HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2013-10-31, Page 30PAGE 30. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31, 2013.
Festival season brings theme of ‘home’ to stage
14/19 open house coming to Blyth
Continued from page 1
company in the 1970s.
In 2014, Canadians will be
recognizing the 100th anniversary of
the beginning of The Great War, so it
was only fitting, de Vries said, that
the life of a Canadian hero from
nearby Owen Sound be presented on
stage during such an important year.
Following Billy Bishop Goes To
War , the season’s second of three
world premieres will take to the
stage in the form of Stag and Doe, a
comedy written by first-time
playwright Mark Crawford, who
was in Blyth last as an actor in
2011’s Vimy .
The season is rounded out with
Festival regular Gil Garratt’s St.
Anne’s Reel, a prodigal son story
featuring a mix of drama and old
time fiddle tunes.
Named the successor to interim
Artistic Director Peter Smith in
March, de Vries officially took the
job in August and immediately
began working on the season.
Almost right away, de Vries says she
began considering themes for the
40th season, realizing that it was
important for the community theatre.
While there are always practical
concerns surrounding the
programming of a season, such as
costs, availability and cross-casting
(casting actors who would fit
perfectly into not one, but two of the
Festival’s productions in a given
season), de Vries said she wanted the
2014 season to have a perfect mix of
drama, comedy, history and music,
meaning there will be something for
everyone at Memorial Hall next
year.
What emerged, across a variety of
genres, was the feeling of home, de
Vries says. Whether it was a
character keeping a home, leaving
home, or returning home, the
concept of home quickly became a
central theme on which she decided
to focus.
“For me,” de Vries said in an
interview with The Citizen, “coming
back to Blyth always felt like
coming home. This was one of the
first professional theatre jobs I had
and I’m a farm girl, so I always felt
at home here.”
Funnily enough, she says, it was a
play that had no ties to Blyth
whatsoever that started the wheels of
the season turning. The process
began on Aug. 2, de Vries says, her
second official day on the job.
Crawford called her, asking if she
wanted to read his new play, Stag
and Doe. She said she read it in an
afternoon and couldn’t stop
laughing, so she knew it had to be a
part of the 2014 season.
The play begins with Bonnie and
Brad preparing for their stag and doe
party that night, alongside Bonnie’s
maid of honour, Dee. A third
woman, Mandy, shows up, asking to
use the hall, as her outdoor wedding
plans have been dashed. The
problem is, however, that Mandy is
marrying Rob, who left Dee at the
altar years earlier.
“I really connected to it as a farm
girl,” she said. “It’s set in the kitchen
of a community hall, like the one in
Auburn, or the lower hall right here
[Memorial Hall].”
The play’s sense of home led de
Vries right into Garrett’s play, which
follows Daniel, who returns to his
home farm near Wingham only years
after his mother has died.
Daniel is then reunited with his
father, with whom he has never got
along, but who used to play fiddle
with The Ranch Boys on Barn
Dance.
St. Anne’s Reel, the final play of
the season, treks through drama and
comedy amid plenty of fiddle music,
de Vries says, setting the stage for
the perfect local tale of the prodigal
son.
Billy Bishop Goes To War, written
by John MacLachlan Gray in
collaboration with Eric Peterson,
will be featured as the season’s
second play, kicking off the Blyth
Festival Memorial Series.
The play, celebrating the World
War I hero pilot from Owen Sound,
will be a popular one in 2014, de
Vries says. The play has won the
Governor General’s Literary Award
for Drama, among others and de
Vries says it will be a perfect fit for
the Blyth Festival and Memorial
Hall.
To open the season, de Vries
decided to include her own play,
Kitchen Radio.
From a readiness standpoint, de
Vries said it made sense to include
Kitchen Radio in the 2014 season. It
has been in development for years,
she said, alongside Festival regular
musician David Archibald, and it
might serve as a nice re-introduction
to the community.
The play, set in 1968, follows
Eleanor, who is a bank manager’s
lonely young wife who finds
excitement in her life through
country music stars via her kitchen
radio.
