We’ll take a cup of kindness, yet.

 Chinook High School hopes to promote compassion and understanding with their production of “ the Curious Incident of the Dog in The Night-time, which runs  Dec. 12-17.

The Simon Stephens penned drama, based on  Mark Haddon’s novel is a five time Tony Award winning, seven time Olivier Award winning play. Chinook High School drama teacher Duane Piper is directing the production.

“ So we feel pretty lucky to be able to do it,” said assistant director, Grade 12 student Kaitlin Carter.
“It is about Christopher Boone, A 15-year-old with autism who is really good at math. We get to see the world through his eyes,” Carter continued, adding the 25 member cast and crew tell the story though  a lot of tech, sound, storytelling as well as the acting itself.

“The Story opens with Christopher finding a dead dog on the road and is blamed for it because he is first on the scene, but he decides to try and solve the mystery and find out who did it,” she described, noting as the story progresses, he discovers a devastating secret about his family.

“ It’s a really exciting project for us to work on,” she said adding Chinook students are working with more tech and fewer cast than in most of their previous performances.
“It’s definitely a drama, though there are some funny moments,” she said, adding  the story contains some important lessons about compassion, caring  and empathy for other people.

The Lethbridge Shakespeare Performance Society is excited to welcome back familiar faces as they bring back their popular fundraiser Shakespeare Meets Dickens, Dec. 14 at Casa.
“It’s the third annual Shakespeare Meets Dickens. It’s an important fundraiser for the Lethbridge Shakespeare Society,” said artistic director Kate Connolly, who won’t be part of this year’s event due to undergoing knee surgery. But there will be plenty of familiar faces taking part including talented singers and musicians Megan Wittig, Ken Rogers, Stephanie Savage and Chris Peterson.

There will also be a lot of familiar faces on stage taking part in the reader’s theatre including most of the Shakespeare Performance Society board members including Jeff Graham and Shelly David plus The Tempest director DJ Gellatly.

The Shakespeare Performance Society has presented innovative productions of Shakespeare plays  in Galt Gardens for the last seven years including a space themed version of the Tempest this year, a western version of A Comedy of Errors and Romeo and Juliet set in contemporary Italy before that.

“This year we’re excited to present Macbeth directed by an and coming young director who studied with Peter Hinton in Ontario, who has directed the Stratford Festival and the Canadian Stage Company in Toronto,” said  Connolly, noting Monique Danielle returns home from Toronto this year to direct a more traditional version of MacBeth.
“I think the board wants to keep it in a fairly traditional time and there’s even been talk of kilts! My vision involves not only a lot of Scottish culture and Shakespearean time period but also the involvement of Greek and Roman mythology, particularly with the role of the witches! I want to play with the ideas of gender, feminism, femininity and toxic masculinity. We’re taking on a lot of big ideas that are so crucial to where our society’s at today but with a talented cast I think audiences are going to be in for something pretty amazing, ” Danielle wrote in a Facebook message.

There are a couple  of fun shows happening this week including a cornucopia of Christmas concerts.
Wednesday night, Dec. 12 features a whole lot of rockabilly for the second anniversary of the Windy City Opry featuring a couple of Calgary’s best rockabilly bands. Both Eve Hell and the Razors and Peter and the Wolves return to Lethbridge for the show at the Slice, which begins at 8 p.m. sharp. There is a $10 cover charge.

Get ready to laugh on Friday, Dec. 14  and have a few “Puppers” with Letterkenny Live.
K Trevor  “Squirrelly Dan” Wilson and the coach Mark Forward will be performing stand up sets before joining Letterkenny creator Jared “Wayne” Kesso and Nathan “Daryl” Dales to perform some beloved bits from the cult favourite Crave TV series and introduce some new bits. The laughs begins at 8 p.m.  Tickets are $35, $49.50 or $75.

And then there are the Christmas shows. The Lethbridge Shakespeare Performance society presents their beloved Christmas fundraiser of Shakespeare meets Dickens at Casa,Friday, Dec. 14 from 7-10 p.m. There will be a reader’s theatre performance of  A Christmas carol, Christmas carols and food from Shakespearian and Victorian times.
Tickets cost $20.

Local surf rock band Mosrite Holiday are doing double holiday duty on Friday, Dec. 14. First they will be opening a live feature of A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Owl Acoustic Lounge. Keyboardist TJ Waltho with be performing the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas with drummer Brad Brouwer and bassist Paul Holden as the show is shown in the background.

 Right after their set, Mosrite Holiday rush over to the Slice for CKXU’s Holiday extravaganza. The University of Lethbridge based community radio station have a lot to celebrate this year. In addition to celebrating the Christmas season, their long awaited 2,900 watt transmitter went live this week, allowing people to listen to 88.3 from Claresholm to Fort Macleod to Taber. The new transmitter is the product of the previous three years’ Fundrive fundraising weeks and matching government grants and a lot of hard work on the part of CKXU’s volunteers and staff.
 Several local bands play the CKXU extravaganza along with Mosrite Holiday including local stoner rock band Rainbow Patrol, synth pop musician Tyler Vandendool and alternative rock trio MomBod. Admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. The bands begin at 9 p.m.