by Jason Asbell
It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.
With the lovely snows this past weekend, fresh white linen draped our cozy mountain town and all its buildings. And even though The Civic Centre roof was one such blanketed structure, it is still within snow load limits to be able to hold NCTS’ annual free community winter event, Home For the Holidays, this coming Saturday, Dec. 9.
Besides gigantic Barbie boxes and everyone decked in pink, Home For the Holidays is our favourite Civic Theatre event of the year. Resident Nelson Muppet, Ebenzella Bruise, is back joining us with Santa, Kootenay-born animator Nathan Affolter, and other surprise visits for prizes, drawing lessons, laughs, and free holiday movie screenings. Starting with Aardman Animations’ beautiful holiday short film Robin Robin, we are excited to bring back Elf as our feature film (and in celebration of its 20th anniversary!).
This year’s event is once again generously sponsored by SMT Lawyers, allowing it to continue to be barrier-free (meaning you can come for free, or choose to pay a bit to support NCTS’ operations). And in return, NCTS, with all your generous food and cash donations, can help support all the amazing work and services provided by the Nelson Community Food Centre. Bring a donation for the Food Centre and receive a free mini popcorn from The Civic Theatre concession.
Finally, as we look to the end of the year and the future of The Civic and NCTS overall, just a little reminder that we are still in the thick of our Rising Strong operating fund campaign, with a goal of raising $100,000 by Dec. 31. We are delighted to have had such a tremendous response from our community already, with more than $42,000 raised toward this goal since late October, and more than 130 donors!
This year, your support is more vital than ever. With anticipated closures of The Civic Theatre due to snow this winter, we really do need some help from our friends to transition into the coming year. We accept donations of cash, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and cryptocurrency, and can offer a charitable receipt. Gifts can be made through civictheatre.ca/donate.
In addition, we warmly welcome pre-purchased advertising credits this year, which can help small businesses as they wrap up this year, while helping NCTS too. Advertising credits never expire and we will have great opportunities for advertising and sponsorship in the year to come. Email us at info@civictheatre.ca for more information.
From all the elves here at NCTS, we look forward to welcoming you all to your community theatre this season and many more seasons to come.
Jason Asbell is programming director at The Civic Theatre.