Monday, April 4 is shaping up to be a Red Letter Day for Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Yellow Door Theatre Project. That’s the night of the premiere of the hour-long original musical film written by Lezlie Wade and Scott Christian, and starring a young cast that includes a number of local students.
Wade is still in the process of editing down footage from almost five months of six-hours-a-day filming last summer. It’s a daunting task at times.
“It’s massive,” she says of the process. “It was a guerrilla shoot. I have a whole bunch of b-roll that I have to go through for reaction shots. Some clips, there might be five takes, and one take there might have been a light showing, in another a bug might have flown by, and another a tourist might have walked through the scene.”
The film centres around the graduation of the fictional all-girls school High Gate Academy. Scenes were shot across NOTL, including at the gazebo, at the Niagara Pumphouse Arts Centre, the St. Mark’s Church cemetery, Queenston Heights, Royal Oak Community School and Niagara Shores Park. The old Laura Secord Memorial School in Queenston fills in for the academy.
“The couple who are there doing restoration work were so amazing,” Wade says from her Old Town home. “They actually let us into the school to shoot in the hallway at the main entrance. And we shot in the schoolyard there, too.”
A number of scenes were also shot in Niagara Falls at the Butterfly Conservatory, while Queen Victoria Park fills in for a segment of the film that takes place in Paris. As well, a green screen was set up at Yellow Door’s studio for some of the other settings in France.
Yellow Door’s founder and artistic producer Andorlie Hillstrom expresses her admiration for all the work Wade has done on this project. Wade wrote the book and lyrics, handled all the camera work on the shoot, directed the musical and is editing the film.
She’s worked on a number of projects with Christian, who wrote the music for the sixteen songs in the film. The pair previously collaborated on a shorter film, Dead Reckoning, and teamed with Yellow Door for last year’s musical adaptation of Hansel and Gretel, performed at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre.
For Red Letter Day, Hillstrom put out a casting call across the Ontario theatre world, not expecting the interest that it would generate.
“We had teens from Stratford, St. Thomas, Toronto, Richmond Hill and London auditioning,” says Hillstrom. “Frankly, there may not have been as much interest if the pandemic hadn’t been on. These kids were so looking for something to do. And this is enormous for them to be
involved in a project with artists of the calibre of Scott and Lezlie.”
Yellow Door regulars Hannah and Ayla Jamal, Sydney Cornett (who also served as production assistant), Mariah Rackal, Emily Fulton and Catherine Dubois all have important roles in Red Letter Day.
Crossroads Public School graduate and current Grade 10 Laura Secord Secondary School student Dubois plays Yasmina, a math and science genius pondering her true calling as graduation looms.
“She’s a great student, but she kind of struggles with whether or not that’s the path she wants to take,” says Dubois. “She got into a very good school, but then she takes a trip to Paris, where she sees the painting Portrait of Madeleine (by French artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist), which changes everything and makes her question her future.”
Dubois loved the filming process last summer, even those 12-hour days of 40 degree Celsius temperatures, and like the other actors, will be seeing the film on April 4 for the first time.
“I am so excited to see it,” she says. “There’s a lot I don’t know (about the other scenes in the film). I know what I did, and I know the graduation. It’s going to be really cool to see what my friends did. Even though I’m in it, I don’t know everything about it.”
As the script had not yet been completed by the time the casting process began, Wade and Christian were able to tailor much of the storyline and the songs to the actors who would be taking on the roles.
“Lezlie had a rough idea of what we wanted to do,” Christian says, “but it’s only after we met the participants that the individual stories and songs for each of them came to life. The cool thing is that each actor has a bespoke role and a bespoke song that is written just for them and their experience.”
Christian adds that the songs run the gamut from pop, to rock to EDM (electronic dance music). Each number looks at issues that typical teens face and avoids the sappiness of an After-School Special.
“Our mission with this was to create a body of work and a collection of songs that would really thrill teenage singers,” he explains. “I’m really proud that even divorced from the video, it works as an album. And it’s a small miracle that the kids we got are just phenomenal. They sound like a professional cast.”
In preparation for writing the lyrics, Wade dug through the old journals she kept during her own high school years. The process made it easier to put herself into the shoes of a 17-year-old about to graduate.
Of the storyline, Wade says there are lots of funny moments, but also some deep drama throughout Red Letter Day.
“It’s a lot spookier and haunting than I thought it was going to be,” she marvels. “Part of it is because there is a girl in this class who is killed in a hit-and-run accident. One of the other girls is secretly in love with her, and she has to learn how to let go. The whole story anchors on that girl who is gone.”
Hillstrom is quick to credit the financial support of the Lauren and Vaughn Goettler Foundation for making the movie happen. And she adds that the parents of the cast were very supportive, driving the kids around to the various sites and appearing as extras in the graduation scene, shot at Queenston Heights. And for the barbecue scene, Joe Otta actually cooked for the entire cast and crew.
It’s not lost on the participants that many of the students involved weren’t able to have their own real-life graduation ceremonies during the past two years. Dubois, for example, was not able to attend a Grade 8 graduation from Crossroads in 2020.
“They came together and had this experience,” reflects Wade, “They really bonded by having this graduation experience. When you look at the film, it really feels like they have known each other for quite some time.”
Christian adds that when it comes right down to it, Red Letter Day is more about the experience for the kids than it is about the final product, as great as it might be. Though there may be future screenings of the film beyond next month’s premiere, he is really hoping the play and the songs will be used by youth everywhere for future auditions. And Wade doesn’t rule out adapting the script for a future performance on stage.
The premiere of Red Letter Day is Monday, April 4 at 7 p.m. at the FirstOntario Performing Arts Centre’s Film House in St. Catharines. Tickets are $17 and can be purchased at firstontariopac.ca.
