Village Squire, 1975-03, Page 9Naked
on The
North Shore
Telling the story
of a lonely,
Labrador town
To most of us, the idea of getting up on
stage in front of a few hundred people is
enough to set the knees to knocking so
violently that we're likely to end up in the
infirmary. Mention getting up on stage all
alone and entertaining people for about 90
minutes and most of us would be a basket
case.
But one area native not only does it, he
loves it. Ted Johns, presently touring Ontario
and this area does just that. He gets up on
various stages from auction barns to hotel
lounges to theatres, and regales people with
tales of a little village in Labrador for 90
minutes. The audiences, and the critics have
loved it.
Johns was born in Seaforth hospital while
his parents lived on'a farm just east of the old
air force base southeast of Clinton. He grew
up on another farm near Mitchell where he
attended elementary school in Fullarton
township and went to Mitchell District High
School before studying English and History at
the University of Toronto. He gained his
M.A. degree and then used his teaching
Ted Johns, area resident performs play solo.
profession to help him see the world. He
spent a good deal of time in Czechoslovakia
and eventually taught English, specializing in
modern poetry at Brock University at St.
Catharines for four years. One of the stops on
his travels was a little village called Old Fort
Bay located just off the Straight of Belle Isle
about 40 miles below the Quebec Labrador
border. He taught grades six and seven in the
village of 300 people.
After he became involved in theatre with
the Theatre Passe Muraille production of The
Farm Show he quit his teaching position for
the exhilerating, yet uncertain world of the
stage. The Farm Show and Under the
Greywake (a play about northern Ontario) got
him firmly implanted with the urge for
original Canadian theatre. He recalled his life
in Old Fort Bay and thought about doing a
play on the village. In January 1974 he
received a $500 playwrite's grant from the
Ontario Arts Council and headed back to
Labrador with another area resident, Bill
Acres of Gowanstown, near Listowel. Acres
made sketches of the area and later made
several paintings and composed the set for
the show.
The result of the visit was a one-man show
that ran for five weeks under the banner of
Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto. The
reviews were lavish. Urjo Kareda of The
Toronto Star said: "In Naked on the North
Shore, his solo performance now at Theatre
Passe Muraille, Ted Johns re-creates the
small community of Old Fort Bay, near the
Straits of Belle Isle on the North shore of the
St. Lawrence. He does so with an
extraordinary combinations of humour,
poetry, mime and sheer gusto. The style is
both wholly his own and at the same time
immediately identifiable in most rural
communities in Canada...Ted Johns is that
rarest of creatures, a natural entertainer, and
his one-man documentary is beautifully
unusual."
Other reviews were just as flattering.
More important than the reviews was the
acceptance of the play by the people involved.
Last year the play undertook a two-week tour
of Newfoundland (after it played at the
VILLAGE SQUIRE/MARCH 1975, 7