Performing arts students take on Stage Door, Middletown

Second-year students at Canadian College of Performing Arts are showcasing their talents in two shows, their first public theatrical presentations of the 2018/19 season.

Stage Door, the American theatre classic by Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman, opened Wednesday and will be staged Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday in a 2 p.m. matinee. All performances are at the college’s Performance Hall, 1701 Elgin Rd.

This witty, fast-paced valentine to live theatre, popularized by a considerably different 1937 movie version starring Katharine Hepburn and Ginger Rogers, chronicles the hopes and struggles of several aspiring stage actresses who live at the Footlights Club, a bustling boarding house in Depressionera New York.

Middletown, Will Eno’s existential humour-laced drama—described asa contemporary equivalent to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town — opens tonight at 7:30 p.m., with a 2 p.m. matinee on Friday and the closing-night performance on Saturday. By turns profoundly moving, darkly comic and surreal, the play journeys into the universe of a small American town that is anything but normal, with stops from the local library to outer space.

The Saturday Stage Door matinee and Middletown’s 7:30 p.m. show that day are “relaxed performances.” These performances are open to everyone, but intended to be welcoming to those who find the theatre environment challenging.

Stage Door and Middletown presented unique challenges and rewards for both directors.

“It’s madness, and it’s fun,” said director James Leard, describing the comic chaos in Stage Door, a show he says he wanted the students to participate in to have the experience of doing a big, 1930s-era American theatre production on a box set.