New West residents will enjoy music, theatre and much more as they stroll down memory lane in celebration of Century House’s 60th anniversary.
Golden Age Theatre, the centre’s theatre group, is highlighting outstanding moments in news, politics, sports, music and fashion in a dinner-club, cabaret-style production, Those Were the Days. Joined by other groups at Century House, the show will use music, song, dance and audience participation to journey from 1958 to 2018.
“It’s Century House’s 60th year in existence, so the show is going to flashback to 1958, 1968, 1978, etc. For each segment there will be some news items, some fads, idiosyncrasies of that year, a little bit of everything of that particular year,” said Carla Krens, artistic director of Golden Age Theatre. “We will have people coming on doing different things. Some will do fashions. Others will do whatever was appropriate for that particular year. The Century House ukulele group will sing songs for each year and the choir will do a song for almost every year.”
While the Golden Age Theatre Company normally performs on its own, participation from other Century House groups means about 70 people will be part of Those Were the Days. With the action being centred around a “news desk”.
“I did a lot of research. I had to come up with things for each year,” Krens said. “I didn’t do everything the same for every year. I took dialogue out of a movie that was a hit in a certain year, or a song titles. That was the most work for me – to find all that information and then sift through it and pick a few for each year and make it different for each year so it’s not predicable. The news people are the centre of it.”
Kren said the setup is going to be more informal than most productions, with tables and chairs being placed around a catwalk.
Those Were the Days is taking place on Friday, June 1 at 7 p.m. and Saturday, June 2 at 1 p.m. Tickets are $8 for Century House members and $10 for non-members, and are available at Century House.
Refreshments will be served after the performance. A limited number of tickets are available, so people are encouraged to get them quick before they sell out.
Krens was involved in writing and putting on about 25 variety shows, plays and productions in Sicamous before re-retiring to New Westminster. Those Were the Days is her third and final production at the helm of Golden Age Theatre.
“Come have some fun with us,” she suggests. “Sing along or interact, or sit back and enjoy. It’s maybe not hugely sophisticated but it’s a lot of fun.”
Princess Margaret visited the Royal City in 1958 to officially open Century House. The Century House Association is planning a number of events in the coming months to commemorate its anniversary.
