Stage Door News
Stage Door News
The Blyth Festival has announced its 2016 season:
World Premiere
OUR BEAUTIFUL SONS:
REMEMBERING MATTHEW DINNING
By Christopher Morris
When Matthew left for Afghanistan in February of 2006 his loving family said their difficult goodbyes, full of love and pride.
That April, while providing security for Brigadier General David Fraser through the streets of Gumbad, the Mercedes Benz G Wagon Matthew was in was hit by a roadside bomb and the blast took his young life, along with three of his fellow soldiers. The Dinning family were devastated.
A year later, when Matthew's younger brother, Brendon, himself volunteered for an active tour of duty in Afghanistan, the Canadian Forces (knowing what the family had been through) called Lincoln and Laurie directly to ask the couple for direction; 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?
Laurie and Lincoln were left to make one of the hardest decisions imaginable for any parent; and this decision is at the heart of this play.
This play is about love of family, the search for bravery, and the always complicated paths to manhood, motherhood, and peace.
World Premiere
THE BIRDS AND THE BEES
By Mark Crawford
You see back then, Gail was married to Frank.
And Earl was married to Sheila.
And then Sheila ran off with Frank.
And left Earl and Gail sitting alone on their respective home farms on either side of the concession road.
And while Earl soon moved on, and even took up online dating,
Gail just never really...
well...
remounted the proverbial horse of love...
so to speak.
Nowadays, Gail raises bees. And Earl is still a cash cropper. Gail rents Earl her fields... but neither of them can really stand each other. Sarah, sick of feeling trapped in a loveless marriage, and tired of spending her days walking around artificially inseminating turkeys, is back under Gail's roof.
Enter Ben, a 23-year-old virgin and an eager, athletic young grad student majoring in entomology, intent on studying the declines in the local bee population.
This is just the starting point of Mark Crawford's brilliant and knee-slapping new play.
World Premiere
IF TRUTH BE TOLD
By Beverley Cooper
With If Truth Be Told, festival favourite Beverley Cooper (Eyes of Heaven, Innocence Lost: A Play About Stephen Truscott, and The Lonely Diner: Al Capone in Euphemia Township) has approached this significant moment in our Huron County history with passion, sympathy, and daring.
Peg Dunlop is an internationally celebrated writer, with a long list of distinguished awards, living with her family in Vancouver. Peg is the most famous and successful writer ever to come out of the small town of Wayford. In spite of her influential career and accomplishments, Peg is no local heroine. Far from being celebrated in her hometown, many of the locals despise her work, and deeply resent her writing, revealingly, about life in Wayford.
When Peg unexpectedly moves home, few in the town embrace her return. Unaware of the apparent controversy surrounding Peg, Wayford's eager young high school English teacher assigns one of Peg's books to her grade thirteen class, and invites the writer to come and speak at the school.
As news of Peg's return spreads, and details of her book emerge, a group of concerned parents, led by a local pastor, endeavour to have her book banned. As the townspeople begin to choose sides, Peg befriends a teenage girl named Jennifer, who is herself an aspiring young artist, trying to understand what it means to tell the whole truth, and what it means to tell a good story.
World Premiere
THE LAST DONNELLY STANDING
Conceived and created by Gil Garratt and Paul Thompson
A successful businessman 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".
When the rest of of the family had moved away after the fateful murders of 1880, Robert refused to move, 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.
Box Office: 1-877-862-5984
Website: www.blythfestival.com
2015-11-06
Blyth: Blyth Festival announces it 2016 season