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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Brussels Post, 1979-08-29, Page 2:1INUIlif LS 01041.110 Brussels Post WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29,, 1979 Serving Brussels and the surroonding community. Published each Wednesday afternoon at Brussels, Ontario By McLean Bros. Publishers Limited Evelyn Kennedy Editor Pat Langlois - Advertising Member Canadian Community Newspaper Association and Ontario Weekly Newspaper Association Subscriptions (in advance) Canada $10.00 a Year.. Others $20.00 a Year. Single Copies 25 cents each. 41•11111M. Behind the scenes by Keith Roulston Working together It's always an. emotional time when the Laing night comes each summer for the. Blyth Summer Festival. People who have been through so much together over the last few months are now scattering across the country again, unsure when and if they will see each other again. It brings on a "trle of themr....lartcholy feeling we all have in fall, a bittersweet feeling of completion and loss. The emotions were even a little stronger for those of us involved this year because it marked not just the end of a season but the end of an era. The end of the first five years of the Festival had come and with it the end of the leadership of James Roy and his wife Anne, the two people who had had the biggest roles to play in getting the theatre off the ground and keeping it growing. The departure couldn't have been better orchestrated. The couple leaves at the end of the most successful season in the Festival's history. They leave with the knowledge that no one questions that the Festival is becoming an institution in the raaion and that it will continue to grow in the years to come. Yet for those involved from the beginning it was an emotional *-aa t..14.-'k. back and think of all that had been ao.a.ampash,..., against the odds, ags'insa tha.a.re. who said it couldn't be andt was fooli\-11 to try. The Far.rVal at' course is a bit -of 'a fairy vale story., it crazy idea. to start a Farfes onael theatre in a town d'9O3 people with out even ,a large tourist population. It was even co...th'er to choose Canadian plays and expensive original scripts. I remember somebody in the theatre saying it was impossible to produce four new scripts a year. I remember someone saying it was ridiculous to suggest the Festival could succeed producing all its plays with rural and small town audiences in mind. But those at the heart of the Festival stuck to their beliefs and did it their way. The success of the theatre which is gaining an ever wider reputation is proof they were right. People not directly involved in the Festival have gained in having a first-rate theatre in -their back yard, some place to go to recognize themselves or their neigh- bours being represented on stage. Some- whete to go to be erartained, perhaps informed or made to think. People in Huron County probably go to more theaue on average than people in cities like Toronto or New York. Bet people can also gain I think by the example the Festival sets for bow things be successful if everyone wor3ks To the editor: tart sure thie all of the parents who had children. attending the saarnmet rehil&en's program at the park were meat impressed with the calibre of instroetion and supervision provided by "both Brenda Knight and Kathy Sholcl throtighent the 1412111tirder program of an 's, =eta, Weang and apeaCial eavents periods. Beth leaders shotdd be totatended on 4341,ties6en and ,aeathity, as well as together. In an age when we're turning away from co-operation and more towards looking out for Number 1, we need successes that prove working together is still the best way. Theatre is one of those professions where working together as a team is essential. People aren't in the business for the money. Nearly everyone involved in theatre in Canada earns far below the poverty line. People are in the business because they love it. Theatre fulfills a certain need within them. Nearly everyone in theatre is there because it provides a way for them to express themselves. Whether it's the writer, the actors, the directors, or the lighting designer, all are running on their need to express their creative drive. Yet while expressing that drive they are also at their most vulnerable, laying their very soul open before others. Criticism can cut them to the quick. But theatre requires an intricate weaving of individual talents to making the whole thing work whether it be a single play or a whole season of plays. People must be willing to sacrifice their own pride for the good of the whole. In a business where people are involved not for money but for pride, that can be a big sacrifice indeed. But people do it and in doing it they create a success that brings glory to all of them. The success of the play or the season reflects on all involved. So does the failure. A team that doesn't work together will share the agony of knowing that they blew it. The Festival has been a model of working together over the years. But the co-operation has gone much farther than just within the company itself. From the beginning the co-operation of the commun- ity and the theatre has been strong. Like each member of the company, the people ou Huron coanty seem to feel that the success of the Festival reflects glory on everyone. So when the call goes out for eecole to sit on the board of directors of the theatre, people are ready to answer. When actors need places to live, people are helpful in finding them. When a chair or a lamp or some other article is needed for a play, people can always be counted on to provide it. Whet visitors need a place to eat, local womens groups are glad to provide the seraice. As a result of co-operafion the Festival is now used as an example of how a ocimmunity-oriented arts orgeni Lionaa should work. Thet is a tribute to the people