Gala Performance to raise funds for the Atlantic Smile Company Well-known performers will assemble for the show Saturday evening at the Seniors Active Living Centre in Charlottetown. Several familiar faces from the Charlottetown Festival will take part in a gala fundraiser this weekend in Charlottetown for the Atlantic Smile Company. Terry Hatty, Julain Molnar, Catherine O’Brien, Shawna Van Omme and Hank Stinson will all perform during that gala, slated for Saturday evening at the Seniors Active Living Centre at the CARI complex on the campus of UPEI. They will be joined by pianist/singer Heidi Jury. The cast assembled for this gala will perform a diverse selection of music comprised of pop, rock and show tunes, as well as some surprises. There will also be short excerpts from a forthcoming production the Smile Company will be touring later this year. In addition, Saturday’s gala will feature a silent auction, draws for numerous door prizes and an assortment of treats catered by another member of the festival company, Glenda Landry. The Atlantic Smile Company, the group at the centre of this gala, is the only professional theatre company providing original musical theatre for seniors. The company, established in Charlottetown earlier this year, plans to tour its productions to nursing homes, hospitals and senior residences across Atlantic Canada. The company is modelled after the Ontario Smile Theatre, which has been bringing professional theatre to seniors in that province for more than 30 years. Catherine O’Brien, founder of the Atlantic Smile Company, is excited about Saturday’s gala. She is optimistic the event will help raise much needed money to fund future productions the company hopes to undertake as well as increase public awareness of just what the smile company is all about. O’Brien and Hank Stinson, co-founder of the Atlantic Smile Company, are pleased to have the support of several fellow cast members from the festival for the gala. “We have the support of some very talented people who’ve given generously of their time and talents to help us launch the smile company at this gala,” Stinson said. He’s not exaggerating. Dora Award-winning singer and actress Julain Mulnar has been performing in major theatres and cabarets across Canada and the United States for 20 years. Her many credits include appearances in such works as The House of Martin Guerre, Side By Side By Sondheim, Larry’s Party, The Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, Into the Woods, Camelot, The Taming of the Shrew, The Mikado and close to a dozen productions at the Charlottetown Festival, where she has performed at the festival for six seasons. Terry Hatty, who spent six years as lead singer with The Guess Who, has been a member of the festival for several seasons as well, appearing in such productions as Anne of Green Gables-The Musical, Something Wonderful!, Dracula, Fire and Stan Rogers: A Matter of Heart. He’s also been a featured player in productions like The British Invasion at StageWest in Toronto; The Picture of Dorian Grey at the city’s Tarragon Theatre and the World Café, London, England. Charlottetown native Shawna van Omme, who portrays Prissy Andrews in the festival’s production of Anne of Green Gables-The Musical, is a graduate of the musical theatre performance program at Sheridan College. She has also appeared in several of the festival’s main stage productions. O’Brien and Stinson both have extensive musical theatre credits as well, many of them loddged at the Charlottetown Festival in productions ranging from Anne of Green Gables-The Musical and Something Wonderful to Emily. Both have also performed in theatres across the country. This fall O’Brien and Stinson will perform in Stinson’s latest creation, Through The Gable Window, a two-person musical based on the novels of L.M. Montgomery. Stinson and Hatty are also part of the creative team behind the Charlottetown Festival’s newest mainstage production, Canada Rocks The Hits Musical Revue. They are excited about the potential of a regional smile company and are hopeful that the community will get behind the idea and support it. By Doug Gallant, The Guardian, June 3, 2005. Click here for a few candid photos from this event. |