The Prairie Players' production of Done To Death starts Thursday night at the William Glesby centre in Portage la Prairie.

Director Paul Oleynick says there are three nights you can see the show.

Paul Oleynick, director"Tomorrow night, tickets are on sale, and flying off the shelves for Thursday and Friday night. We're hoping to get a few more people on Saturday. No dinner theatres for this. This is a spring production. Our spring productions don't have dinner theatre, but our fall productions do. We will have that for Sound of Music coming up in the fall."

He shares how practices have been going.

"We've been plugging away since January, and it's getting better and better as we go. It's just, some days I grit my teeth, but it's hard, because it's a cast of 17, and to get everybody to show up all the time is quite the challenge. They've done a tremendous job. They've come around -- the cast. They've volunteered their time. And we've worked around a lot of schedules and I think we got a show. The camera club came out the other day and took some pictures and watched the show. They said it was quite good."

Oleynick notes the actors involved.

"They've approached it very professionally. A lot of the people from the Prairie Players have been around like since '69. And there are still some there today that are part of the original crew. They're very professional; everybody behind the scenes, and in the scenes. We're starting to get some new Prairie Players out there that are just amateurs, and they're giving their go at it. They're doing quite well. They're learning off the senior actors as is to be expected. They rub off on them."

He lets us in on the plot.

Nita Wiebe (Photo courtesy of Dennis Wiens)
Gord Holm (Photo courtesy of Dennis Wiens)"Without giving anything away, they're going to laugh, and laugh, and laugh, and still laugh. It's a parody of all the mystery genre type things: Agatha Christie, James Bond; the hard-hitting; the horror genre as well. These are once-famous authors that are gathered together to write a television pilot. When a murder does occur, they start poking fun of each others' styles. So, it's a lot of fun. It goes into the fourth wall -- imagination sequences where they're poking fun of each others' styles. It's quite funny. It's very well written by Fred Carmichael."

Oleynick says it's his second director's experience, with his first back in 1994 at Prairie Theatre Exchange. He directed Eric Bogosian's play Talk Radio, a more serious, controversial piece. Oleynick notes the newcoming actors can be expected to come away from the production with the theatre seed in them, wanting to do more. He says once they hear feedback from the audience as they perform, it becomes of them.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Wiens

Productions take place Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, at 8:00 p.m., while doors open at 7:30. Tickets are also available at the door. It's reserved seating, so if you want to get them in advance and pick your seats, you can call the William Glesby Centre (204) 239-4848. or go online as well: www.glesbycentre.com