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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-08-15, Page 10PAGE 10. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 15, 2013.Young Company explores county employment A year after the successful launch of The Farm 2012, Blyth Festival’s Young Company decided to look at the other parts of Huron County with their collective show this year, Working in the County. Dealing with people from, as the show’s cast explained it, every industry except agriculture, the group interviewed people from across Huron County to answer a couple simple questions about who works where and why. What they found, however, was that beyond the work, beyond job satisfaction, beyond employees and employers, there were a lot of different opinions about how the world works and how Huron County really is. This year’s Young Company had fewer members than years past, featuring seven actors under the direction of Martha Ross. Young Company Co-ordinator Beth Beardsley of Wingham took to the stage with cast members Nicholas Beardsley of Wingham, Jillian Bjelan of Hensall, Emma Enders of Wingham, Marlayna Kolkman of Blyth, Genevieve Pitre of Goderich and Julie Vincent of Seaforth and rehearsed from July 8 to Aug. 6 to prepare for their earlier- than-normal run of August 7-11 at the Phillips Studio. The Young Company has typically been on the Phillips Studio stage at the end of the season but they have been supplanted this year by Gary Kirkham’s Falling: A Wake which runs from Aug. 28 to Sept. 7. As for the inspiration of the play, Bjelan explained that, after last year’s success, it just made sense. “As a collective with Martha, we decided to interview people and take that information, and our own opinions, into the show,” she said. “Last year, when we did the The Farm 2012 show, which was the inspiration for this year’s Beyond the Farm Show, we saw how well it can work.” Beth explained that they decided to focus on pretty much anything but agriculture and look at pretty much everyone in the work force. “We focused on anyone who has a job really that isn’t anything to directly do with agriculture,” she said. “We looked at mainly adults, but really, we were looking at anyone from their 20s to however old Don Scrimgeour is.” Nicholas explained they ended up talking to more of the upper members of companies versus the employees on the ‘front line’. “We interviewed a lot of managers, a lot of big-boss-types and only a few workers,” he said. “What we ended up finding was that those people who are the bosses and those people with their own business say they’re happy with their lives and that the workers usually weren’t. Some of them said they were just working to get to the weekend.” There was also a divide, according to the group, between ages and attitudes about the area. “Teens seem to not enjoy the area and want to get out of Huron County,” Beth said. “However, people with jobs, with careers, like it. They don’t see it as somewhere that people get stuck.” The play was designed to be active, comical and keep the audience on its toes according to Bjelan and, because cast members used both their own attitudes and beliefs mixed in with those they found through their interviews, a good reflection of the working world for those of all ages. “We included our own monologes and our own personal experiences this year because, last year, with the Farm Show, we didn’t really have as much of an understanding with the story, we didn’t relate as much.” The level of how much they related to some of the professionals even surprised some of the crew. “We interview Elli Cohen, he’s a lawyer in Goderich,” Nicholas explained. “I really wasn’t ready for what I saw when I walked into his office. I expected it to be one way, but it was very modern and nice. It was like walking into an office on a television show.” Interviewees like Cohen thought that they didn’t have much to tell the youth, according to Beth, however, in the end, they didn’t have aninterview they didn’t get a story outof. “A lot of people were hesitant to be interviewed by us,” Beth said. “They would say that we wouldn’t get anything from them but we found out that everyone has a story to tell.” One of those hesitant interviewees was the co-owner of Pianovations, Londesborough’s Lianne Hoogenboom. The Young Company crew interviewed Hoogenboom who has an interesting story about how she became involved in her business. Hoogenboom’s career came after she refinished a piano that she found through her job cleaning homes and refinishing old furniture people would ask her to take to the landfill. After that, she found employment through the company that she refinished the piano for, and eventually came home to Huron County to start doing it on her own. “That kind of story is interesting and shows that people around here didn’t just fall into the positions they are in, there is always a reason,” Beth said. Putting the play together was an interesting experience for the group as, with fewer members than normal, there was a lot more work for each person to do. The experience, whilechallenging, was rewarding howeveras the group said each one of them grew and learned things about themselves and theatres, the most important of which is that nothing is out of bounds when it comes to the final product. “We were just joking around on stage one day when we were working and something we joked about ended up in the final draft of the play,” Beth said. “You don’t forget that kind of stuff.” Check out our great selection at... The Citizen Books to help you create Beautiful... 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