The Dining Room is a play on family life

Acting out eight or nine characters in one play sounds like quite the feat, but actors Teresa Wright and Corin McFadden say it's what makes The Dining Room, the latestproduction by A Community Theatre (ACT) P.E.I.,so much fun.

The play, which is showing in Charlottetown next week, takes the audience behind the scenes of various decades of North American upper-middle-class family life, with each scene set inside a dining room.

Wright said it's an intimate look at many characters and story lines, and the actors play everyone from children to grandparents, maids and friends.

In total, the actors portray55 personas, or eight to tenpeopleper actor. But every character has his or her own scene, so it's easy to switch between the roles, she said.

"You really only have to try to think about all the motivation and the delivery for one scene," said Wright. "And it's a good challenge, too, because you get to try different things."

An intimate look at family dynamics

Wright, who is performing withACTfor the first time, said the play takes an intimate look at different slices of life and family dynamics.

Most peoplewatching a performance ofthe The Dining Room canidentify with at least one of the characters, she said.

"Maybe they had some conversation with their own mother that way, or they argued with their father," she said. "There are little pieces of it that I think a lot of people can identify with."

McFadden grew up in a household with a dining room, so he was familiar with many ofthe different rituals and habits that come with dining together.

'A lot of a good family connection'

But the play will appeal to most people with its many depictions of family, some of them loving, others more dramatic, he said.

"There is a lot of a good family connection in this play," he said.

He added that the theatre tracked down several original pieces for props, such as glassware or china, to make the play appear even closer to reality.

By now, the actors even had a few private showings set in people's dining rooms on the Island, said McFadden.

"It's almost more of a performance art when you are right in someone's kitchen," he said.

Now The Dining Roomwill be available to a larger audience in Charlottetown, with shows at the Le Carrefour Theatre on Feb. 17 and 18.

Tickets can be bought online or at the door.

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