In her mind, de Vries says, country
music stars blazed a trail for women
in the early days, and continue to do
so. Kitchen Radio is a tale of female
empowerment during a time of
change told with original country
music.
While directors for the four shows
have yet to be announced, de Vries
says it’s important for her that she
not direct Kitchen Radio. She’ll have
a full plate serving as a playwright
on the project and artistic director
for the rest of the season, so she felt
it made sense to bring in another
director for the project.
However, she says 2014, being the
40th season, will be something of a
“homecoming” and audiences will
see a lot of familiar faces back in
Blyth next year.
The season will also be peppered
with special events to celebrate the
Festival’s milestone, all which will
be announced in the coming months,
de Vries says.
For more information about the
upcoming season or to purchase
season passes, visit the Festival’s
website at www.blythfestival.com.
Continued from page 1
discussed using Huron Geomatics to
help create architectural data to help
produce drawings and three-
dimensional models of the hall.
Elliott explained that, prior to
discussing Huron Geomatics, he
broke down the different phases of
the 14/19 project, which will include
renovating the existing hall, creating
a centre for the arts at the location of
the former Blyth Public School
including a second, state of the art
theatre, and finally, creating an
endowment to help run the centre.
He pointed out that, before the 14/19
committee could move forward,
they needed documents to work
from.
“The first phase requires us to
know the needs of the building,” he
said. “We need the baseline for it so
we can start to dream out loud and
look at making the facility cutting
edge.”
He said the goal was to turn the
hall into more of a year-round
destination for different uses
including arts, culture, conferences
and business meetings.
“We want to market Blyth as a
365-day-a-year destination.”
The information gathered by
Huron Geomatics, however, will go
above and beyond a simple building
drawing according to Elliott.
Through using the data, which
will only take two days to record and
compile, modelling can be done to
see how changes will affect the
acoustics of the building as well as
the sight-lines of the audience. Both
of those aspects are important to the
future of the building as a theatre.
Aside from the obvious local tie-
in, with Huron Geomatics being a
Wingham-based company, Smith
explained, in an interview with The
Citizen, the pay back from using the
system will come in many different
ways.
“It’s a local company, so the
money stays here in the county, in
the township in fact,” he said. “I
think it will also pay dividends down
the line though. That investment will
recoup its money back and then
some.”
Elliott agreed, saying that,
ultimately, the data can provide an
idea of their end goal to everyone
they hope to get involved from the
municipality, the county, the
province and the country.
Elliott said that, once some
misinformation regarding the data
was cleared up, council was
completely on board with it.
“Some of council believed it was
Continued from page 24
So, when the son is yet a long way
off and the father sees the distant
figure with the familiar gait and
appearance, he jumps up in a very
undignified manner and he runs to
his son. His son was coming home
and that was what mattered.
It is true that we should never wait to
start a conversation with God until
things get really bad. At the same
time, if we do wait until disaster
strikes, it is important to know that
God is longing to hear from us. It is
more than just okay to talk to God
then; in fact, God thinks it to be
simply wonderful. He is talking
with us again, and that pleases him
like nothing else. Of course, he
would like to continue the
conversation beyond the time of
crisis, and invites us to join the
family again. He welcomes us back
to the dinner table with open arms.
It’s better to restart the
conversation now, to open again the
lines of communication. But if we
have neglected to do so, know that
God still wants to hear from us, even
if it is because we have nowhere else
to turn.
The people in the church chuckled
when they heard the story of the
running father. They chuckled, not
because they thought the father was
being silly. Rather, they chuckled
because his response to the returning
son was so astounding that it seemed
almost unbelievable. It is equally
astounding that God would welcome
us back, but it is true.
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Graduation
Nicole McIntosh
Congratulations Nicole on your
accomplishments at Westervelt
College in Sales/Marketing.
Nicole is enjoying an internship
with the Marketing Team of the
London Knights. We are very
proud of you and wish you much
success in all your future goals.
Love always,
Mom and Dad,
Jodi and Josh
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God invites us back
says Van Leeuwen
Continued on page 31
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