Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Heroes and Heroines, History and Hilarity, it's all on stage this summer at the Blyth Festival from June 15 to September 3. "This year we will be doing that singular magical thing that Blyth does best: premiering four new plays," says Gil Garratt, Artistic Director.
Opening the 42nd season of the Blyth Festival will be Our Beautiful Sons: Remembering Matthew Dinning by Christopher Morris from June 15 to August 6. This riveting new play is based on the true story of a local family, the Dinning's of Wingham (just ten minutes from Blyth). Their eldest son, Matthew, was a dynamic, funny, and charming young man. Matthew's first posting with the Canadian Forces was at Petawawa in May 2004, as a member of the Military Police. In April of 2006, at 23 years young, Cpl Matthew Dinning was killed in Afghanistan. A year later, his younger brother, and the Dinning's only other child, Brendon, volunteered for active service. The Canadian Forces called his parents and asked them how to proceed. Should they grant his request, knowing the sacrifice this family had already made for their country? Should they reject it? How do a loving mom and dad make a decision like this? This is a play about the bonds of family, the search for bravery, and the always complicated paths to manhood, motherhood, and peace. This powerful play was written after extensive interviews with the Dinning's themselves.
Returning to the Blyth stage in Our Beautiful Sons: Remembering Matthew Dinning are Festival favourites J.D. Nicholsen and Rebecca Auerbach as Lincoln and Laurie Dinning, Tony Munch as Mario, Catherine Fitch as Gail, and Clinton native Cameron Laurie as Brendon Dinning. Blyth welcomes newcomers Jesse Lavercombe as Matthew Dinning and Meghan Chalmers as Tanya.
Directing Our Beautiful Sons: Remembering Matthew Dinning is Blyth Festival's Artistic Director, Gil Garratt. An artist with a long relationship to Blyth, 2016 will mark Gil's 16th season with the festival, and his second as artistic director. Gil's eclectic career has carried him coast to coast, and overseas, collaborating with companies all over Canada. Gil is the recipient of a Dora Mavor Moore award for Outstanding Performance, and has been nominated for a Robert Merritt award in Nova Scotia.
Gillian Gallow (Vimy, Pearl Gidley) is designing the set and costumes, long time festival favourite Rebecca Picherack is designing the lighting, and Verne Good is the sound designer.
The Birds and the Bees by Mark Crawford is next from June 22 to August 6. From the writer of 2014's runaway hit Stag and Doe, comes a raucous, hilarious new comedy with huge, honeyed, heart. A retired empty-nester, Gail has been quietly raising bees in solitude. Unexpectedly, her grown daughter Sarah returns home; it seems twenty years of artificially inseminating turkeys has taken a toll on Sarah's love life, and she and her husband are through. Throw in a meddlesome neighbour, a little internet dating, and the last pair of tickets to the final Turkey Days Dance of all time, and you have a racy recipe for relentless laughter.
Starring in this hilarious comedy is veteran stage and TV star Nora McLellan (Orphan Black, Killjoys, X-Files, Shaw and Stratford Festivals) as Gail. Beloved Blyth Festival alum Marion Day plays Sarah. John Dolan returns to the Blyth stage as Earl the neighbour, and young Christopher Allen makes his Blyth debut as the irresistible Ben.
Ann Hodges is directing The Birds and the Bees. Ann was last in Blyth in 2012 when she directed Beverley Cooper's The Lonely Diner; Al Capone in Euphemia Township. A hugely celebrated director, Ann has directed at theatres across Canada and directed the Opening Ceremonies of the 2002 North American Indigenous Games.
The same team of Gallow, Picherack, and Good are designing.
If Truth Be Told by Beverley Cooper runs from July 27 to September 3. Inspired by the fire and furor that surrounded the book banning's throughout Canada in the 1970's & 80's, when authors like Alice Munro, Margaret Laurence, J.D. Salinger, and John Steinbeck were being pulled from the shelves of local high schools, Cooper's play looks unflinchingly at who decides what we can or cannot read.
Telling the story of fictionalized author Peg Dunlop, this play captures an author at her moment of truth; she has won awards for her writing all over the country, and made a name for herself internationally, all by writing stories set in the small town where she grew up. But when she moves back to her old hometown, her childhood friends and neighbours are anything but impressed, and soon a concerted campaign begins to have her work banned in the local high school. In her fight against the zealous censors, she befriends a teenage girl who is herself an aspiring young artist. What follows is a high stakes lesson in what it means to tell a good story, and what it costs to fight the good fight.
Catherine Fitch stars as Peg Dunlop, the author with a fight on her hands, J.D. Nicholsen plays Harry Briggs, Rebbeca Auerbach is Maysie Pigot, Meghan Chalmers is Jennifer Pigot, and making her Blyth debut is Anita La Selva playing Carmella, a teacher bent on defending Peg.
Miles Potter, who is directing If Truth Be Told, has made an indelible mark on the Blyth Festival with his steady hand at the helm of such celebrated plays as Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott, Pearl Gidley, and 2014's hit Stag and Doe. Miles has directed plays at virtually every major theatre in the country including nine productions for the Stratford Festival and seventeen productions for the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre.
Steve Lucas (Innocence Lost, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Stompin' Tom) is designing the set and lighting. 40 year veteran of the Blyth stage, Shawn Kerwin, is designing the costumes, Beth Kates (Seeds) is designing the projections, and Lyon Smith (Mary's Wedding) is the Sound Designer.
The Last Donnelly Standing by Paul Thompson and Gil Garratt is the final show to open, playing from August 4 to September 2.
This is the ultimate epilogue to the bloody Biddulph feuds. After the 1880 massacre; in the midst of the fraudulent trial of the vigilantes that followed; after the acquittals and the justice by fire; when the rest of the surviving Donnelly family had moved away, Robert Donnelly refused, and instead took up residence in a house on Lucan's main street, opened his own hotel, and stood 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.
Reprising a role he first played in the colossal hit The Outdoor Donnellys, Gil Garratt stars as Robert Donnelly in this new one-man Ontario Gothic tour-de-force full of old time music and unsettled souls.
Directing The Last Donnelly Standing is the legendary Canadian theatre pioneer, Paul Thompson. Hailing from the Town of Atwood and the farm fields outside Listowel, few directors have had an impact on the cultural landscape of the country the way Paul has. He has received a number of awards including four Canada Council for the Arts Awards, a Dora Mavor Moore Award, an honorary doctorate from the University of Western Ontario, and has been named an officer of the Order of Canada.
Beth Kates is designing the set, costumes, and lighting for the show while Lyon Smith is designing the soundscape.
The Blyth Festival Box Office is now open for ticket sales. Passes for the 2016 season are on sale until April 30 at a substantial savings over single ticket prices. Call 519.523.9300, Toll Free 1.877.8625984 or visit blythfestival.com.
Blyth Festival acknowledges the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, the 2015-2017 Season Sponsor Parkland Fuels/Sparlings Propane, and Season Media Sponsor CTV.
Blyth Festival is a professional theatre that enriches the lives of its audience by producing and developing plays that give voice to both the region and the country. The theatre produces a repertory summer season of exclusively Canadian theatre, with an emphasis on new work. The Blyth Centre for the Arts, including the Blyth Festival, was founded in 1975.
Photo: Gil Garratt as Robert Donnelly. ©2015 Terry Manzo.
2016-04-05
Blyth: The Blyth Festival premieres four new plays