The Citizen, 1988-06-15, Page 5THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 15, 1988. PAGE 5.
In the beginning...
Back in 1975 it would have been hard to predict
the national reputation the Biyth Festival would achieve
Memories
Today the Biyth Festival is one of the most popular
attractions for visitors to Huron County. It’s hard to
believe now with how much uncertainty it started 13
years ago. Few people probably even thought the
Festival would survive for a second year let alone the
14seasons it has so far during which it has established
a national reputation and has seen plays it started like
“Quiet in the Land’’ and “I’ll Be Back Before
Midnight’’ go around the world.
In this recollection the theatre’s founder James Roy
tells of those early days when asmall group of people
who didn’t know it couldn’t be done, started a theatre
that has put Biyth on the map across the country.
BY JAMES ROY
In the early spring of 1975, I was
an aspiring young director caught
in the dilemma of no work
opportunities and no possibility of
opportunities for work until I could
demonstrate my abilities to some
artistic directors. The circle seem
ed unbreakable, so I had spent my
first winter after graduating from
university at Theatre Passe Mur
aille in Toronto, filling various
design and technical positions, and
directing a small budget SEED
Show.
It was at this point, with the
possibilities of further employ-
mentatTheatre Passe Muraille
dwindling, thatPaul Thompson
asked if I was familiar with the
theatre in the Memorial Hall in
Biyth. I was not, though I had
attended my first three years of
public school in the village, a point
that I was later to trade on
mercilously in establishing the
local credibility of the Biyth
Summer Festival. My early
memories did include a vivid one of
the basement meeting room in the
Early Hall
memories -
a pain
in the arm
Hall - we were marched over from
the public school one morning for
our polio shots - but at that time the
upstairs theatre was used infre
quently. And besides, what does a
six year old notice?
Theatre Passe Muraille had
recently reheared the remount of
“1837: The Farmers Revolt” in the
building while a debate was raging
locally over its proposed demoli
tion. Built as a memorial to World
War I in the 1920’s and for decades
the focal point of much of the social
activity in the community, by the
early 1970’s the Biyth Memorial
Hall was in need of costly roof
repairs to prevent its structure
from seriously deteriorating.
Many in the village were anxious to
replace the building with a mo
dern, efficient cement block struc
ture that would cost little more than
a new roof.
Fortunately, there were some
propitious individuals who felt that
the existing hall was an asset that
should be preserved. The cause
was championed in the weekly
paper by its editor and publisher,
Keith Roulston, and he was joined
by some important members of the
community. The most aggressive
of these were a group of senior
citizens who remembered how
important the Hall had been to
village life - and who still needed
the basement meeting room for
their euchre parties since card
playing was out of bounds in
churchbasements. They tipped
the balance in favour of preserva
tion when they discovered that
their group was eligible for a
government grant that could be put
towards the repairs. The opposi
tion crumbled, andthe Hall was
fitted with a new roof.
However, there remained a lot of
grumbling that spending money,
government or not, on the building
would not mean that it would
regain its former glory as a centre
of town activity. After all, the
second floor theatre had barely
been used since the advent of
television in the 1950’s, and that
was hardly going tochange just
because the roof was new.
That was the situation I drove
into on Easter weekend of 1975
when I arrived in Biyth, full of
enthusiasm, for a meeting with
Keith Roulston. He was cordial,
helpful, and somewhat disbeliev
ing that anyone would want to start
a professional summer theatre in a
village of 800 situated among the
farms of agricultural Ontario. That
he did not laugh outright at the
absurdity of my proposal was the
first small step towards the birth of
Even by the Festival’s third year in 1977, the box office was still in the
cramped lobby of the theatre. In the beginning the only administration
office was a stair well.
