The Blyth Festival is pleased to announce an extension of the 2025 season and the run of THE WIND COMING OVER THE SEA, the acclaimed new folk musical by internationally renowned author and playwright Emma Donoghue (Room, The Wonder). Following a sold-out world premiere engagement in Blyth, additional performances have been added from September 25 to October 5 on The Margaret Stephens Stage at Memorial Hall, with tickets now on sale.

Premiering on Saturday, June 28, THE WIND COMING OVER THE SEA was met with overwhelming enthusiasm from audiences and critics alike. All performances in its initial run are now sold out, prompting a wave of public demand.

Speaking about the extension, Lisa Thompson, MPP for Huron-Bruce said "From the stage to the main street, the Blyth Festival enriches our communities and boosts our economy. Through the Experience Ontario 2025 program, we’re helping bring even more people to Huron–Bruce to shop, dine, stay—and be inspired, ensuring that rural Ontario remains vibrant, connected, and full of life."

Donoghue's play was developed by the Blyth Festival as part of its ongoing commitment to the creation of original Canadian theatre.

For over 51 years, the Blyth Festival has championed Canadian theatre, producing works by more than 300 Canadian playwrights. Through commissions and new productions, Blyth has helped launch plays that have toured widely and become Canadian classics including the Governor General’s Award-winning play by Anne Chislett QUIET IN THE LAND which is currently running in Blyth until Aug. 23 and Michael Healey’s THE DRAWER BOY – named one of the Top Ten Plays of 2001 by Time Magazine.

The organization currently also has 26 new Canadian plays in development under the creative guidance of Artistic Director Gil Garratt, who has led the company since 2014.

A world premiere production written by the internationally acclaimed, best-selling author of The Pull of the Stars and ROOM, opened in late June and has been playing to sold out audiences ever since. On stage at the historic Blyth Festival Margaret Stephens Stage at Memorial Hall in a production directed by Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt, THE WIND COMING OVER THE SEA is a folk musical incorporating traditional Irish and British ballads performed live on stage by the acting company, telling the true story of Henry and Jane Johnson, who emigrated from the town of Antrim in Northern Ireland to Southwestern Ontario during the Great Famine of the 1840’s. A deeply moving tale of love and perseverance that interweaves music with verbatim text from archival letters exchanged by the Johnsons, Donoghue’s play takes an unflinching look at a fundamental and ongoing piece of the story of Canada – the promise and peril of emigration. The production features Landon Doak as Henry Johnson and Shelayna Christante as Jane Johnson.

An immigrant from Ireland herself, Donoghue first wrote about the Johnsons in a story entitled Counting the Days in 1998, the year she settled in Canada. When Henry Johnson first left Ireland for Canada by sea, over a year ahead of his wife Jane and their two young children, they corresponded through a series of letters which were kept and later published by various members of the Johnson family. The original letters are held in the Archives and Special Collections of Western University where Donoghue was at one point a writer in residence; almost every scene in Donoghue’s time capsule of a script springs from the lines found in these letters of love and longing exchanged between the young couple and dispatched across the ocean.

Donoghue was captivated by the emotion imbued in the letters and the care required to preserve them through generations: “The letters were so moving to me,” she adds. “I knew that Henry and Jane would have held onto them and carried them along on their journeys. They acted like a vector between these human beings, a kind of rope of love thrown from one to the next carrying Jane across the sea to Henry.”

Joining Garratt on the creative team behind THE WIND COMING OVER THE SEA are Set and Lighting designer Ken MacKenzie, Costume Designer Meghan Choma, Sound Designer Adam Campbell, Music Director Anne Lederman, and Music Supervisor George Meanwell. The cast also includes Geoffrey Armour, Masae Day and Festival veteran Michelle Fisk.