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BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 28/29, 2006. PAGE 15.
Speaking to the
audience
For director Gil Garratt, Another Season's
Harvest is "One of the most significant pieces
we've done for our community".
Gil Garratt: Building a sense
of community.
By Bonnie Gropp
Citizen editor
When Blyth Festival's artistic
director was looking for the right
person to direct Another's Season's
Harvest this season, he didn't look
far.
"When Eric commissioned Keith
and Anne (Roulston and Chislett) to
do this play, he talked to me about it
pretty much right away," said
associate artistic director Gil Garratt.
Noting that the playwrights are part
of the summer theatres 'old guard'
and that the play itself has a
connection to the Festival's history,
Garratt added that he had a clear
sense of the trajectory that's
involved.
The play picks up the story of the
Purves family from Chislett and
Roulston's acclaimed Another
Season's Promise, 20 years later.
Now they are coping with the crises
facing agriculture today.
With its rural theme, Harvest will
assuredly appeal to the Festival's
core audience, Garratt said. "But, I
also think it's one of the most
signficant pieces we've done for our
community. We haven't produced a
play here that spoke to the local
issues as succinctly as this one. You
Japanese coming
to see Another
Season's Harvest
Continued from page 14
perform. The most recent was the
Furano Theatre Company which
performed in Japanese. The
company lived with members of the
community and amazing
connections have been formed, said
Chislett.
As an unofficial liaison of sorts,
Yoshihara is often the one
approached when people in the
Japanese theatre community are
interested in coming to Blyth. "His
is part of the fulcrum from where all
this passes," said Chislett, who was
contacted by him in May regarding
this most recent visit.
"One of the women coming with
the group this time, is with a theatre
group that has adopted a mandate
the same as ours, to produce
national works. So there is a strong
link philosophically."
Chislett said this group has seen
pictures of earlier trips that show the
barbecues and parties held in
honour of the special guests. "They
are looking forward to repeating
that"
don't have to have been raising beef
to understand this play."
But while the story deals with
issues like BSE, at its heart is love
and family. Drawing from his own
experience as a new father, Garratt
talks of the connection between
generations, a theme very much
present in Harvest. "Cap (his wife,
actor Cappucine Onn) has deep roots
to this community. Her father is here
and now my family have moved
nearby as well. It's a very new world
for me in some ways, but also a real
shift, opening up to that level of
support, the love, the frustration,
learning and compromise that means
family."
Like the Purves family, where
three generations exist together,
Garratt's son Gideon has something
that many youngsters today don't.
"He is regularly spending time with
grandpa. That's very enriching to a
child's life. I think it's a problem
today, everyone is moving away to
be independent and have careers.
Money is the pressure, but they don't
look at what they're throwing dut to
get that."
Harvest, he said, is about the kind
of co-operation that must exist
between generations who live and
work in close proximity.
"There's a message, but Keith and
Anne are not being didactic about it.
They're not saying how you should
do it, how you should weather these
problems. The central piece of
advice they offer is co-operation.
That's integral, the shared sense of
power."
It's interesting that many of the
qualities of family he mentioned are
also qualities that must be brought to
direction. "It's absolutely about co-
operation, there are frustrations. I try
to be as encouraging and as patient
as possible. The hardest thing is to
try and keep open, to let the actors
fire off each other and actually sit
back and let them inhabit the role.
That can be tricky."
"I have lived with this play for a
year and have a clear concept of
what I see. But you get to rehearsals
and it's all about the actors making
their own discoveries."
His connection to the community
—he and Onn have a house in Blyth
— has played a big part in his vies:•
of the play. "It's been pretty
incredible watching what has
happened. The farmers I've come to
know all have off-farm jobs. There
has been a real anxiety that extends
to the entire community. If the
agricultural sector is left to wither
and die, so will the community."
Though Garratt never saw Promise
which premiered at Blyth in the mid-
1980s, he has read it and says he
found it "incredibly moving".
Knowledge of it is only important
to his role as director, he says, in so
far as what the story spoke to, the
farm crisis then. "It's probably a
good thing because I don't have that
piece welded to my interpretation. I
did pick up the family story in that,
but it's not a critical key to
understanding this story."
A story, he adds, "that is a
powerful piece."
Most honoured play premiered at Blyth
Festival: Quiet in the Land, by Anne
Chislett, winner of both the Governor
General's Award and the
Chalmers Award.