of the community and to the people who started it all, James and Ann Roy. Well, here it is, Tuesday afternoon, time to write the column. I could have written it last Friday, or Sunday morning after church, or any day during the past three weeks of holidays. But I couldn't. I write my column on Tuesday afternoon, rush to the post office, plead with the clerk to squeeze it into the outgoing bag. Summer or winter, working or vacation. If I try to write it on a Thursday evening, a Mon day morning, there's a complete block. Blank paper, vacuum mind. Espec- ially in summer, when I have enough time to crank out a couple of volumes of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. That's why the summer columns don't have one single, brilliant theme, lucidly expostulated, witty, striking a single, singing note in a muddled world. They usually come out as a kind of shotgun effort. There are too many distractions. A couple of promiscuous bluebirds have proliferated on our property. There are now five juveniles of the same species, shrieking bluebird imprecations from five different trees, driving out the song-birds of yesteryear. This morning, we had one of those real, old-fashioned summer storms. Darkness at noon. The gods bowling in the heavens with tremendous balls that rumbled, crashed and reverberated down the empty halls of the black sky. Bolts of lightning straight from Zeus that hit, you swear, twenty feet from your giant oak. Blinding rain, cars driving, lights on, as though they were fording the Ganges. I love storms, ever since the one that put a pine treetop through the roof of our cottage, when I was seven, and everybody calling, "Where's Billy?" and finding Billy standing against one of the remaining walls, scared speechless and grinning like an idiot. Or the one on the Lakes, when several ships went down, and the captain was puking in his second-best hat, and every dish in the galley was smashed. More distractions in summer. Rotten kids. col from son Hugh in Paraguay. He'd previously written for five copies of his birth certificate, and copies of his student transcripts from U. of T, and Dalhousie, because he might be going to university in Paraguay or Toronto or India or Cuba. Card says, "Massage and English classes going well," What the hell does that mean? Phone Ball front ((neglect who's off to Moosonee to teach Male to Indian kids, Doesn't know how to get thete DoeSn't know ,hOW to get furniture Shipped, what 1.0 take, why, what, where, how lunch? SO guest who teals all that out? Animals, birds and fishes have the right idea. Teach the offspring to feud for themselves, kick them out, and have sortie more. I Weeder how many grandfather whales, or beat% or oolltoo, ate Min tioiviog problems for their fully-grown children, and baby-sitting their grandchildren? And in summer, of course, the daily mail, though a welcome break in the monotony, is distracting. Pleas, amounting almost to demands, from relatives that you have to pay a visit, you promised last winter. They don't really want to see you, only make you listen to their problems, when all you want to listen to is the birds and the click of a five-iron as you set it up by the pin. Not all bad. Nice letter from Jim Lamb of Nova Scotia, saying I'd helped inspire his new book Press Gang, and that I am his favorite columnist, along with Ted Reeve and Eric Nicol. Bless you, sir. Note from Bessie Doolan, 89, of Cereal, Alta.: "I attribute the smiles & chuckles I receive from your column as a big aid to my loogevity." And bless you, Bessie. Invite me to your hundredth and we'll dance together and defy the fates, if you don't mind jigging with a guy with an arthritic foot that goes whither it wants. Two proofs of a photo of yours truly, from Mike Bottle of the Milton, Canadian Champion who dropped in one day to take a picture. Thanks, Mike, but I think you got your negatives mixed up. Surely this is a photograph of American poet Robert Frost when he was 86. Just kidding. You got me, warts and all. Every crease, every wrinkle, the warped nose with scars on it, the bump on my lip from the car crash when a piece of the lip turned up missing during surgery, even the hairs in my ears, which you might have had the decency to trim before you shot. Never mind, my wife likes it, probably because it makes me look old enough to be her father. But she insists I don't have those bags under my eyes and wrinkles on my forehead, I must have been squinting it to the sun, I point out. Anyway, it's the sort of lace of which people say, when they can't think of another single thing, "It looks lived-in," or, "There's a lot of character in it." But it's been a good summer, Twice I've gone out to play golf and played with complete strangers who were worse clef- fers than I, despite their immaculate shirts and sleeks, and fancy equipment. Occasionally I go down to the dock, look at the $30,000 to $160,0011 boats, and chortle when I think of what they'll be worth when gas rationing starts, And snicker and snicker when I drive up besides Lincoln Continental in my Ion Ford so rusty you can put your feet through the floorboards and pedal with them, for nuthility. Nut otilte like last summer, cruising the eapitals of Europe, but fair-to-middlin',if the old lady would get off toy back about falling through the back Acorn) evert time she bangs out the washing. THE MEDICINE WOMAN? — Cindy McNeil had the position of the medicine man/woman(?)as part of the Indian Pow-wow held at the Brussels playground on Monday night. (Brussels Post Photo) Sugar and spice By Bill Smiley A job well done their sincere end keen interst in organizing and carraing out the various aodvities. The highliglat of the summer program was the Indian Pow-Wow night which the parents end relatives seemed to eojoy as much as the petticipaoingthildten. Thank you Brenda and Kathy for a job well done. Norm litiehards ttatt6it.