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Each year a number of Belizean children fly to the United States for life saving surgery. These young heart patients whose families cannot afford the expensive medical care return to the country with a second chance at life that’s priceless. The children are given the opportunity through Rotary’s Gift of Life Programme that runs on an annual budget of sixty thousand dollars. Half of that comes from proceeds of fund raising drives held by the Rotary Club along with contributions from the business and general public. And the biggest fundraising activity is the annual play staged by club members. They’ve been doing it for 5 years, and this year the cast is hoping that their production of “Otis and Pinocchio” will be a hit. Last night, 7News got a sneak preview of what will be happening on stage this weekend at the Bliss Center.

Alberto Young, Rotary Club
“We promise that it will be a fun family event, like all the other plays we’ve had. We had a very good turnout for all the plays that we’ve done. Ernesto Vasquez, Sandra McKay, you have Jason Pascual, Rotaractors and Rotarians who are acting as well as some of the cast from the past plays. These are friends of Rotary who have given of their time to support such a worthy cause. They’ve been hard at work as you see from some of the footage, working all through the night to make sure they put on a quality play. The director is Jamie Thompson and he has been working with the Rotary Club of Belize for the past two plays and he’s given really the creative and the directive direction and management of these plays. And so they’ve worked hard to make sure that it will be something that Belizeans will enjoy.

Well Otis and Pinocchio is based on Pinocchio and Otis is his friend who leads him in the bad direction as we do have this but It really mimicks basically what is happening. We always look at what’s happening currently. We always make it involve what’s happening in our community as part of these plays and we put it in a comedic light. It is one of the ways that we bring across comedy to Belizeans and Belizeans enjoy having a good laugh and I think our plays have really targeted the Belizean audience, have really satisfied that.”

The play runs on Friday and Saturday nights at eight, and then on Sunday. There’s a special matinee showing at six in the evening. Tickets can be purchased from the ticket booth at the Bliss Centre for Performing Arts.