PDCI Drama Club
The Perth Collegiate Drama Club:
Written by Carolee Mason 2003, Modified by Johann Ramsaran 2008
PDCI has a long history of supporting and participating in the performing arts. From the early days of PCI ( Perth Collegiate Institute ) when school performances took place downtown in the Balderson Theatre, to the late fifties and sixties, when musical and dramatic performances were held in the school’s new auditorium, drama activities have always been an important part of life at the Collegiate.
The current incarnation, which we named the "PDCI Drama Club" when we started it in 1981, has been active every year since then, producing as many as three main stage productions and fifteen student directed shows each year. Add to that the possibility of visiting productions from Eastern Ontario high schools when we host the Sears Ontario Drama Festival, and you have a very busy theatre space - once of the most active student drama programs in the province of Ontario.
Some facts about the PDCI Drama Club:
* Started in 1981, with the arrival at the school of Carolee Mason and Brent McLaren
* First production was the musical Godspell, with Carolee as director, Brent as musical director and Geoff Mason as the producer
* Under the leadership of these three, musicals and childrens’ theatre productions were mounted each year until 1988.
* We continued to do childrens’ theatre throughout the early nineties; with the arrival of Jack Hurd in 1999, we again begun to stage original childrens’ musical theatre
* For the last several years, between 2000 and 3000 elementary school children have attended our live musical theatre productions - thus developing an early appreciation for the performing arts!
* In 1982, Carolee and Geoff, who had been involved in the Sears Festival as students, entered the PDCI Drama Club’s first production into the Festival. This is the largest festival of student theatre in North America, with thousands of students, and more than three hundred schools participating annually
* Sears Festival productions from PDCI have participated at the Festival under the direction of Carolee Mason every year since 1982; Geoff Mason has continued to serve as the technical advisor and logistics person, while also taking on the task of hosting both the District Level and Regional Level of the Festival along with Janice Walker, another Sears Festival alumna, who like Geoff is a Guidance Counsellor at PDCI
* PDCI has been honoured with eight shows having been advanced to the Provincial Showcase, in which the best 15 shows from the Province are brought together and celebrated. PDCI has gone to the Showcase for the last five consecutive years.
* PDCI Shows have been selected to advance from the District to the Regional Level eighteen times.
* Students from PDCI have won awards and scholarships at the District, Regional and Provincial Levels of the Sears Festival.
* In 2007 Geoff and Carolee Mason retired, and the PDCI auditorium was renamed the Geoff and Carolee Mason Theatre.
* Currently, five PDCI students are studying or have just graduated from post-secondary performing arts programs with Sears Festival scholarship or bursary support.
* Over the years, we have graduated a number of students who have gone on to study, and then to work, in the performing arts in Canada
* Many more of our Drama Club grads have gone on to careers in the teaching field |
