The Citizen-Blyth Festival 2002, 2002-06-05, Page 13Janet Amos: Returns to the role of Rose Clark and creates role in Piccadilly.
"It was a very, very happy time, such fun,
and I associate Rose with those pleasant
memories."
Yet, while there is such warmth surrounding
the character, Amos notes that Bamboozled is
different than the first play. "It's not so farcical
and the character of course is different. She's
older, retired."
Amos also stresses that Rose is a minor
character. "The play is really Ted's as Aylmer."
Another aspect of the production which is
also exciting for Amos is the chance to work
with director Paul Thompson, a friend from
her Passe Muraille days. "I'm really looking
forward to that. We very seldom get to work
together anymore."
Though it would seem that this season is
rather like a homecoming for Amos, a chance
to relive the past and get re-aquainted with old
friends and characters, there is an opportunity
as well to build something new.
In Goodbye Piccadilly, Amos will be
creating a new character, Bess. Yet the actor
has familiarized herself so much with the role,
that when describing Bess she sounds as if she
is speaking of an old friend. "She is an older
person, like Rose, but a different kind of
person, a town person."
The story has been one that Amos admits has
left her with mixed feelings. Bess, she says, is
a woman who has enjoyed a fun life with her
husband. When her husband leaves for a trip to
Algonquin, she learns that he has been
awarded. the Order of Canada.
A whole community musters to
present Donnelly story
By Bonnie Gropp
Citizen staff
The character of Rose Clark holds
wonderful memories for Janet Amos. Thus it is
that she is happy to be returning to the role in
Blyth Festival's premiere of Bamboozled: He
Won't Come in From the Barn, Part II.
Amos, who was twice artistic director in
Blyth, first from the fall of 1979 to 1984, then
after being invited back from November of
1993 to November of 1997, said that Rose was
one of the reasons she hoped current Artistic
Director Anne Chislett would have a place for
Amos in the 2002 season. "It is wonderful to
come back to her," she says.
It was 1973 during a tour of The Farm Show
with Theatre Passe Muraille, that Amos met
her future husband Ted Johns, writer and star
of the Barn plays. They married 26 years ago.
When Blyth Festival mounted He Won't
Come in From the Barn, in 1977, Amos was
pregnant with the couple's • son Joe and Clare
Coulter,was cast in the role of Rose opposite
Johns. "It played that summer for a week. I got
back from having Joe in time to see it. I sat in
that audience with Joe in my arms. It was a
very beautiful time," Amos recalls.
As artistic director, Amos said she liked to
end the year strong, thus in her second season
she decided to bring back a success and chose
her husband's play as the final production for
that year. Revived with a new set, it gave
Amos her first chance to play Rose.
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BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY. JUNE 5. 2002. PAGE 13.
A new role and old familiar one for Janet Amos
It was a feud in the rough and tumble of
a pioneer community that ended in tragedy.
More than a century later it's a legend so
sweeping that it takes an entire village to tell
the story of the death of the Donnellys.
Depending on which side of the legend
you choose to believe, the Donnelly family,
who lived near Lucan in what was still part
of Huron County in 1880, were either
innocent victims of a community vendetta
or evil monsters who finally got what they
deserved. Their bitter feud ended one cold
night in February, 1880, ,when a mob
attacked two Donnelly family homes,
murdering five people, including women
and children, and burning one house to the
ground.
It's a story that's fascinated legendary
Canadian theatrical director Paul Thompson
so much that he kept coming back to it over
and over again with various stage versions.
Finally he devised The Outdoor Donnellys,
a production so massive it takes the entire
village of Blyth to bring it to life. Not only
are locations all over the village used for
various scenes that tell the family's story,
but 40 amateur actors, not just from Blyth
but from as far away as Stratford, take part
in the performance as well as the core
professional company.
While the main play, performed by the
Festival's professional company, takes place
at the Blyth fairgrounds on a large outdoor
stage in front of a grandstand, various
scenes from the lives of Donnelly members
and their opponents are portrayed at various
locations around the village prior to the
main stage finale. Audience members are
taken between locations on wagons and
people movers. It takes more than 100
volunteers from tractor drivers and ushers to
actors to bring off the huge event.
A local horse owner loaned his team of
horses to draw the stage coach which is
central to the feud between the Donnellys
and others in their community. The stage
coach was built at the Festival's shops and,
Continue on page 16
"She's so excited she's beside herself," says
Amos, "but when she tries to phone him she
can't reach him."
Bess soon gets a call from England,
however, saying that her husband has died
mysteriously there. "It's all very unsettling,
then it turns out he's visiting a woman with
whom he'd had an affair during the war."
Saying that the story is actually, quite funny,
Amos also admits she is having some trouble
with the comedy because she finds Bess's
situation "quite upsetting. It's incredible. The
life she knew wasn't real. She feels betrayed."
As it would be with any new acquaintance
what appears on the surface is not all there is
to Bess. "It's an interesting role. At first I
thought of her as quite sweet, but in exploring
the character I can see she's bossy too."
With Bess and Rose, Amos, as she did last
year at Blyth, is playing women considerably
older than herself. It is something she's gotten
used to. "I seem to get cast in character roles.
Gosh, I played Rose 20 years ago."
Since then, audiences have come to love
many of the wonderful characters she has
brought to Blyth. There is a familiarity, a bond
with the actor which warms theatre-goers to
the personas she plays.
And though many different faces appearing
at Blyth along with the those from the early
days, Amos admits she sometimes misses a
sense of family she once experienced here.
However, there is no question that with
audiences she remains a favourites
"I haven't done a lot of work in Blyth in
recent years, but it was nice to be welcomed
back last year. People in town do know me.
For me there has been a connection to this
community."