Blyth Festival

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Blyth Festival, is a theatrical festival, located in the village of Blyth, Ontario, Canada, which specializes in the production and promotion of Canadian plays. [1] [2]

Blyth, Ontario Unincorporated community in Ontario, Canada

Blyth is a village in North Huron, Huron County, Ontario, Canada.

Blyth Festival, located in Blyth, Ontario, Canada, specializes in the production and promotion of Canadian plays. The following is a chronological list of the productions that have been staged as part of the Festival since its inception. World Premieres have also been noted.

Contents

In addition, the Festival acts as a resource for local groups and makes its facilities available for community use. The Festival and the Centre contribute significantly to the economy of the village and to the tourism industry in Huron County.

Huron County, Ontario County in Ontario, Canada

Huron County is a county of the province of Ontario, Canada. It is located on the southeast shore of its namesake, Lake Huron, in the southwest part of the province. The county seat is Goderich, also the county's largest community.

History

The organization was started by James Roy, playwright Anne Chislett and local newspaper editor Keith Roulston in 1975. [3] Its primary mandate was to produce and develop local Canadian plays. [4] [5]

Anne Chislett is a Canadian playwright.

In 1975, few scripts that fit the festival's mandate were being written, so the festival's founders began to create new works and adapt the work of other Canadian playwrights. The first season included a play with an established reputation, Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap , but the popularity of the Canadian-written offering, Harry J. Boyle's Mostly in Clover, encouraged the founders to focus on plays with local content. [6] The Blyth Memorial Community Hall had an upstairs auditorium which had been little used for decades; this was refurbished to provide a venue for the festival. [7] At that time, the Festival was the only summer theatre producing original Canadian plays. The Blyth Festival's archives are stored at the University of Guelph [8] .

Agatha Christie 20th-century English mystery and detective writer

Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, was an English writer. She is known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving around her fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple. Christie also wrote the world's longest-running play, a murder mystery, The Mousetrap, and, under the pen name Mary Westmacott, six romances. In 1971 she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) for her contribution to literature.

<i>The Mousetrap</i> Murder mystery play by Agatha Christie

The Mousetrap is a murder mystery play by Agatha Christie. The Mousetrap opened in London's West End in 1952, and has been running continuously since then. The longest running West End show, it has by far the longest initial run of any play in history, with its 25,000th performance taking place on 18 November 2012. The play has a twist ending, which the audience are traditionally asked not to reveal after leaving the theatre.

One of the festival's most financially successful plays was Beverley Cooper's Innocence Lost: A Play About Stephen Truscott, staged in 2008. [9]

By 2014, the festival had premiered 120 original plays, including Alice Munro's How I Met My Husband, and the Governor General Award-winning Quiet in the Land, by Anne Chislett. [9] In 2017, Blyth Festival's original production, Pigeon King, was chosen to be restaged in Ottawa as part of the National Arts Centre's 2018-2019 season. [10]

Alice Ann Munro is a Canadian short-story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as having revolutionized the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move forward and backward in time. Her stories have been said to "embed more than announce, reveal more than parade."

"How I Met My Husband" is a short story written by Alice Munro, first published in 1974 as a part of her collection Something I've Been Meaning to Tell You.

Blyth Centre for the Arts

After the founding of Blyth Festival, Memorial Hall grew into a year-round centre of cultural activity for Huron County and southwestern Ontario. In addition to the Festival, the Centre includes an Art Gallery that showcases three professional exhibits, one non-juried community show and co-ordinates a student exhibit each season. A choir, the Blyth Festival singers, and the Blyth Festival Orchestra perform regularly. The theatre provides a venue for musical, theatrical and other special events during the off-season. [11]

In addition, the Festival acts as a resource for local groups and makes its facilities available for community use. The Festival and the Centre contribute significantly to the economy of the village and to the tourism industry in Huron County.

Artistic directors

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References

  1. ↑ Wildfowl Carving and Collecting . Vol. 13-14. Commonwealth Communications Services; 1997. p. 108.
  2. ↑ Leisure, Recreation, and Tourism Abstracts . Commonwealth Agricultural Bureaux; 1990. p. 160.
  3. ↑ Gordon Vogt. Critical stages: Canadian theatre in crisis . Oberon Press; April 1998. p. 156.
  4. ↑ "Blyth Festival". The Canadian Encyclopedia.
  5. ↑ The History of North American Theater: From Pre-Columbian Times to the Present . Continuum; 1998. ISBN   978-0-8264-1079-5. p. 460.
  6. ↑ Canadian Theatre Review . Vol. Issues 45-49. 1985. p. 63.
  7. ↑ Canada . APA Publications; 1 January 1993. ISBN   978-0-395-66239-7. p. 145.
  8. ↑ "Blyth Festival". University of Guelph. Retrieved 25 Sep 2019.
  9. 1 2 "Canadian playwrights have benefited greatly from Blyth Festival". London Free Press, Joe Belanger, July 4, 2014
  10. ↑ "Grand Theatre, Blyth Festival plays chosen by National Art Centre". London Free Press, Joe Belanger, March 4, 2018
  11. 1 2 "Peter Smith: Huron County meets Kings County". The Register/Advertiser, Apr 28, 2017
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