The Citizen, 2019-03-21, Page 3THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, MARCH 21, 2019. PAGE 3.
‘New Friends Old Friends’ a labour of love: McGregor
Blyth’s Duncan McGregor has
returned to an earlier play for this
year’s Foundation for Education
show at Blyth Memorial Hall.
Called New Friends Old Friends,
the play, put on by the McGregor
and Friends group and the
foundation, includes three stories
which McGregor, alongside
directing, adapted from their original
sources. The three stories include,
Tractor Dan, Fiona and Ralph and
The Amazing Adventures of Emily.
The play, set for April 8-12 at
Blyth Memorial Community Hall
with shows at 10:15 a.m. and 1:15
p.m., is an hour long and aimed at
students in Grades JK-6. McGregor
says it’s a labour of local love.
“The major thing is how we put
these three stories together,”
McGregor said. “The first part of the
story is a harvest in Huron County.”
McGregor explained that, as part
of the harvest, some of the youth in
attendance will be welcomed on
stage to help with the harvest
including performing a special
dance, while everyone will be
invited to participate in the creation
of a huge storm in the first of the
three plays, Tractor Dan.
“Later on, the audience becomes a
crucial party of a story in The
Amazing Adventures of Emily,” he
said. “They have to be, otherwise
Huron County will become a
desert.”
The play features a significant
amount of locally-sourced props and
technical know-how, McGregor said,
which is always a priority for his
shows.
“If I’m producing a show in
Goderich, I try to work with people
from Goderich,” he said. “With this
play, I’ve sourced as much as I can
from local people.”
In particular, Blyth residents are
crucial to the play, he said, pointing
to Jane Smyth, Cheryl Peach and
Steve Cook, a regular McGregor
contributor who recently moved
away from Blyth.
“Steve is quite a performer,” he
said. “It’s amazing how talented he
is.”
Peach, a former principal, is in her
second year participating in
McGregor’s performances, and
came to work with him through
McGregor’s friendship with her late
husband Geoff. She is the stage
manager for the show.
McGregor explained he has a long
history with the Peach family,
having taught Geoff and Cheryl’s
daughter Laura as well as coaching
her sister Kathryn on stage.
Smyth is an essential part of the
play, McGregor said, though she
isn’t on stage. Aside from working
the theatrical lights for the show, a
daunting task in itself, Smyth is also
organizing bus unloading, leading
students into the building and
making sure all the house lights are
on for the audience coming in to the
production space.
Local artisans are also prominent
in the play, McGregor explained.
Dave Siebert, a carpenter by trade,
has lent his expertise to help create
props and scenery for McGregor’s
productions for years, and this show
will be no different.
Local business owner Irene
Kellins of Stitches with a Twist is
applying her needlework knowledge
to craft some special costumes for
the play. The costumes require
crocheting, knitting and sewing and
McGregor said he knew exactly who
to talk to get the work done.
Artist Billie White, who creates
through a process called “flow
painting” is featured in the show,
having crafted the backdrops for the
show. While she may not be local to
Blyth, hailing from Goderich, her
works have been blown up from 12
inches tall to approximately eight
feet tall thanks to the work of Blyth
Printing.
“Ken [Whitmore] and Steve
[Dawe] worked on them for a week,”
he said of the three, double-sided
backdrops which can be moved to
help tell the stories in the play. “It
wasn’t as simple as printing them
larger, either. We had to look at how
they would be used, consider how
stage lighting would affect them and
look at how to make them easily
accessible.”
Dawe’s daughter Ava will also be
on stage.
The original paintings the blown-
up backdrops are based on are
striking, McGregor said. White
usually produces abstract art and,
while McGregor appreciated it, he
said that he didn’t know how it
would translate to a younger
audience. The flow technique of
painting inspired him to ask White to
produce impressionist art, which
resulted in some amazing work, he
said, that he thinks will be well
received by the audience.
Other locals involved in the play
include composer Arlene
Darnbrough and musical performer
Suzanne MacVicar, whose husband
Wes and daughter Halle are also on-
stage performers.
As far as the play as a whole goes,
it was originally produced in 1996,
at Memorial Hall, but for the Blyth
Festival. McGregor said that, in
those days, many community plays
like these were produced as a means
of supporting the Festival.
This is McGregor’s sixth
performance for the Foundation for
Education, which he explained is,
within itself, a labour of love. As a
former educator, he finds the work
the foundation does, which includes
bringing artists into local schools,
absolutely essential to a well-
rounded arts curriculum.
He said his love of the foundation
is only paralleled by his love of
creating the productions, and his cast
and crew feel the same way.
“The adults take time off,” he said.
“The younger stars get permission to
miss school for the event and the
schools are always so supportive.
“There is a lot of effort that goes
into these plays,” he said. “We
started rehearsals in January because
you can’t predict Huron County
weather.”
He said that, through the
particularly challenging winter that
Huron County has faced this season,
there have been five cancelled
rehearsals, but thanks to the
availability of the June Hill rehearsal
space, located above the
Blyth Festival offices, in
Memorial Hall, the play is still right
on track.
On top of offering the rental of the
space to the foundation, the
generosity of the Festival is
overwhelming, McGregor said,
when it comes to offering props and
costumes for the production, the
Festival has been very
accommodating.
The three tales told through the
play are all based in Huron County,
but tell very different stories,
McGregor said.
Tractor Dan, for example, is a tale
about a man trying to convince his
community of the worthiness of a
new tractor. McGregor explains that
the play comes from a story-poem
that was originally told in “the
legendary The Farm Show.”
Fiona and Ralph tells the story of
two unlikely old friends, a sheepdog
named Ralph and a wild fox named
Fiona. In an attempt to avoid an
unsavoury fate, Fiona and Ralph
cook up a plan to make Ralph seem
like the hero of the farm. However,
as with all schemes, there are
consequences.
The Amazing Adventures of
Emily is a tale about a young farmer
named Emily who has to defend her
home against an evil force bent on
turning it into a desert. Along her
heroic journey, she faces obstacles
that divert her from her cause,
testing her humanity and making her
friends along her perilous journey.
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He sheds a sacred light on His own word of truth, and by His personal and
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However valuable and blessed the book of God is, we cannot be made wise
unto salvation by the word itself--without the special teachings of the Holy
spirit as a personal and living instructor. He can suit His teachings to our case;
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for us what no earthly teacher can--write His own laws upon our hearts and
give us will and power to keep and obey them.
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A Grace Gem
Submitted by: Immanuel United Reformed Church,
Listowel, ON 519-291-1956
A loving touch
McGregor and Friends, led by Blyth’s Duncan McGregor,
shown above, are producing New Friends Old Friends at
Blyth Memorial Hall next month. The play is proof,
McGregor says, that it takes not just one village, but many
villages to create the kind of child-friendly programming
that the group has become known for.
To prove his point, McGregor posed on a prop tractor crafted by
local carpenter Dave Siebert, wearing hand puppets made by
Irene Kellins of Stitches with a Twist in Blyth and sat in front of two
of the impressionist-style mobile backdrops crafted by Goderich
artist Billie White and blown up to larger-than-life-size proportions
by Blyth Printing. (Denny Scott photo)
By Denny Scott
The Citizen