The Citizen, 2003-06-25, Page 30BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2003. PAGE 5.
Kelly McIntosh writes,
acts in busy Festival season
By Sarah Mann
Citizen staff
Blyth Festival’s resident
playwright, Kelly McIntosh, is off to
a grand start.
After playing Maggie in last
year’s production of The Outdoor
Donnellys, McIntosh is now in her
fifth season in Blyth, and is starring
in The Perilous Pirate’s Daughter,
writing, composing and acting in
Hippie as well as holding the title of
resident playwright.
She also won a K.M. Hunter
Artists Award, an $8,000 award
given to Ontario residents who have
completed their training, begun to
produce a body of work, and are
starting to make a significant mark
in their field. It recognizes
individuals who demonstrate
imagination, originality, and the
potential and determination to
achieve.
That she has.
McIntosh says the award was “one
of the most wonderful things that’s
happened to me. To have someone
recognize your work when you’re
applying for grants, vying to be
hired, and to get a phone call out of
the blue to say you’re on list -1 kind
of yelped.”
“Although the money is nice, the
award is meant to give young artists
confidence and it really put the wind
in my sails.”
McIntosh grew up in Toronto and
attended Ryerson theatre school.
For a couple of years she did
alternative theatre in Toronto before
working at-the Caravan Farm
Theatre in Armstrong, BC.
This was an outdoor theatre “even
in the winter” which did shows
using horses and animal
choreography.
“One of the reasons Paul
Thompson became interested in me
was because of this experience and
hctw it would relate to the Donnelly
show. I became know as the
‘outdoor theatre girl expert’.”
Until now, McIntosh has worked
with Paul Thompson exclusively on
collectives.
Now she is working with Jonathan
Garfinkel and Thompson on Hippie.
The process of getting Hippie to
where it is today is a story in itself.
The idea for Hippie came about
two years ago when McIntosh and
Garfinkel were housesitting for
some locals “who were very much a
part of the ’60s coming to the area.
We wanted to tell this untold story.”
“It was a time when a large section
of people were vying for social
change which was more personal
than political. Hippie is about the
reckless behaviour of the hippies
and the crude reaction of the locals”
So in October and November of
2001, Garfinkel and McIntosh
rented Mary Pennington’s house and
began interviewing people such as
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Kelly McIntosh will be busy this summer, singing and acting
in Perilous Pirate’s Daughter and writing and creating for
hippie. She gets support from her dog Riddley.
Harry Finlay of the Black Swan
coffee house in Stratford, a coffee
house that had poetry readings and
live music.
Then the two presented 20 scenes
to Paul Thompson and spent the
night re-writing them with him.
The next stage of the process
brought an invited audience to a
house to see Act I and part of Act II
being performed by actors
Toronto.
“Don Harron was there,
Coates, Anne Chislett, and
people we didn’t even know. It was
then that Chislett kind of committed
to the project.”
After that, McIntosh and
Garfmkel spent five weeks writing
material with Paul Thompson.
“We’d get together and write
based on tasks that Paul would give
us - write a scene with this kind of
theme, write a character who feels
like this. We wrote hundreds of
pages, probably 500 pages of
material.”
Then, the play was workshopped
and scenes and characters were
chosen.
McIntosh plays a character based
on someone like Joni Mitchell. To
prepare for this role and for
composing the music for Hippie,
McIntosh listened to Joni Mitchell’s
early records (up until Court and
Spark released in 1974.)
“I studied the way she [Mitchell]
uses open tunings to produce warm,
complex sounding chords and took
to it quickly. I then took my own
melodies and placed them in a Joni
Mitchell-type arrangement.”
Though nothing has been decided
yet, there will be other music from
the ’60s.
“Paul has some ideas as to how we
will do that. .. And there will also be
a different type of folk music, that
being the folk music of the locals.”
When asked, McIntosh said this
Continued on page 7
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