Village Squire, 1977-02, Page 33worked with them and learned from them.
Then they went back to the borrowed farm
and worked out short theatre pieces from
the information they had gathered.
Then one sunny Sunday afternoon they
invited anyone interested and particuarly
the farmers and their families to gether in
the barn on the farmand witness the show
they had put together. It was a sceptical
group that gathered. What could the actors
find interesting in their lives? Would they
ridicule them? Were these people really
any good with their strange ways of putting
together such a strange kind of show?
It was an amazing theatre adventure that
afternoon. Playing before a super critical
audience the actors put together a show
that had the audience which spread out
through the hay mow in stages of emotion
from laughter to tears. It was a moving
piece of theatre which won acclaim from
the people it was about. The actors used
nothing but their voices and bodies and a
few scraps of old machinery and put on a
trmendous show for this unsophisticated
audience.
The show, Thompson explained at the
time, was just to see if the material
gathered was true to life by trying it on the
farmers themselves. He planned to rework
the material when his group went back to
Toronto. But he soon discovered that the
show was good as it was and it opened in
Toronto with very few changes. It was the
show that probably did more to make
Theatre Passe Muraille one of the nation's
leading theatres than any other. It was a hit
in Toronto. It toured western Ontario. It
toured the U.S. It toured western Canada.
It was made into a television show for
C.B.C. (but was sadly butchered).
Following the same ptbcedure the group
then went north to tell the story of
Northern Ontario Life, then west to tell the
story of life on the Prairies in The West
Shows.
It came back to western Ontario in 1974
to rework its play on the 1837 rebellion to
tell particularly the farmers side of the
story. Working from Blyth's Memorial Hall
Theatre they researched the lives of such
men as Col. Anthony Van Egmond of
Egmondville who was the general of the
rebel army. When the show went back to
Toronto it became probably the group's
second biggest hit after the Farm Show.
The Western Ontario ties became
stronger during the summers of 1974 and
1975 when the troupe moved to Petrolia's
Victoria Playhouse for summer seasons
which included a local play about the oil
industry. Then last winter came The
Horsburgh Scandal which premiered in
Blyth and told the story of the famous
Chatham scandal which centred around
Rev. Russell Horsburgh, a native of the
Wingham area.
Since 1972, T.P.M. has toured western
Ontario regularly with The Farm Show,
1837: The Farmers' Revolt (twice), Them
Donnelly's; The West Show, Horsburgh
Scandal, Hornby and now with 18 Wheels,
a truckdrivers musical. They opened the
way in popular theatre for plays about
ourselves helping create an audience for
the establishment of the new Victoria
Playhouse company planned for this
summer and the successful Blyth Summer
Festival, both of which are based on
Canadian plays.
Along the way, however, T.P.M. has not
always stayed away from controversy and
probably made the most fame two years
agp with a sex revue called I Love You
100
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VILLAGE SQUIRE/FEBRUARY 1977. 35