Improvements are underway at McColl Playhouse, thanks to three young Terrace Little Theatre Society summer student workers.
Sydney Freeman and Nadia Gifford have been working on-site to upgrade the wheelchair accessibility of the building and sprucing up the theatre space, and Finn Ignas has been working remotely to update the group’s website.
“[The society is] renovating the bathroom, so we were helping with plumbing and putting the frames up and the insulation,” said Gifford, a second year University of Northern British Columbia student.
“We’ve been working on making a pathway so that wheelchairs can wrap around and come in, they’re redoing the bathroom to make it a more flat surface, more handicap accessible and we’ve been redoing the main theatre space.”
Freeman graduated from Caledonia Secondary School this year and will be attending British Columbia Institute of Technology in the fall. She said that she likes the maintenance aspect of the job.
“They’re showing me different saws and different tools, and showing me different techniques and blueprints and what not to help me with trades, they know that I’m interested in it,” she said.
Usually, the Terrace Little Theatre runs the Summer Drama Days program, a day camp for six to 13-year-olds. At the end of the three week camp the children perform a play for their parents and members of the community.
But due to the COVID-19 pandemic, that program has not been able to take place this summer or last. Usually the summer students help out at Summer Drama Days, but instead they have been working on other important projects around the historic building located on the corner of Soucie Ave. and Kalum St.
Aug. 27 is the student’s last day of work before heading back to school.
“I just love this building, and every time we go around, we’re like, ‘Oh, that might need fixing and that might need renovating,’ but the whole time, we love being here, it’s really cool,” Gifford said.
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