Image Credit: CFJC Today

By Adam Donnelly

LOCAL THEATRE

Kamloops theatre company hopes to start a conversation with a production of The Zoo Story

Feb 8, 2023 | 5:00 PM

KAMLOOPS — What started as a conversation about creating an opportunity to perform during the pandemic has now come to fruition.

Derek Rein and Brandon Reid are starring in The Zoo Story, a one-act play from 1958 by Edward Albee, the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

The pair, along with director Dusan Magdolen and stage manager Jessica Reid, make up RadRock Productions, which was formed as a creative outlet, post-pandemic.

“We just started spitballing ideas back and forth,” Reid, who plays Jerry, explains. “The first time we talked about The Zoo Story, we were going to do The Zoom Story. Like, do it over Zoom, but we couldn’t really figure out the logistics to get that done. Once things started to open up last year, we put our heads together and decided we wanted to go ahead with this.”

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The story centres around Peter and Jerry, two very different people, who strike up a conversation in New York’s Central Park.

“Peter is kind of a middle-upper class gentleman in New York City who has a Sunday afternoon ritual of sitting on a bench in Central Park and reading,” Rein explains. “He encounters Brandon’s character, Jerry, one afternoon. It’s an encounter that kind of changes their lives forever.”

“Jerry is of the lower class, and he’s just walked all the way from his place to the zoo in Central Park,” Rein explains. “Now, he’s looking for someone to tell his story [to]. He bumps into Peter, and as we’ve said before, both of their lives change rather profoundly.”

According to a media release, the company chose the play because they felt the themes of Albee’s work — isolation, social class division, and the need to seek understanding from one another — were relevant over six decades after it was first written.

“We’re putting a mirror to society, but not in an accusatory way,” Reid says. “I just think we’re saying, ‘This is what we’re like as human beings’ — whether you’re more like Jerry or you’re more like Peter — or whether you’re an amalgam of the two.”

The play runs for three nights, February 9, 10 and 11, at the Pavillion Theatre. Showtime is 7:30 p.m. each night. The pair are hoping they can attract an audience and start a conversation.

“We’re kind of doing this all on our own, formed our own little company,” Rein says. “I wanted to do something that was a little bit different than what Kamloops audiences might normally come to see in the theatre. We hope people respond to it.”

Tickets are available at Kamloops Live Box Office.