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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 1987-07-22, Page 22PAGE 22. THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, JULY 22, 1987. Rex Deverell Playwright gets new experience in Blyth For Rex Deverell, one of Cana­ da’s busiest and most prolific playwrights, the chance to be playwright-in-residence at the Blyth Festival this summer was a welcome chance to meet other people involved in Canadian thea­ tre. Regina may seem a much bigger place than Blyth but the theatre community there is, much like Blyth’s, concentrated around one theatre. Since becoming play­ wright in residence at Regina's Globe Theatre in 1975 Mr. Deverell has been dealing mostly with artists from his own theatre (although he’s also been active as a past chairman of the Guild of Canadian Playwrights. So the invitation to Blyth provided a chance to get to know another theatre in another part of the country. The job description of a play- w right-in-residence changes from playwright to playwright and theatre to theatre. In Mr. Dever- ell’scase this season, he asked that he not have to read a lot of scripts but rather that he be able to spend time getting toknow the theatre and the community and putting that knowledge together in a new play that hopefully might be presented by the Festival in years to come. The invitation to Blyth came as a surprise, he said. He had visited Blyth a couple of times last year when his play “Drift” was being presented. He talked about the play, saw a performance andtalked to the actors afterward. Then came the invitation from Festival Artistic Director Katherine Kaszas to spend the summer in Blyth. It was one of the relatively few opportunities for the converted westerner to return to his roots in Ontario. Originally from Orillia, he went west in 1970 with his wife Rita province. Keystone Alley Cafe McCutcheon - blake Mr. and Mrs. Frank McCutcheon announce the marriage of their son Darwin Todd to Margaret Elizabeth, daughter of Mr. and Mrs.- Morris Blake of Charlottetown, P.E.I. The wedding took place June 13 in Charlottetown, P.E.I. Monday 11 am.-5pm Tues -Sat.8a.m.-9p m Sunday-Closed 519-271-5645 Shelton-Deverell who had a part as an actress with the Globe’s touring company performing in schools. They decided to call Regina home, considering it fairly central in a country that can see actors and writers criss-crossing the country in search of work. Besides, at the time the price of wheat was low and houses were cheap in Regina. So he began writing in a basement apartment in Regina while his wife toured the province with the school company. (He says he seems to have come full circle these days, living in the basement partment of Ralph and Amy McCrea for the summer. The only difference is that now a word processor replaces his old type­ writer.) He soon began writing child­ ren’s plays for Ken Kramer, artistic director at the Globe. His first play was about a little town on the prairies that has lost its sense of identity because the government has removed its name from the latest roadmap. In “Shortshrift” the people send the town handy­ man to try to convince the government to put its name back on the map but he comes back defeated only to find the town has been transformed because some­ one had done something important and made everyone feel better about themselves. That play led to a number of other children’s plays then to becoming writer in residence in 1975 and his opportunity to write for the Globe’s main stage. Since then he’s been kept busy with an interesting mixture of work. One year he might be writing a political docu-drama about something like a miners strike and the next he may be writing something very person­ al like “Drift” and then again he may be doing a new translation of a foreign classic. It seems like he has been very prolific, he says, (a summary of his stage plays, radio plays and television shows takes up seven typewritten pages), but he wrote so much because he had so many deadlines. He has always felt about one deadline behind, he said, and hoped this summer might givehimsometimeofftofeel he was caught up for a change, A new project has come up, however, that’s put him right back in the same boat. He finds the Globe Theatre and the Festival have something in common: a sense of responsibility to the comm unity and a sense of being supported in their vision by the people of the community, although the Globe’s audience is perhaps somewhat more serious. The rural touch is also strong in both places even though Regina is much larger. So much of the local economy still depends on the farm situation in Regina that you start listening to the farm reports when you live there, he said. It also affects the writing. One of his plays was “No. 1, Hard”, a play about the grain industry. The Globe is a regional theatre sothere is a responsibility to do not just Canadian plays but plays from aroundthe world and clas­ sics, he says. As someone who started out Shop Blyth brochures popular with tourists The brochures put out by a group of Blyth merchants with financial help from Blyth Village council have proven so popular that they’ve run out early in the season and orders for more have to go unfilled, village council was told July 14. Councillor Bev Elliott told coun­ cil that the 17,000 brochures printed promoting shopping in Blyth’s smaller stores had all been distributed. A request from the Southwestern Ontario Travel As­ sociation (SWOTA) for an extra 1500 copies for the Goderich tourist booth and 100 more for SWOTA’s London office had to be left unfilled because of the lack of brochures. Nextyear, she said, 35,000 will likely be printed. SMALL IS BIG Small independent power pro­ ducers are helping Ontario Hydro generate electricity. An independent power producer near Ramore has built a hydro­ electric generating station on Black River that will provide 475 kilowatts of electricity to the utility each month. The utility encourages parallel generation and has seen a dramatic increase in the number of entre­ preneurs whobuildand operate small hydro-electric stations. Over the past year the number of independent power producers doubled from the year before as 15 graduating from McMaster Uni­ versity with a degree in theology, he says the gulf between religion andthe theatre is not as wide as might be suspected. Although he studied theology he had always been interested in theatre, having acted in plays since he made up plays with his cousins at Christmas dinneron the farm. Theatre and religion both deal with ritual and theatre has its roots in religion as far back as ancient Greece and more recently in medieval times when theatre came out of the cathedrals. Then there were the prophets who challenged the community to examine its standards much like a playwright does today. He says he uses whimsey and humour to express his disatisfaction with the standards and try to move society toward something better. After so many years in the west he considers himself a westerner but still senses a lack of Saskat­ chewan roots. That sense of distance can help in writing, he says because it gives the writer a chance to observe more from the outside. That kind of observing from the outside is the kind of thing that he ’ s doing this summer in Blyth. Whether the observations inspire a play that will show up on Festival stage in future, only time will tell. She credited the Blyth Festival’s publicity staff for getting the brochures out around the region with their own brochures. Meanwhile SWOTA was spear­ heading a promotion to have a full-page spread on Blyth in the Century Homes magazine. The ad will appear in the October-Novem­ ber issue of the magazine at a time when the Festival is over and new customersneedtobe attracted, she said. Many of the same merchants who participated in the promotion and Council agreed to pay $180 of the $1,200 cost. - BROWNIE'S DRIVE-IN • 169 BEECH ST., CLINTON 482 7030 A OPEN AT 8: ’0 P.M. - FIRST SHOW AT DUSK private producers supplied about 20 megawatts of electricity to the BUSH FIRE by Laurie Fyffe A tale of mystery, love & hate, set in Canada ’s pioneer past July 21 - August 21 Call the Blvth Festival box office for tickets and information 523-9300/9225 OPEN HOUSE An Open House will be held for residents of West Wawanosh Township re­ garding a proposal to regi­ ster Fill Line Mapping in the Townshipof West Wawa­ nosh. The Mapping will be used by the Maitland Valley Conservation Authority [MVCA] to identify areas where the placement of fill should be regulated for the purposes of flood control, pollution control and the conservation of land. Areas to be regulated include watercourses, flood plains, river valleys, head­ water areas and swamps. Maps to be displayed at the Municipal Office in West Wawanosh Township: T uesday, July 27,1987 1:00p.m.-5:00p.m. 7:00p.m.-9:00p.m. Forfurther information contact M.V.C.A. 335-3557.