About the Play:

Small Time is a full-length dark comedy by Norm Foster. Trying to hold his marriage together, a musician takes a steady job as the lounge act at a nightclub. But he rapidly discovers that his new-found job security includes entanglement with the mob, molls, and murder. Small Time holds audiences spellbound as the story involving sex, violence, and romance unfolds.

Small Time refers to Scott Sherman, a deplorably bad lounge singer who ekes out a living only because he owns the club in which he performs. However, Scott has a problem. Because of gambling he lost his wife and daughter nine years previously. He's looking for a piano player and goes through 10 before he finds Marty Birch, who also has a problem. His wife of two years, Sandra, has just walked out on him because he can't hold down a job. He's determined to put artistic freedom before a regular pay cheque. Scott hires him and helps him out with his marriage problems. Meanwhile a small-time thug named "Cookie" knows Scott from the past and knows he's a gambler. When he finds out Scott is in debt, he buys the debt from the bookie and threatens to take over the club – unless Scott and Marty break the legs of someone who's offended his mobster boss. It's a decision that torments both of them, faced with losing their jobs and for Marty, his wife. Small Time is Norm Foster through and through -- even if he charts new territory in this a film noir-flavoured gangster comedy.

Small Time premiered in 2000 at Theatre on the Grand in Fergus, Ontario and included the playwright himself in the role of "Cookie." Since then the play has been produced widely at community theatres across North America.

Cast: 2 female, 3 male

What people say:

"Foster shows dark side – and it's funny too ... Small Change has the patented Foster humour and its main characters are people we get to know well enough that we pull for them even when their predicament looks most bleak." — Kitchener Waterloo Record

"Norm Foster has a knack for creating winning characters and situations that make audiences respond with affection." — The Globe & Mail

"Foster is a master at observing truths that everyone feels, but few fully realize." — London Free Press

About the Playwright:

Norm Foster enjoyed a 25-year career as the morning man at independent radio stations in Thunder Bay, Winnipeg, and Kingston, before finally ending up in Fredericton, where he began writing plays. He is considered to be Canada's most produced playwright, with more than fifty-five critically acclaimed plays that are known for their humour, accessibility, and insight into the everyday tribulations of life. He is the recipient of the Los Angeles Drama-Logue Award for his play, The Melville Boys which would go on to be produced across Canada and in the United States, including a well-received run Off Broadway in New York. It would become his signature play, and the one which would bring his name to the forefront of Canadian theatre.