BOYS’ THEATRE COMPANY

Press, Volume LXXXIX, Issue 27047, 23 May 1953, Page 2

BOYS’ THEATRE COMPANY

CONCERT FOR CORSO FUND

The wardrobe* of a number of home* in St. Albans will have a iadly depleted look this afternoon, when the Well’s Theatre Company presents a concert in the Methodist Hall, Rugby street As yet, the company is not a real threat to the New Zealand Players—its members are all schoolboys—but for enthusiasm and enterprise it bears comparison with much more experienced companies. The C. B. Cochran of this variety show is John Harrison, aged 13, and the headaches of theatrical production are not new to him. Last year he and his friends produced a concert to aid the funds of CORBO, and today’s takings will be devoted to the same cause. John Harrison has been interested in theatricals since he was a very small boy, and he was still at the Heaton Street School when he presented his first production. He is now a pupil of the Papanui Technical College, and others from the same school, with one or two from the Christchurch Boys’ High School, make up the eight members of the Well’s Theatre Company. Two months’ solid work has gone into the preparation of this year’s concert, and the players’ parents may not realise the full extent of their assistance until they begin to recognise familiar articles on the stage. Properties have been made by the boys, costumes borrowed from families and friends, and the assistance of two wellknown Christchurch personalities has been obtained—“ Aunt Haysi” and “Major,” formerly of station 3YA. For those unappreciative of the drama, there will be a "bring and buy” stall. John Harrison’s assiduous search for anything that might help the show has been a successful one. He has managed to borrow a sound system. His father has built him a puppet theatre, complete with coloured lights, which John himself stage furnished, and operates. Another member of the company has borrowed a radio pickup and records for the incidental music, and for weeks the boys have steadily rehearsed the plays in the programme.

John Harrison plans to present another show next year, and it may well become a sensational, spectacular epic —for by then John Harrison will be a veteran of 14.