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Blyth Festival, the little theatre that could It seemed like a long-shot for success back in the summer of 1975 when a small troupe of actors assembled in a village of 900 people off the beaten track for tourists to begin a summer theatre doing Canadian work, but the Blyth Festival's success helped change the face of summer theatre in Ontario. It's hard, to remember now that back then doing Canadian plays for summer theatre audiences was Continued from page 11 appreciated the fact that this young .woman was really interested in what they did." Lederman says it would have been different had she felt hostility from the Metis but says they were the shy ones. "It's a tricky thing because you're always trying to decide whether they don't want you there. A lot of them are very reserved and it's easy to imagine they don't want you there at all but I never really quite got that sense." Eventually. Lederman says. she got a sense that the players were actually delighted she was there. "You get enough to keep you going," she says. When Lederman was first exposed to the music and began to try and learn the style she felt like she was 'learning a new language but couldn't get the accent right. "I'd go back to Toronto and try to play and I'd have all the notes but it didn't feel right, it lust didn't have the right accent. But it comes. It's just a matter of time." Lederman says the Metis players also have a different technique to hold the fiddle that she finds to be thought to be an impossibility. Only one other summer theatre in Canada, the Lennoxville Festival in Quebec. was presenting Canadian plays in a summer setting and it was struggling and would soon close. Even Blyth's founding artistic director James Roy took a "safe" route by programming Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap as the second play of his original season. It drew half the audience of Mostly In Clover, adapted from the works of quite akward. Up until doing this play Lederman didn't .even try the Metis technique but now that she's portraying the fiddlers on stage she's attempting it. "I'm actually trying to sit like they sit and hold the fiddle like they hold it and it does get me closer to the sounds of the individual players." Every player sounds slightly different and Lederman says her challenge is to figure out how to Johns notes Continued from page 12 creation by dedicated teenagers. The program has opened doors and created opportunities for young people, though Johns laughingly wonders, "What have we been responsible for" in getting so many young people involved in theatrical life. Listing the Young Company, the art gallery, the Festival Singers choir and the Blyth Festival Orchestra, Johns says the Festival has done well in making itself a community centre. He also says he's seen a real local writer Harry J. Boyle and that set the Festival's course of doing plays for local audiences. In 2004. of 29 theatres listed in the brochure for the Association of Summer Theatres 'Round Ontario, 18 were performing at least some Canadian work with six besides Blyth featuring predominantly Canadian scripts. The risky business of developing new scripts was even more daring for make them all characters on their own. "I just have to think, I know these people and if I think about- them and keep their image in my mind then I can do them justice." Although the Metis style of fiddling is somewhat different, Lederman says fiddlers and people who like fiddle music will enjoy it. "It's got the drive, it's got the spirit and the infectious character I hope people enjoy." changes change in the community from the early days when people didn't quite know how to deal with these strange creatures who came to work at the theatre, to a place that is used to people coming and going and seems to look forward to the arrival of the theatre company each spring. All this has grown up over 30 years in Blyth when, if the founders had hired a market researcher back in 1975. he would have given them dozens of reasons not to locate a theatre in the community, Johns chuckles. the Festival when it started. Even Lennoxville was producing plays that had been successful. elsewhere. In 2004 several theatres such as the Thousand Islands Playhouse in Gananoque also frequently premiere plays. In 1975, those summer theatres that existed in Ontario were generally in traditional tourist areas like Muskoka and Grand Bend. The idea of performing summer theatre in a small inland farming village went against all conventional thinking about locating a professional summer theatre. The success of the Festival brought many delegations to Blyth for advice on how the theatre had beaten the odds. As well, when Blyth toured its plays to town halls in other communities in the early 1980s. it helped establish the idea of a theatre in Drayton which eventually became the immensely successful Drayton Festival. Today there are professional theatres in places like Millbrook, Erin, Port Hope, Picton and Morrisburg. Musician became welcomed guest eattpatatatiatta, an pat 30th Swum flity.th 5,e4tittat 1 Year, 12,000. km. Powertrain Warranty Included CHEVROLET J.L. McCUTCHEON MOTOR Brussels 887-6856 Toll Free 1-888-351-9193