Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Blyth Festival's artistic director, Gil Garratt, has announced his follow up playbill to 2015's critically acclaimed summer season. "I'm incredibly proud to announce that this coming year we are boldly embarking on four world premieres! Nothing has been as vitally important to who we are at Blyth as our New Play Development, and so, to know that 2016 will be composed entirely of new, original work, is hugely inspiring. "This will be a hugely adventurous season of Heroes and Heroines, History and Hilarity." added Garratt.
The 2016 season begins on June 15th with OUR BEAUTIFUL SONS: REMEMBERING MATTHEW DINNING by Christopher Morris (June 15 - Aug. 6). At 23 years young, Cpl Matthew Dinning of Wingham, Ontario was killed in Afghanistan. A beloved, charming, and ambitious young man, his death hit the small community hard. A year later, his younger brother Brendon, volunteered for active service. The Canadian Forces called his parents, Lincoln and Laurie and asked them how to proceed. Should they decline Brendon's request? Should they assign him duties here in Canada instead? ...Or should they grant his request, knowing the sacrifice this family had already made for their country? Were the Dinnings prepared to face it all again?
Laurie and Lincoln were left to make one of the hardest decisions imaginable for any parent; and this decision is at the heart of Christopher's play. A play about love of family, the search for bravery, and the always complicated paths to manhood, motherhood, and peace. This play is emblematic of what Blyth does best: telling powerful local stories, and giving voice to the region and the nation.
Next it's THE BIRDS AND THE BEES by Mark Crawford (June 22 - Aug. 6). The Birds and the Bees is a raucous, hilarious new comedy with huge, honeyed heart. It's nearly time for the last-ever annual Turkey Days Festival and the excitement in town is palpable.
Gail is a retired empty-nester, quietly raising bees in solitude, by herself, by her lonesome, all alone, completely unaccompanied... okay, it's been awhile. Unexpectedly, her grown daughter Sarah returns home; it seems ten years of artificially inseminating turkeys has taken a toll on Sarah's sex life and she and her husband are through.
As both women set about putting their lives back in order, and reacquaint themselves with living under the same roof, they are visited by an eager, strapping, athletic, young grad student named Ben...(who happens to be a virgin)...he has come to study the declining bee population...but things get...well...a little extracurricular.
Throw in a meddlesome neighbour, some internet dating, and a pair of tickets to the last Turkey Days Dance of all time and you have a racy recipe for relentless laughter.
The third mainstage show is the world premiere of If Truth Be Told, by Beverley Cooper (July 27 - Sept. 3). 1970s. A world famous, award-winning writer moves back to her old hometown, only to discover her childhood friends and neighbours now want her books banned. The local school board rallies to preserve moral order and keep these filthy books out of their classrooms.
In her fight against the zealous censors, the writer befriends a teenage girl who is herself an aspiring young artist. What follows is a high stakes lesson in what it means to tell the whole truth, and what it means to tell a good story.
The final show of the mainstage season is THE LAST DONNELLY STANDING created and conceived by Gil Garratt and Paul Thompson (Aug. 4 - Sept. 3). The Last Donnelly Standing is the ultimate fiery epilogue to the bloody Biddulph Feud. Of the seven Donnelly brothers, only one was ever sentenced to hard time in prison; only one was ever convicted of "assault with intent to kill and murder" (on a duly deputized police officer no less); only one returned to the charred foundations on the infamous Roman Line to drive his hammer against fresh timbers and rebuild from the ashes: Robert Donnelly.
A successful business man in tumultuous times, known equally for his quick temper as his elegant fashion sense; Robert's family name may have made him an object of scorn in the community, but his own fiery nature solidified his reputation. So notorious was Robert's role in the Biddulph feud, that Orlo Miller, the authoritative historian on the Lucan terror, remarked of his own research into the arrest warrants of the period that "the Donnelly name had been conspicuously absent from the records since Bob had gone off to Kingston Penitentiary". Even the London Free Times in 1878 described the way he sat as he stood trial for attempting to kill Constable Sam Everett, with "a broad grin across his face."
When the rest of the family had moved away after the fateful murders of 1880, Robert refused, and instead took up residence in a house on Lucan's main street, pacing his porch as the murderers among them walked those very roads. The Last Donnelly Standing details the rise and fall of a defiant young man, who stood in the face of history, and dared to burn it all down with a smile.
A variety of season passes are now on sale with significant savings if you buy before Christmas. Call the Blyth Festival Box Office at 519.523.9300, Toll Free 1.877.862.5984 or online at blythfestival.com
2015-11-20
Blyth: The Blyth Festival presents four world premieres in 2016