Blyth Festival 2024: The 50th anniversary season is a personal one for Artistic Director Gil Garratt

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Blyth Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt will have his hands full this season. In addition to his year-round duties that are both artistic and directorialy, he will be directing The Farm Show: Then and Now and overseeing a number of special events being held for the 50th anniversary season. He’s also written one of the season’s plays: Saving Graceland.

 

Being at the forefront of one of Canada’s most important theatres for its 50th anniversary season is a weighty task that is not lost on Garratt, but he is also someone who understands that with great power comes great responsibility.

 

He has both a personal and a professional connection to The Farm Show. He has worked with Paul Thompson - the show’s architect and a Member to the Order of Canada - for decades, so honouring that legacy and those of the other artists involved is paramount to him. However, he clearly understands that, without The Farm Show, there is no Blyth Festival and that the village’s artistic reputation would disappear, rapidly fading like Marty McFly’s family from his wallet photograph in Back to the Future.
To be able to bring that show back to the stage is a privilege, he said. But the way he’s chosen to do it means even more. He’s connecting this production’s actors with the professionals who created The Farm Show and the locals who inspired it.

 

As the process started, Garratt arranged for a get-together between The Farm Show: Then and Now cast and all the living Farm Show creators in the Theatre Passe Muraille space (where the show was produced after it was born in a Huron County barn like so many animals before it). The two parties spoke for hours upon hours, the originals telling stories and the newcomers just listening, enraptured.

 

Furthermore, once the cast arrived in Huron County, Garratt selected a number of major players from the process of creating The Farm Show in the 1970s to meet with the cast, including Alison Lobb and others. 

 

With this process underway and such a crucial part of rehearsals, it’s clear that The Farm Show is much more than a play - it was a cultural movement and it continues to be just as important now as it was then.

 

And now we arrive at the “Then and Now” aspect of the show, which means that Garratt and his cast will be updating The Farm Show, in a way, with the blessing of the original creators. Thinking back to when the show was created in the early 1970s, those depicted in the show have grown older, changed and accomplished so much, with some being lost along the way. Garratt is striving to respect the original show while, at the same time, bringing the story into the present day.

 

It will be a challenge, he said, but one that will serve the story as a part of the 50th anniversary season at the Blyth Festival.
Meanwhile, Saving Graceland will grace the Memorial Hall stage, featuring a lot of biographical material from Garratt’s life and serve as the Blyth Festival debut for his eight-year-old daughter, Goldie, who will play Dylan.

 

The play tells the story of a mother who unexpectedly brings her daughter to her parents’ house and leaves her there for a time. The recently-retired grandparents soon have to navigate how to care for their beloved granddaughter in regards to time, money and any other factors that go into raising a young one these days.

 

Garratt said he is always writing, so he’ll frequently put pen to paper to memorialize an idea, a scene, some dialogue, etc. However, as he continued to write, the idea of kinship care kept bubbling to the surface. He began crafting a story about grandparents taking care of their granddaughter for a long, undetermined amount of time and he was off. 

 

He felt the story getting too serious and, frankly, heavy, so he decided to work in the Collingwood Elvis Festival, making the grandparents loyal visitors and huge Elvis Presley fans.

 

As he began to craft the story and talk to more people about it, he realized just how common it was for grandparents, uncles and aunts and more to be caring for young children. It is much more widespread than he first thought, which is why he thinks the play will resonate with audiences.

 

He hopes it will connect with people who are in such a situation, but also open people’s eyes to the possibility that you can’t completely know the unique challenges your neighbours may be facing.

 

Garratt has been the artistic director at the Blyth Festival since the 2015 season after years of serving as the associate artistic director. He left the associate artistic director position in 2012, returning after writing St. Anne’s Reel, which was produced by the Festival in 2014.

 

During his time with the Festival, Garratt has directed and starred in a number of productions. He is a graduate of the National Theatre School in Montreal and has won a Dora Mavor Moore Award for his on-stage efforts.

 

The Farm Show: Then and Now opens outdoors on the Harvest Stage on June 14 after preview performances on June 12-13. The play closes on Aug. 4.

 

Saving Graceland opens the season in Memorial Hall, first with preview performances on June 19-20 and then opening night on June 21. The show closes on Aug. 3.