HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2015-11-05, Page 27THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 5, 2015. PAGE 27.
A scary pair
Students from Central Huron Secondary School did their
best to scare the community on Friday, hosting a haunted
house at the school, but for a good cause, with proceeds
going toward the local food bank, among other charities.
Here, Sam Murray, left, and Amy Thompson, await their
next visitor. (Vicky Bremner photo)
In his announcement of the 2016
Blyth Festival season, Artistic
Director Gil Garratt said that two of
the four plays planned for next year
were stories he commissioned
within 48 hours of being named to
the position last year.
The two plays, Our Beautiful
Sons: Remembering Matthew
Dinning by Christopher Morris
which opens the season and If Truth
Be Told by Beverley Cooper, which
will be the third play of the season,
are both extremely important,
according to Garratt.
The Dinning play was one that
Garratt said he knew needed to be
part of Blyth’s library of plays.
“Christopher came to the theatre
three to four years ago with this idea
for this play, but no one committed
to commissioning the play,” he said.
“For me, it was an immediate thing
to do. We have to do this story and
we have to pay this artist and get this
play rolling.”
Garratt said that, while the play’s
opening is coinciding with the 10th
anniversary of Dinning’s death in
Afghanistan, the real reason it will
be performed in 2016 is because the
story needed to be told.
“This is something that is really
important,” he said. “Especially in
this part of the world. This play
needed to be completed and needed
to be seen, so it was an easy decision
for me to make.”
If Truth Be Told was more the
commissioning of an artist than a
specific play, Garratt said.
“I started, called up [Cooper] and
asked what she had for me,” he said.
When she explained the story,
which is about a very successful
author who needs to leave home to
be recognized, but later returns to
find her stories, as well as others, are
being banned by the local school
board, Garratt said the story also
needed to be told.
“This is an important conversation
to have around here,” he said.
Some will remember that the play
mirrors a very similar situation that
occurred several decades ago when
school boards were attempting to
ban, among other books, the works
of local author and Nobel Laureate
Alice Munro.
Cooper, has penned great plays
that have been premiered at the
Festival, including Innocence Lost:
A Play About Steven Truscott and
The Eyes of Heaven.
“I asked her what she had in the
hopper and she told me about this
play,” he said. “I loved it.”
The play isn’t about Munro,
however, Garratt says, saying it’s
about the bannings here and the
massive impact that kind of decision
can make.
Garratt, who was recently asked to
join the board of the Alice Munro
Festival of the Short Story, said that
the play really spoke to him.
“In living memory, in our life
time, people have wanted to shut this
kind of literature down,” he said.
“We have this incredible artist and
she was made a pariah.”
The play also focuses on the
banning of Margaret Laurence’s
work The Diviners.
“It’s a fascinating conversation to
have,” he said. “We have shifted
from that, but it begs the question,
who are we censoring now?”
Garratt also looked to Mark
Crawford, who penned the comedic
hit from 2013 Stag and Doe, for
another local play he thinks will find
an appreciative audience, The Birds
and the Bees,
“The premise made me fall out of
my seat laughing,” Garratt said.
“Mark came to me and said, ‘I want
to write a play about farmers, sex,
neonicotinoids and turkey
insemination.’”
Garratt said that the play has a
local hook to it and that is why he
made Crawford a playwright-in-
residence.
“There should, in [my office], be a
drawer full of plays from here, about
here and that speak to this place, not
for it,” he said. “That’s why I pushed
with this play. I want to start
building that.”
The fourth play, a one-man show
starring Garratt called The Last
Donnelly Standing, follows up on
The Outdoor Donnellys and looks at
the life of Robert Donnelly, the only
member of the infamous Donnelly
tribe to survive the vigilante justice
levelled at the family that stayed in
the area.
The play is written by Garratt and
member of the Order of Canada Paul
Thompson who wrote the original
play.
Garratt expands upon his first 48 hours as AD
Huron Chapel is excited to present JUNO award winning artists…
Tim and Glory Boys
Sunday November 15th @ 7:00
at the Blyth Memorial Hall
tickets $8.00 in advance $30 for family pass available at the Blyth Festival Ticket
Office, the Radiant Living Christian Bookstore in Goderich or from Huron Chapel
www.frankmills.com
FRI., NOVEMBER 20, 2015 - 7PM
BLYTH MEMORIAL HALL
Tickets at the Blyth Festival Box Office
or by calling 1-877-862-5984
Online at www.blythfestival.com
273 Hamilton St., Blyth • 519-523-4590
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