The Citizen, 2003-06-25, Page 38BLYTH FESTIVAL SALUTE, WEDNESDAY, JUNE 25, 2003. PAGE 13.
House-sitting introduced Garfinkel to hippie story
By Sarah Mann
Citizen staff
Housesitting doesn’t usually
produce ideas for a play but that is
how Jonathan Garfinkel and Kelly
McIntosh came up with the idea for
Hippie.
“Two years ago, Kelly and I
became interested in the people of
the area and hippies, mostly through
friends we housesat for,” Garfinkel
said in a telephone interview. The
friends were very much a part of the
hippie movement in the area. “There
were so many stories, it was such a
rich time, we knew there was a play
in there.”
The two of them rented a
farmhouse and started writing and
researching by interviewing local
residents. They also interviewed
Harry Finlay who was owner of the
now defunct Black Swan coffee
house in Stratford. This was a
beatnik cafe where people gathered
for poetry readings and live music.
Garfinkel and McIntosh wrote
‘hippie’ as much about locals as
the strange youth who invaded
Continued from page 12
it, like in the sense you feel that
you’ve exhausted that approach.”
For Thompson, one of the higher
rewards of doing collectives is to see
people who have started in the
collective process and evolved into
their own writing persona.
“It obviously enriches the
potential for performers to not be
dependent on other people to
generate their own material. They
know how to do that.”
Hippie opens on July 24 with two
performances of Hippie Uncut on
July 27 and July 30.
“The point of this is not to be
hippies and to challenge the
audience into loving or. hating
them,” Thompson says. “The point
is to envelop the experience because
the experience is as much about
what was happening to the locals as
it was about the kids who were
coming out here.”
some scenes and read them to co
writer Paul Thompson and “he gave
us some really good feedback.”
Two days later they invited “a
small group of people to hear the
play but 40 or 50 showed up, many
of them we didn’t know.”
The response, Garfinkel said, was
“electric and exciting. We wanted in
to be in Blyth and that made Blyth
want to have it.”
Garfinkel says Hippie as a hybrid
of Thompson’s collectives because
the characters and scenes are
improvised.
“Having Paul around was also
useful because he was from that
era.”
Garfinkel has worked with
Thompson before as a dramaturge
on four collectives. Dramaturgy
“means different things to different
people,” but “with Paul it meant the
actors were [improvising] and
creating material on their feet. I
would take the words out of the air
and put them on the page, sometimes
adding in my own words.”
Garfinkel, who is also a poet, has
also had two of his own plays
(Walking in Russia and The Trials of
John Demjanjuk: A Holocaust
Cabaret) produced by Theatre
Asylum in Toronto.
With this play, one of Garfinkel’s
goals was “to show the movement
with individuals instead of one
individual.”
“Hippie is not about what hippies
were like but how they affected the
area and how farmers were
influenced by the influx of young
people.”
Many young people don’t realize
that the hippie movement came so
close to home when all they hear
about is what happened in San
Francisco.
“We’re interested in what
happened in our own backyard, not
in the States or a city, and how it
affected the people.”
The ’60s are filled with many
images, movies, and television
specials and “the most difficult part
about writing this play is trying to
make characters who are real,
believable, deep and not a stereotype
of the ’60s.”
When Garfinkel thinks about
Hippie, he feels useful energy,
music, and a clash with a more
conservative generation.
“People can expect it will
challenge the views of [people of]
the area and make them ask
questions about themselves. It also,
in tradition of Paul’s work,
mythologizes the area.”
And Garfinkel loves the area.
“I love Blyth. I’ve been there four
seasons and I like the people, the
theatre, and the landscape. It’s a
good place for an artist to be. It’s a
lot different from the city because
you can actually talk to people and
get to know them.”
( A
Need travel
information on
Huron County?
Check out7
www.stopsalonglakehuron.com
TOWN’TimeritageHALL MmTHEATRE
pLam oust fTFieattcz
P.O. Box 580, 274 Josephine Street
WINGHAM, ON NOG 2W0
(519) 357-4082 (Phone/Fax)
COUNTRY KITCHEN SKILLS BOOKS
• Preserving For All Seasons
• Cheese Making Made Easy
• Home Sausage Making
• A Guide to Canning, Freezing,
Curing & Smoking Meat, Fish
and Game
And more
Citizen
404 Queen St., Blyth
SCROOP'S Brussels Bologna
and the
MEAT MARKET Lumberjack Steak"
* Featuring a special line of
Dutch Foods
Fresh and Frozen Meat Products
* Homemade pies by
"Brubachers of Ethel"
Hunters
Make last year's wild game into farmer-style sausage,
summer sausage, pepperoni & pepperettes
533 Turnberry St., Brussels
887-8674