Alex McCuaig | Medicine Hat News
A play revolving around the 2006 murders of the Richardsons in Medicine Hat will be making its dramatic debut today and tomorrow at Calgary's Ignite! Festival for Emerging Artists.
The Sage Theatre's production of Castles in the Sky will be a paired down version of the original script which was featured at a staged reading in Victoria earlier this year, according to playwright Jude Thadeaus Allen.
Billed as a study of violence and healing, the one-act play is based on interviews Allen - along with coauthor Francesca Albright - conducted in the year following the murder of three members of the Richardson family.
Asked why the need to produce a play of an incident that many in the Medicine Hat community would prefer to forget, Allen said there are many aspects of the story which need to be told.
"The intention (to tell the story) are similar to anyone else's," said Allen. "There are questions which need to be answered and I suppose we were the ones to do that."
As for the possibility of backlash in the Medicine Hat community for the production, Allen said he is not sure that will be the case and "it's our hope it will make a positive impact."
Tickets for Castles in the Sky at Calgary's Pumphouse Theatre are now on sale for shows on Friday at 10 p.m. and Saturday at 4 and 10 p.m. and are available by visiting 403.263.0079 ext. 2 for the box office.