Lyn and Denny Kaulback were given a hearty farewell to thank them for their contributions to the Revelstoke Theatre Company on Saturday.
“They are the theatre company,” said Martin Ralph. “It’s important to me to give them a good send-off because they are theatre in Revelstoke.”
The Kaulbacks are moving to Oliver, B.C., and are taking with them decades of acting, directing and producing plays in Revelstoke.
Lyn was one of the founders of the theatre company some 40 years ago. She was volunteering with her daughter’s grade two class when the teacher, George Winingder, told her people were starting a theatre group. She had no experience, but she saw her sister in a play.
“She raved what a wonderful time she had,” Lyn said. “I thought if she could do it, I could do it. When George put that idea out there, I thought I’d find out what it was about.”
She played the wife in a play about a dysfunctional couple; her husband in the play was her ex-husband’ s boss, making for some odd moments. “I loved it from the very first day,” she said.
She continued acting and eventually got into directing and other roles.
Denny got involved later when he met Lyn. At first he volunteered to help build sets but one day, Lyn was struggling to find someone to play the lead role of the devil in a play and Denny volunteered.
“I was at the age where you have a mid-life crisis. I thought, ‘Why don’t I precipitate my own mid-life crisis and try acting?’” he said. “It was a real eye opener because once you got your brain past the spot there’s people watching and you got into the play, everything sort of read and you forgot the audience.”
After acting in a few more plays, he tried his hand at directing. “Directing is really addictive. You take all these whisps of smoke and you make it into a picture,” he said.
Lyn played a major role in many of the community musicals, serving as director for the Sound of Music, Annie and Oliver. “Probably the biggest pleasure about it is you had so many people working together to create one goal,” she said, adding she loved that “when you do something like that, you have people as young as six and people as old as 80, and they’re all together working on a project.”
Ralph, who has run the theatre company for the past few years and is now ceding the reins himself, said the organization probably wouldn’t be here without the Kaulback’s contributions.
“There are plays we couldn’t have gotten off the round without the two of them,” he said. “Lyn is so motivated – when she digs into a show, we do it.”
Lyn and Denny said they’ve already been in touch with the head of the Oliver theatre company and will be getting involved there.
They both recommend anyone gives theatre a go. “You’ll gain confidence, you’ll get in front of people, you’ll gain experience, you’ll understand a different part of life,” said Denny.