Village Squire, 1980-05, Page 5Clockwise from the top, Aileen Taylor -Smith of Huron
Country Playhouse; Janet Amos of Blyth Summer
Festival and Bernard Hopkins of Theatre London.
Equus by Peter Shaffer, will take over from William Hutt as
artistic director on June 1 of this year.
So the hats are new, but the people under them aren't. The
three new/famliar faces have a few other things in common, too.
For one thing, they're all actors, and while there's nothing odd
about an actor heading a company, it's interesting that the
theatre boards picked people who know theatre from the stage
out. Mrs. Taylor -Smith, Amos and Hopkins all have backstage
savvy, but they're players. not accountants -- and that can only
mean good things in an era when the bottom line seems to be. of
greaier concern than the characters' lines.
Another thing: Not one in three is promising radical or stirring
changes to the theatres they'll be leading. Fans of the Huron
Country Playhouse can note Taylor -Smith's remark that no
theatre "should undercut comedy -- laughter is important."
Blyth Summer Festival patrons who've enjoyed its emphasis on
originals may smile when they hear Janet Amos has said: "1
can't predict how my choices (including Gordon Pinsent's John
and The Missus and a collective work about Jack McLaren of the
Dumbells) and work will be accepteo by people there. If I do
really well, I'll continue to build on what's been there."
STRATFORD CONNECTION
All three also express appreciation for the previous directors,
but don't seem daunted by the notion of big -shoes -to -fill. Oine
change at Theatre London will see less emphasis on the
"Stratford connection" with the Shakespearean Festival 40
miles away. "Right now, it's like kissing cousins." Hopkins said
in a telephone interview from his Lennoxville, Quebec home.
"That's the way I put it to the board when 1 was interviewed for
the position, and I said then we should probably be less like that,
and more like kin down the road. Of course, the situation arose
automatically because Bill (Hutt) was active with both places at
once, and I won't be."
Aileen Taylor -
Smith said she feels she has an advantage over James Murphy,
her predecessor, in that Marc Quinn, the Playhouse's general
manager, is there to handle the business side of the operation.
"Many times Marc and I will be discussing something and in the
course of talking with each other we' 11 realize that James would
only have had himself to talk to when he was considering the
same kind of thing," she said.
The Playhouse is a $250,000 operation, with 1979 attendance
hitting about 26,000. said Quinn, but Taylor -Smith's association
with the Grand Bend theatre dates from its days under the big
top. When the 5275,000 barn -styled theatre was ready in 1975,
so was she. With the tent gone, Taylor -Smith appeared in three
plays, as Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest, as
Amanda in The Glass Menagerie, and as Ethel Banks in Barefoot
In The Park.
TORONTO'S CREST
Her dramatic experiences go back to the classic '50s era in
Toronto, when Taylor -Smith worked with the Crest Theatre. She
would like to take advantage of her Toronto contacts, bring
people to the Grand Bend theatre who haven't been there, and
build on James Murphy's foundation. It was Murphy, after all,
who -- assisted by Bill Heinsohn -- brought Toronto's Gate
Theatre Productions to the Bend in 1972.
Last summer, Taylor -Smith directed The Owl and The
Pussycat, and many of her choices for the 1980 season are also
perennial summer theatre favourites. The season will open
officially on June 26 with Noel Coward's Private Lives. "It's a
classic," she said, "that's never dated." The Spring Thaw tour
will have warmed up the Playhouse with a June 7 appearance,
about halfway through its cross-country tour.
The artistic director had actually been back in Toronto, holding
auditions for the summer, in the days before the press reception.
Actors were enthused about the chance to play in Private Lives,
she reported.
"1 have been holding auditions for our season, and there have
been 304 actors all saying how much they'd like to be in Private
Lives."
She also said opening night should be a special one, with the
audience encouraged to come early and stay late. "Basically, the
actors are very shy," she said, but that shouldn't keep
theatregoers from going backstage after the performance.
After offering such hits as Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys
and Bernard Slade's famous two -hander Same Time, Next Year
through July and into August, the season will close with a revival
of Annie Get Your Gun. "On and on every song in it's a hit,"
the artistic director said. Through the summer, there'll also be
Sunday films, with such Canadian movies as The Rowdyman and
The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz on the schedule.
But before Annie and her weapon get together for the last time
on September 6, there will be one special problem in casting
Vanouver humourist Eric Nicols's Free At Last. Apparently, the
play -- a witty send-up of the problems of a menopausal male --
calls for a goat to bleat its best on stage. The most memorable
image of the press reception had Aileen Taylor -Smith mulling
over the possibilities of auditioning live goats for the part -- as
had been done in Theatre New Brunswick's staging of the play --
without any loss of composure or confidence.
Bernard Hopkins hasn't had to contend with the problems of
live goats and their hucksterish agents yet, but the auditions for
young actors are already on his mind. All three new directors are
VILLAGE SOUIRE/MAY 1980 PG. 3