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Keith Roulston: playwright, editor, publisher and board member.
SETTING THE STAGE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 24, 1998. PAGE 7.
Around the card table in Blyth
By Allison Lawlor
W hile the Blyth Festival
aims to do new Canadian
plays Carol Shield's play
Thirteen Hands seemed perfect for
this season.
First performed at the Prairie
Exchange in 1993, Thirteen Hands
went on to play at Canadian Stage
in Toronto.
This season it will be performed
at the Blyth Festival and directed by
Diana Belshaw.
Thirteen Hands is an all-women
show that takes place around a
bridge table.
"My mother was in a bridge
club," said Carol. "I was never in a
bridge club but I was in a book club
By Allison Lawlor
Aveteran playwright of the
festival, Keith's first play,
The Shortest Distance
Between Two Points was produced
back in 1977. The play took a
comical look at forgotten, Ontario
small towns.
Keith's play Jobs! Jobs! Jobs!
which is being performed at the
festival this year also takes a comic
look at a serious issue. This time
it's the changing economy of the
'90s and its effects on people.
"I like people to enjoy the theatre.
Maybe in the process they get a
message from it, but I don't want to
hit them over the head," he said.
Jobs! Jobs! Jobs! deals with the
global problem of corporations
gaining increasingly more power at
the expense of people, and looks at
it from a local level.
"A small town is a microcosm,
where all aspects of a community
come together," said Keith. "In a
town of 3,000 you get a cross-
section of people from all different
social classes."
which is similar."
The idea for the play developed
from Carol's interest in the
unnoticed parts of women's lives.
"Something important goes on
around a bridge table," she wrote in
the playwright's note at the front of
Thirteen Hands, "a place where
many women have felt most
brilliantly alive."
Carol is excited about the cast this
season at Blyth. She has seen both
Goldie Semple and Michelle Fisk
perform in theatres out West and
admires their talent.
Primarily a novelist, Carol has
written seven novels, including The
Stone Diaries and Larry's Party,
two books of short stories, three
books of poetry and four plays.
Keith has been around the Blyth
Festival since its beginning in 1975.
He acted as general manager of the
festival from '79 to '83.
Being one of the co-founders of
the festival, Keith has watched it
grow and mature much in the same
way he has developed as a
playwright.
Keith is grateful to artistic
director Anne Chislett for taking the
time to work with him on polishing
the script of Job! Jobs! Jobs!
"This play is at a different level
than my work 20 years ago," said
Keith. "My work wasn't produced
for 20 years because no one had the
patience to see the potential in my
scripts."
Keith's other plays include, His
Own Boss, 1978, McCillicuddy's
Lost Weekend, 1979 and Another
Season's Promise, 1986-87 co-
written with Anne Chislett.
Born and raised on a farm near
Lucknow, Huron County is home to
Keith. He says this is what makes
writing for the Blyth Festival
special.
She recently won the prestigious
Orange Prize for Larry's Party. She
is also the past recipient of the
Governor General's Award, the
Pulitzer Prize, the Arthur Ellis
Award, the Marian Engel Award, as
well as placing second in the 1992
U.K. Guardian Fiction Prize for her
novel, The Republic of Love.
While writing a novel is a solitary
act, Carol said she enjoys the
change of writing for the theatre.
"Theatre is very immediate. You
see it take shape," she said. "I like
the collaborative side of theatre,
being a part of a rather large team."
Carol lives in Winnipeg where
she teaches at the University of
Manitoba. She just completed a new
novel.
"The things I am interested in and
concerned about are interesting to
audiences here."
After graduating from high school
Keith went to Toronto to study
journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic.
It was in Toronto where he
developed his love of theatre. He
saw his first professional
performance at the Royal Alex
Theatre.
"I like the immediacy of theatre.
The audience is right there. With
newspapers you don't know
whether people are reading your
stories."
Keith is the president of the board
of directors at the Blyth Festival
and the editor and publisher of The
Rural Voice and publisher of The
North Huron Citizen.
He lives with his wife, Jill, and
their youngest daughter, Erin,
outside of Blyth in East Wawanosh
township.
Carol Shields: award-winning novelist and playwright.
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Roulston returns to the theatre