers 100% of the time and led to the same burnout we were trying to avoid.
All that said, I have been puzzling over this problem for many years with no solution in sight. If anybody has any ideas, please (please) send them my way. Similarly, if anyone would like to volunteer to help our Communications Team, please let us know!
The production of a radio play has unique challenges compared to KWLT’s usual fare of stage plays. Let’s meet the intrepid production team who rose to those challenges.
Joe Gull (Director) began in musical theater in high school in 1993 with “Oklahoma”, and first ventured into community theater in Orillia with Mariposa Theatre’s productions of “South Pacific” and “Little Shop of Horrors”. After appearing in “Low Life’s” for Hamilton’s Staircase Theater Emerging artist series and then again in the Hamilton Fringe festival, the necessities of career forced him into a 10 year hiatus from theater. He returned in 2018 for TCP’s “Oliver” as Bill Sikes, then again in TCP’s 2019 production of “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” as one of Quasimodo’s gargoyles, then again in 2019 with TCP in “Calendar Girls”. Since the beginning of 2020, Joe has lent his voice to eight audio dramas productions with KWLT (“The Tragedy of Mariam”, “All Around the Square”) and ICHTHYS Theater (“The Velveteen Rabbit”, the Sherlock Holmes series), served as Assistant Director and Director for all five episodes of the “All Around The Square” series, appeared in the Ensemble for Playful Fox’s “Beauty and the Beast” and is set to return with Playful Fox again in the Canadian Premiere of “Murder On The Orient Express”.
Monica Maika (Stage Manager) has been involved with KWLT for the past three years, ever since moving back to Ontario. She has been onstage for KWLT but transitioned to behind-the-scenes work during the pandemic. She is happy to be involved in theatre in any form, even when it means keeping Joe on track and on time. She will be seen treading the boards again in Playful Fox’s upcoming production of “Miracle on 34th Street”. Thanks to Shawn for putting up with late night absences and the sounds of shouting coming from the zoom rehearsals.
Rob Curwain (Technical Director) is excited to be a part of “The Devil’s Disciple”. This is his first proper time with KWLT, after partially assisting in “All Around the Square”. You may have heard him as the Announcer in ICHTHYS Theatre’s Sherlock Holmes audio dramas, and he was recently on stage in Playful Fox’s production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”. Sit back and enjoy the madness that is “The Devil’s Disciple”!
At the start of “The Devil’s Disciple” we see the British army as monolithic, a looming offstage threat; by the third act we’re privy to their internal disputes. Here are the actors playing the redcoats:
Fred Brandenburg (General Burgoyne) is thrilled to be back with KWLT as General Burgoyne. Previous KWLT roles include Dragon in “Paper Bag Princess: the Musical”, and Saucy Jack in “Saucy Jack and the Space Vixens”. Big (virtual) hugs to director Joe (a.k.a. The Gargoyle), the entire team at KWLT and Her Worship for supporting Fred in his theatre addiction.
TJ Pelkman (Major Swindon) makes his theatrical debut in “The Devil’s Disciple” and he is thrilled to be a part of the production. When TJ isn’t fixing computers or painting tabletop miniatures he is playing drums or practicing Brazilian Jiujitsu. Being involved in this theatre production has given TJ more of an appreciation for movies and what it takes to be an actor.
Joseph A. Sebok (The Sergeant) grew up thinking his voice one day could be heard all over the world. As part of the cast of “The Devil’s Disciple”, he is extremely excited to have the opportunity to do so. He has also done Radio Dramas/Voice-Over work for OMT’s 2019 “Beauty and the Beast”, and with Playful Fox Productions from 2018–2021 as multiple characters from “A Christmas Carol”, “Dracula”, “Frankenstein”, and recently “The Importance of Being Earnest”. He is honoured to be a part of the Kitchener-Waterloo Little Theatre family, and hopes you enjoy the show.
“The Devil’s Disciple” is set in Websterbridge, New Hampshire; aside from the Dudgeons, the townsfolk we meet are largely divines and professionals. Let’s meet the actors playing them.
Lauren Kallan (Judith Anderson) is excited to be performing in her first leading role as Judith Anderson in ”The Devil’s Disciple”. A lifelong dancer and passionate advocate for the performing arts in education, she is looking forward to contributing to KWLT’s arts programming. Lauren would like to thank all of the cast and crew for their encouragement and warm welcome to the world of community theatre. She is also profoundly grateful to director Joe Gull and his faith in her. Lauren dedicates her performance this season to her daughter Aubrey.
Matt Walsh (Anthony Anderson) has been closely involved with KWLT for quite a few years, but this is his first major role in a production on stage, so to speak. He was previously a voice on the television in 2019’s “The December Man (l’homme de Décembre)” as well as being the show’s producer, and served as technical director for “Problem Child” & “Criminal Genius” earlier that year. He currently holds a ludicrous number of offices in the theatre; outside of KWLT he teaches math online for Purdue University Fort Wayne.
Joshua Jones (Chaplain Brudenell) is thrilled to be involved in “The Devil’s Disciple”. Joshua is a novice actor but has always found the theatre fascinating. He looks forward to stretching boundaries and pushing the limits. Enjoy the show!
Min Ling (Lawyer Hawkins) is thrilled to be involved with “The Devil’s Disciple”. You may recognize him as one of the voices from “The Tragedy of Mariam” or that foot that kicked down a door in “Criminal Genius”. He has also taken part in several other productions on and off stage, such as “The December Man (l’homme de Décembre)” and “Blood Relations”. He would like to thank his friends and family and childhood teddy bear for the support. Enjoy the show!
