BF26: Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski makes his Blyth Festival debut

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

This year, Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski will be making his Blyth Festival debut as part of only the Dry Streak cast, bringing with him a wealth of diverse theatre knowledge and an award-winning resume that runs the gamut of what goes into producing a play.

 

Shepherd-Gawinski has acting credits at theatres such as the Tarragon Theatre and Buddies in Bad Times, as well at Theatre Orangeville, the Lighthouse Festival Theatre in Port Dover and Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre. He has written a number of works as well.

 

He has also worked as a musician within the theatre, which began as a hobby, and then transitioned into sound design when the need arose. Pretty good for a hobby, as Shepherd-Gawinski has since won two Dora Mavor Moore Awards for sound design. He has also been shortlisted for the Playwright Guild of Canada’s Tom Hendry Award and nominated for the Louis Applebaum Composers’ Award.

 

Unrelated to his work in the theatre, but fascinating nonetheless, Shepherd-Gawinski competed in the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament last year, a prestigious American competition - the country’s oldest and largest - that dates back nearly 50 years.

 

However, despite his extensive resume and work within the theatre, Shepherd-Gawinski will be making his Blyth Festival debut with just a single acting role, putting all of his other theatrical skills on the shelf for now.

 

He can chalk up this new adventure to a casual relationship he has with Kate Lynch, the storied Canadian theatre actor and director who will be making her Blyth Festival return at the helm of Dry Streak, her first time back in the village since 2011’s Early August, which she wrote. Shepherd-Gawinski says he has been lucky enough to rub elbows with Lynch at a Toronto-based improvisation class and workshop and when this project came up, she thought he’d be a good fit and mentioned it to him.
This will be Shepherd-Gawinski’s first time at the Blyth Festival, but tales of its mystique are legend in the Canadian theatre world and he always knew he wanted to be a part of it sooner or later.

 

Shepherd-Gawinski grew up in Thunder Bay, where there was a thriving small-town theatre scene. He said he was up on stage performing in roles from as young as nine. He then pursued acting at theatre school and fell into the other aspects of theatre at which he has so excelled by chance or by necessity. When a friend’s play needed music, he made music (he has dabbled in being a musician for much of his life). When he was doing the music for a production, his fellow collaborators suggested he just go ahead and do all of the sound design, so he went ahead and did all of the sound design (he has since won two Dora Awards for sound design).

 

Since he has become somewhat of a renaissance man in the theatre world, Shepherd-Gawinski says that coming to Blyth for a single acting role is a bit of a relief and allows him to shut off certain creative parts of his brain, while activating others. He said there can be a bit of a “blank page” factor in performing someone else’s work that relaxes some of a theatre professional’s muscles.

 

As for coming to Blyth, he said that because the Festival equips many of its professionals with bicycles, he’s looking forward to exploring the outdoors of Blyth and its surrounding area, especially the Goderich-to-Guelph Rail Trail.