It's a play about cultural diversity, the aging demographics of Canada and the lack of young people willing to take on the volunteer mantles.Still, it's meant to make you laugh.“It's a comedy where you really have to laugh at yourself,” said playwright Laurie Hodges Humble.Her play The Poplar Grove Ladies Club is to be performed by community actors as a fundraiser for the Dickson Store Museum in November. Hodges Humble is shocked that her play, which she wrote as part of a workshop in the winter of 2010-11, is about to be on a local stage.“I'm over the moon. I have to be pinched,” she said.The plot is about a ladies club that runs a preschool. One of the mothers of a child there wants to put on a Christmas concert, another mother is too “politically correct” to want to do so and the older ladies who run the club and preschool just want to go to Phoenix for the winter.The playwright said it was inspired by two things – her own experience working in a multicultural situation where Christmas-related things were banned until those the ban was meant to make feel comfortable asked for the celebrations themselves. The second is a story she wrote for the Innisfail Province about the Spruce View Ladies Club and how they couldn't get enough people to put on a Christmas concert.The Poplar Grove Ladies Club is about keeping cultural traditions alive but also tackles the changing face of rural Canada, Hodges Humble said.“Life is so different,” Hodges Humble said.Sharon Lightbown, the Dickson Store Museum manager and an actor, marketing, committee member and volunteer coordinator for the play said she met Hodges Humble in the playwriting workshop so she knew about the play.In 2009 the Dickson Store Museum put on Once Upon a Dickson and since then there's been requests for another play.“Part of our mandate at the museum is to offer opportunities that are what the community and the surrounding community wants,” Lightbown said.The play is scheduled to be performed at the Spruce View Community Hall Nov. 9 and 10.The Nov. 9 show will be performed as a dinner theatre, with a buffet-style meal preceding the performance. Tickets for that dinner theatre are $40 each or a table of 10 for $350.The Nov. 10 show will be an afternoon dessert theatre, with an offering of homemade treats available. Tickets for that show are $25 each or $200 for a table of 10.Lightbown is playing one of the older ladies who works in the kitchen at the club.“It will be a great play,” she said. The performance culminates in a Christmas pageant that is built in as part of the play.Currently the cast is meeting to read the play through three days a week, but will start deciding on the accompanying actions and positions of the actors soon.“We are having so many laughs,” Lightbown said.To purchase tickets, call the Dickson Store Museum at 403-728-3355. If no one answers, leave a message and the call will be returned.
