Thomas Legg delivers a selection of Robert Service poems with full dramatic effect - and piano accompaniment by Jac Friedenberg on this tape. The Herald has a bit of the backstory - including the side door in the U of C theatre department that Legg came in through. [img width=662.5px]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1751905917235x771466308135969400/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [h2]Stage carpenter stepping into the spotlight[/h2] Thomas Legg was hired to be one of the guys backstage. He earns his daily bread toiling as a stage carpenter Carpenter, to be exact, of the U of C theatre services department. He constructs the sets designed for student dramatic productions. He knows his business, by the way, since he's been knocking around theatres for most of his life. He got into showbiz down east in Ontario and has spent time with the Shaw Festival, the Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg and sundry other stage companies. He was just a teen when he started but now after turning 50 last November he's decided to take the big step out front to centre stage. This week, the carpenter becomes an actor. In fact, with one bold move Thomas F. Legg assumes the titles of Producer, Director, Actor. On Thursday evening he will open a three- night run of a one-man show devised from poems written by Robert W. Service, called Songs of A Sourdough and Other Bar- Room Ballads. He is, as you might guess, very excited. "This just might be a whole new career for me," he says. The idea of the show has been growing for several years, he explains, but somehow he wasn't ready. Now he is. "I think," he says cryptically, "that all things happen in their own time." Legg has been a familiar dramatic reader in Calgary almost since he arrived in the City of Flames in 1978. He's presented two or three Christmas readings, a couple of Valentine's Day poetry recitals (including some of his own verse) and was a founder (with Ann Knight and Bill Kinsella) of the Calgary Creative Reading Series. But this is his first venture on to a stage without a script in hand. He tells me he's memorized almost two dozen of Service's best-known poems, including such classics as The Ballad of the Ice Worm Cocktail, the Shooting of Dan McGrew and, of course, the Cremation of Sam McGee. Casting the poems to memory allows him more room for dramatic effects, he says. "The Ice Worm Cocktail, for instance. It takes about 10 minutes to read but about 15 minutes to act." To help establish the mood, Legg has called on the services of pianist Jack Frieden- berg, a gent in his 70s who played for silent movies in his younger days. As well, there are lighting tricks, quick costume changes and sound effects the howling of dogs and wind. But the old carpenter naturally had to build himself a stage set it's a rustic wooden structure, looking like a seedy saloon, which he built out of well-weathered boards salvaged from a decrepit barn. Legg is pinning a lot of hopes on this production. He made the set with flexibility in mind - it's completely portable, which might come in handy if he ever takes his show on the road. Songs of a Sourdough and Other Bar-Room Ballads will be presented by Thomas F. Legg at the Canmore Opera House in Heritage Park Thursday to Saturday starting at 8 p.m.
