North Glenora play readers build community

By Aaron Taylor

EDMONTON — On the third Friday of every month, the St. James play readers get together at the Westmount Presbyterian Church to engage in a little drama.

The people who meet are not former actors, or English majors, and they do not get together to produce high art. But they do engage in a literary experience, and friendship is the result.

On Nov. 18, they read Ronald Elwy Mitchell’s A Husband For Breakfast and Howard T Amend’s All the Comforts of Home, two one-act plays.

What draws people to the church is not the script they read from, but rather the people they read it with. The participants’ faces may be somewhat stoic while they read, but pensive looks are replaced with an overwhelming enthusiasm when they stop and discuss with one another what they have read.

“Some of us meet here for church, and some people are on the board together,” said Marion Hebert, the group’s chair. “But for some of us, this is really the only time we see each other.”

The group spends as much time catching up over homemade baked goods as they do actually reading reading plays. They talk passionately about the future of the North Glenora community league, and excitedly about an upcoming potluck where they will be able to see most of their fellow play readers again.

This welcoming atmosphere has been crucial in sustaining the group. The hospitality of the group’s original members is what drew in new people, and has sustained the club for 20 years.

“We’ve lost a lot of people to death, and old folks’ homes,” said Marge Lilley, one of the event’s co-ordinators. “There’s just one original member left.”

While the group’s numbers may have dwindled over the years, the meetings are still going strong. It meets on the third Friday of every month from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. at the Westmount Presbyterian Church at 13820 109A Ave.