Play fundraises for Gift of Life Program
Otis and Pinocchio… it’s the title for the seventh annual Rotary Club’s production and the biggest fundraiser for its Gift of Life Program. The international program is an effort by Rotary Clubs, hospitals and physicians to assist children with cardiac complications. Close to two hundred kids have benefited from the program. The show opens this Friday night at the Bliss Centre for the Performance Arts. According to Service Projects Director, Sandra McKay, the production is a musical comedy filled with excitement.
Sandra McKay, Service Projects Director, Rotary Club Belize
“It is another of Patrick Brown’s production out of Jamaica. It was originally the Oliver and Pinocchio production and it tells you if Oliver Samuels was in there, you’re looking forward to a lot of fun. We, of course, have had to rename it because we can’t use Oliver’s name and so it’s Otis and Pinocchio. It’s a musical comedy. It’s a story of Pinocchio basically, but what Patrick did was to Caribbean-ize it and to put in all the different kinds of music and lyrics and the Caribbean culture comes out in the whole production but you can see the Pinocchio story the fairytale coming out nonetheless. For a number of years now the Rotarians and the Rotaractors have been bold enough to come on stage and we have been blessed with a very good director in the person of Jamie Thompson who has taken amateurs and really pulled off first class productions through these plays. We had recognized that it was one of our most successful fundraisers and decided to use it as the fundraiser for the Rotary year for our Gift of Life Program. It fully sustains the program as long as we continue to get the support from the Belizean public and so it is imperative that the public comes out once again.”
Yvette Burke, Chair, Gift of Life Program
“The cost to our club at this juncture is around four thousand dollars per child. It can be a little bit less dependent on the cost for fuel and airfare and so on. But that is actually just a nominal when you compare it to the cost of doing one child and average patient is running around a hundred thousand dollars Belize and we have had many that have gone over half a million mark and more. So it’s a phenomenal program.”
Tickets are available at Malas and the ticket booth at the Bliss for fifteen dollars general admission, thirty dollars for reserve and premier tickets are going at fifty dollars a piece.
