A short film made entirely by Deloraine locals has pulled in crowds and raised more than a thousand dollars for the Deloraine Dramatic Society, with an outdoor screening planned for July.
The Sandwich Board of Broken Dreams premiered at the Little Theatre in May, with over 50 people attending each of two screenings and a net profit of $1032 donated to the Deloraine Dramatic Society.
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The cast features Fritz Robinson as Jimbo, Rob van der Elst as Les and Greg Burgess as Henry, with the film written, directed, filmed and edited by Venetia Seddon.
The story of how it came together is almost as entertaining as the film itself. “We were tricked,” says Greg Burgess. Seddon had asked the three men to help out with a reading of a play script. That became another reading, and another. “A bit like the frog in boiling water, we got used to the idea that we were actually going to perform it.”
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The group rehearsed the play throughout 2024, kept coming back each week, tempted by the director’s excellent morning teas. They improved steadily, but an 80-minute script proved too much to memorise. It looked, for a time, as if the play might become its own broken dream. Seddon’s solution was to write a shorter film script, shot in small segments throughout the year, with editing and publicity taking several months more before the film was ready to show in May 2026.
The men are no strangers to creative life in Deloraine. Robinson is an accomplished painter and Don Chorale member, van der Elst is a singer-songwriter who performed at an Arts Deloraine concert in April, and Burgess writes plays and short stories and recently stepped down as president of the Rotary Club of Deloraine.
A July screening is planned for Deloraine’s Pocket Park, with film to be projected onto the wall of the Deloraine Town Cafe bakery. The event is weather-dependent, so no date will be set until closer to the time. Details will be advertised through Arts Deloraine and the film’s Facebook page.
