It is great to see new cultural events developing in Yorkton.
It’s very easy for a Saskatchewan community to get into a rut where culture equates to wearing half a watermelon skin on our heads and cheering for the Canadian Football League’s Saskatchewan Roughriders in the summer, and in winter bundling ourselves in three layers of clothes and heading to a rink to watch hockey.
While both are worthy pursuits to be sure, they should not be the extent of what is offered locally, nor what we choose to support.
So this past weekend it was great to see Yorkton’s Paper Bag Players, a long-time theatrical group in the city, expand its wings a bit and host a Renaissance Fair.
Certainly the location of Rodney Ridge in the city begs for summer events to be held there. It’s not hard to imagine actual seating installed along the southern hillside of the natural amphitheatre to allow for ideal viewing of events on the valley floor, (and still leave the eastern hill for winter sliding).
But before we dream too big, we need the area to be utilized as it is.
In the past there have been attempts, including some fine Shakespeare in the Park plays. Sadly, attracting actors to learn the lines of a Shakespearean play in the all too few days of a Saskatchewan summer proved difficult.
And more discouraging was the less than expansive crowds in attendance.
While Shakespeare plays in a park in summer are standard fare in many cities, an event looked forward to each summer, it never really caught on here.
The Ren Fair idea is a bit broader in approach, encompassing sword fights, musicians and as the highlight, a family friendly theatrical performance, one of light-hearted humour, long a strength of the Paper Bag Players.
The afternoon was not badly attended, the evening performance up against a televised Roughriders game played to a rather scant audience.
But it was a start which hopefully the theatrical troupe will build on.
It is easy today to climb in a vehicle and drive down the highway to attend bigger productions, attend events with high profiles, and bigger names. We do it often, shelling out a couple of hundred in tickets, gas and a sundry costs in the process. That is a great aspect of our mobile world.
That said, we should also remember to support local talent and events. Almost every great musician starts out playing small venues looking to cover costs with a small cover charge. Local live music is the root of the careers we travel to listen to.
And the people on the stage last week were our neighbours giving of their time and talent to provide entertainment here in our city. It is an effort we should support as often as we can.
