What started as a pitch to a local travel tour company has become one playwright/actor’s favourite play to perform.
Sarah Quick is the author of Sunshine Express, a play that explores and jokes about a creature only found in Canada: the snowbird.
Sunshine Express follows Alan and Brenda - a couple just turning 40 who are gifted two tickets aboard Charlie Cheetles Charter tour bus making a round trip from Ontario to Florida and back again. The other two main characters are Tommy, the happy, enthusiastic bus driver, and Sandy, the hospitable tour guide (played by Quick).
The cast of four actors plays all 30 characters aboard the bus at various moments during the play.
The story is told through the eyes of Alan and Brenda, who feel out of place with the grey-haired Snowbirds, but are brought together by the shared experience of a 24-hour bus ride. They discover you’re never too old to make new friends.
“It’s very much about friendships and relationships and love and aging and trying to find the best fun you can find in life,” said Quick, who moved to Canada from England before she wrote Sunshine Express in 2010.
She wrote the play after approaching a travel tour company about becoming a season sponsor for her local theatre. She promised to write “a play that would have the whole audience wanting to go on a coach trip,” if they agreed to be a sponsor.
They did and Quick was on the hook.
She and her husband took a bus tour to Florida and back. It was a 24-hour trip with no overnight stops.
“I was concerned as to what material I would find,” she said. “From day one the play just wrote itself. There were so many funny incidents, so many endearing conversations and so many nice, heartfelt emotions. It ran the gamut of all the emotions you can think of.”
Quick chose to tell the story from the perspective of much younger tour bus patrons for the same reason she thought it was important for a British playwright to tell the story of a Candian phenomenon.
“I can make observations that a Canadian wouldn’t or couldn’t,” she said. “Similarly a younger person can make observations an older person wouldn’t or couldn’t.”
Sunshine Express has become a cast favourite. In fact, it’s the still the original cast who performs the show and will be on stage at the Gayety Theatre when Sunshine Express is performed from June 12-16. Theatre Collingwood is bringing the show to town.
“We’re sort of a bit in love with it,” said Quick. “These characters have become very much a part of our lives so we enjoy bringing them to life again.”
This will be the first time Quick and the cast are performing in Collingwood. Tickets for Sunshine Express are available online.