Miss Pringle’s Mini-Skirt - theHumm July 2024

By Kris Riendeau

Stone Fence Theatre is a true local gem in the Ottawa Valley. This semi-professional non-profit company has been developing and producing their own original material since 2003, including musical reviews like The Train She Blew from Killaloe, and a romantic musical comedy called Stick Out Your Tongue and Say MOO. In 2023 they toured the Valley with Tom Thomson and the Colours of Canada — a production that raised about $10,000 for local hospitals. Their most recent production was Conspiracy Conniptions, a zany comedy set in a doughnut shop and sung in gospel music style. With their new show opening in July, theHumm caught up with founder/producer Ish Theilheimer to find out more about them.

theHumm: What inspired the founding of Stone Fence Theatre in 2002, and what were some of the initial challenges you faced?

Ish Theilheimer: A number of local storytellers, musicians and artists came together to found the company. I was having a lot of fun playing with The Wilno Express, three “from-aways” who came together to write a lot of funny folk-inspired songs about local people and events — The Breeding of the Pig, The Wilno Hound, The Killaloe Kid in a Kitchener Kitchen, The Toronto Polka — a lot of silly stuff that made people happy in the bars and parties we played throughout the Valley in the ’70s. Then the late Barry Goldie encouraged me to write with a home-grown theatre company called The Upper Madawaska Theatre Group in the 1970s. My first musical, in 1977, was called A Place to Roost, about a city rooster who moved to the country to live on the land. Upper Madawaska developed a number of original scripts, most of them focused on the local area. My work with The Ottawa Citizen connected me in another way with people all over the Valley. Johanna Zomers, author of 2024’s Miss Pringle’s Mini-Skirt, was part of the founding group and was also writing for The Citizen.

It was fun, but it was challenging indeed. There was no tradition of professional theatre in the area, and local people were not accustomed to going out to theatre. We solved that by staging “supper theatre” reminiscent of church suppers, and producing our shows in parish and community halls — anywhere we could seat an audience. For years, we served supper at every show. Now, we only do it once in a while because it’s so much work!

Our biggest challenge has always been our geographic isolation, and the fact that although our area is beautiful and a nice place to spend the summer, it is not a prime tourist destination. It has no large attractions or resorts. We had hoped when we launched the company that it could be a full-time professional operation, but the low-key nature of the tourism industry here ultimately meant we could not do that. We have been part-time and semi-professional since 2006, so getting on Ontario’s and Canada’s cultural map has been hard.

Nevertheless, we offer a unique, magical product, and seasoned theatre-goers who experience Stone Fence for the first time are always blown away by what we produce. We are a group with long experience working together and collaborating to produce very special, original theatrical and musical material. Walk into the community hall, and we take you away to another reality. I, personally, have never lost the inspiration I got from a play my parents took me to see in New York City when I was quite small. It opens with these words: “You are about to hear an opera for beggars. Since this opera was conceived with the splendour only a beggar can imagine and since it had to be so cheap even a beggar could afford it, it is called The Threepenny Opera.” Our shows have that same sense of home-grown grandeur.

Can you share more about the types of productions you focus on and how they reflect the cultural and historical heritage of the Ottawa Valley?

We are of, about, and for the Ottawa Valley. In our earliest years, most of our productions were historical. Our first original show was based on the 100-year history produced by The Eganville Leader called Reflections of a Century, the Musical. One of our most popular shows in early years was Al Capone’s Hideout, about when the gangster hid out near Quadeville. We did a show about the Ottawa Valley’s best-known songwriter, Mac Beattie, that played, in one form or another, 75 times in venues all over the Valley. And Up at Fred’s — Allons-y, the story of beloved Chapeau, Quebec hotel keeper Fred Meilleur, played to more than 4,000 people in 2019.

What role do local artists and community members play in your productions, and how do you engage them in the creative process?

We have built a strong network of local artists who work together on our productions and who inspire one-another to create new ones. Last year we started a playwriting workshop, and there are at least four scripts in development in connection with that. One of the ways we have developed plays over the years is by holding storytelling sessions in which we encourage local people with knowledge of, or experience in, a particular area or time or subject to come and share their stories. We have put a lot of material on stage that has come out of these sessions. It’s hard to make up stuff as interesting as actual history and real people’s stories.

Could you discuss some of the most memorable or impactful performances you’ve had and what made them stand out?

There are so many. Doing Up at Fred’s for 500 people in Chapeau. Doing High Times at the Heart Institute — which is all about the defence of public health care — in Deep River the weekend after Donald Trump was elected. The first storytelling session at the Wilno Tavern in December, 2002. The wonderful roast pork the Our Lady of the Angels church ladies made in our original Brudenell parish hall location. The standing ovations every time Fran Pinkerton sang Canada is Love in Conspiracy Conniptions. So many great memories! We’ve never “made it big,” but the connection we’ve made with people in our community is gratifying and rewarding.

Can you give our readers a sneak peek at your upcoming production, Miss Pringle’s Mini-Skirt, which is set to open July 24?

It’s a two-act musical in two distinct musical styles — Beatles and Mac Beattie (Mac was the Valley’s best-known songwriter) — because those were the competing styles in the Valley in the ’60s. The show casts a fond look back at the final days of rural schoolhouses as the Ottawa Valley discovered the Beatles, the Cold War, and Hockey Night in Canada. The script is inspired by Johanna Zomers’ nostalgic weekly columns in The Eganville Leader. In it, a young, inexperienced first-time teacher “from away” learns to cope with her first teaching job in a schoolhouse on the Opeongo Line, the historic settlement road that winds through the hills of Renfrew County. From threshing to chicken killing, from chimney fires to putting on the Christmas concert, Miss Pringle and her students get an education in rural life, love, family and friendship.

Miss Pringle’s Mini-Skirt opens on July 24 at the Rankin Culture and Recreation Centre in Pembroke. Tickets are available at Tickets Please (TicketsPlease.ca, 485–6434).

Hookking Up with Teri Bell and Chris Wynnyk! - theHumm July 2024

By Sally Hansen

Art… and Soul

These two Valley sisters have hook(k)ed up in a deliciously creative undertaking titled Hookk Creative Crochet. For the past three years these two fabric artists have played and experimented and thoroughly enjoyed themselves developing a line of crocheted jewellery. Suspend any initial reservations, and take a serious look at their eye-catching results.

Matched with the right outfit, their colourful, organic, wildly original pieces can spice up your wardrobe and your life. Each croche......

Miss Pringle’s Mini-Skirt - theHumm July 2024