James Roy, [right] sees the Biyth Memorial Hall theatre for the first time along with friend Jeff Cohen in
1975. Within a few weeks James and his wife Anne had managed to recruit a board of directors, come up
with Ontario Arts Council grant money, raise money from local donations, hire actors and find them
accommodation, write and rehearse a play and put on the first performance of the hit play “Mostly in
Clover” before a packed, steamy house on July 9, 1975.
the theatre company. Perhaps he
felt that he had already crawled a
long way out on a limb fighting to
save the building, and going a little
further could not hurt. By the end
of our meeting he promised his
support, and we walked down to
the theatre where he took my
picture for next week’s newspaper
sitting in the dank mustiness of the
auditorium.
Enthusiasm is not experience,
and I had no idea how to begin
creating a new theatre company. I
did know that something called the
Ontario Arts Council gave grants to
theatres, and every theatre I knew
hadagovernmentgrant, sooff I
went to see Norma Clarke, then
Associate Theatre Officer at the
OAC. She explained that we would
in fact be eligible to apply for
assistance if the new organization
set up a Board of Directors and
incorporated. Back I went to Biyth
where Keith Roulston and I sat
down to draw up a list of potential
Directors.
Without realizing its importance
at the time, choosing a Board was
the first crucial step in determining
the eventual artistic character of
the Festival. Theatre Boards, as I
knew of them, traditionally com
prised influential, well-to-do indi
viduals who could bring a theatre
good fundraising connections, and
respectability. Essentially they
remained replicas of earlier times
when rich and powerful patrons
were necessary to protect and
bankroll artists. Though it would
have been possible to create a
traditional Board by drawing
widely from the region and the
neighbouring cities of London and
Stratford, Biyth itself had few
residents that one would consider
to fit the standard profile. More
important, I felt instinctively even
at that early time, that if a
professional theatre were to sur
vive and flourish in a tiny village, it
would have to grow as naturally as
possible from the community
itself.
So on a Friday evening in April,
Keith and 1 drew up a list of 19 key,
community-spirited individuals
whom we thought might actively
support our new venture. Besides
the two of us, the list included two
of the three ministers in Biyth, a
teacher, the village clerk, a
councillor, and several of the
prominent businessmen in the
community. Since no lawyers lived
or practiced in the village, we chose
a candidate from a nearby town.
The next day Keith and I set out
to contact personally all of the
individuals on our list. Each time I
launched into an energetic selling
campaign aimed at allaying fears
that the new theatre company
wouldbe a “bunch of no-goods
from Toronto doing dirty plays”.
(Everyone knew that “I Love You
Baby Blue” hadjust been closed by
the Toronto Morality Squad.)
Amazingly every candidate said
yes to serving on the new Board,
and we were on our way. Next task:
grant application.
The essential part of a request
for government subsidy is the
budget. Completing it required
some hard decisions on the nature
of the theatre season I was to
mount. I knew I wanted adequate
rehearsal time; four weeks seemed
appropriate even though most
“summer” theatres then made do
withoneortwoweeksandtheir
audiences seemed to be willing to
overlook the resulting lower pro
duction standards. It also seemed
sensible to maximize weekend
attendance and word of mouth
publicity by performing in nightly
rather than weekly turn around,
although the latter was the norm
with summer theatres other than
the Stratford and Shaw Festivals.
The big question remained: how
Choosing
the crucial
first season
many and what plays to pro
gramme for the crucial first
season. Two seemed the logical
number to fully utilize an acting
company within the severe finan
cial constraints of a beginning
operation.
In 1975 there were about five
professional summer theatres in
the province, again excluding
Stratford and Shaw, most of whom
concentrated on programmes of
recent Broadway or West End hits,
musicals and old chestnuts. Gen
erally they had built large audience
followings who seemed to appre
ciate the material presented to
them. Only one summer theatre in
Quebec, Festival Lennoxville,
broke this artistic pattern with
its policy of programming
Canadian plays that had only been
produced once previously. As
interesting and successful as some
of the work had been there, basing
an artistic policy on a numerical
total did not seem relevant to the
Biyth situation. Prudently then (or
Continued on Page 6