Blyth Festival at 50: Marion de Vries' 40th season will always be one to remember
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
While Marion de Vries spent a lot of time with the Blyth Festival over the years, she was only its artistic director for a single season. However, that single season was the Festival’s 40th anniversary, and it proved to be a pretty memorable success. It was a long and winding road that brought this Prince Edward County farm girl to the big chair in Blyth for such an auspicious season, and, looking back, she wouldn’t change a thing about the experience.
De Vries came to theatre a little bit later in life than the average artistic director. “I did my theatre degree as a mature student - I already had a bachelor in Environmental Studies in Honours Geography from the University of Waterloo.” She was originally studying a completely different subject at Waterloo, but soon switched to geography. “I got into that kind of accidentally, having never taken geography in high school. I was really into the arts in high school - theatre, acting, dance and writing. But as a good, Dutch farm kid, theatre is not an acceptable career path to follow. So I ended up at Waterloo, and then I just wandered into a geography lecture one day, and loved it. And so I specialized in parks.”
Her degree in geography brought her to various municipal parks departments, and she eventually landed in Brooks, Alberta, where she became involved in the local community theatre group. “We put on musicals like The Sound of Music, and The Music Man. Stuff like that. And I met some professional theatre people there, and I said, you know, this is what I always really wanted to do.”
One of those professional theatre people was Sandra Nichols, and the two became friends. “She had been involved with the Caravan Theatre - they were a horse-drawn theatre company. And now they have the Caravan Farm out in B.C. And they also had a sailing barge that I helped to build and do some shows on. She really encouraged me to do theatre. So, I auditioned for York, was accepted immediately, and did three years there, specializing in directing.”
De Vries obtained an Honours degree in Fine Arts from York University and became involved with the urban theatre scene. “I had done a few things here in Toronto. I was part of a women’s collective called The Toronto Women’s Auxiliary. We were a feminist collective creation group. I’d done a little bit of acting, I’d produced an equity showcase - I’d assistant directed for Nightwood Theatre’s Groundswell Festival, so I got to assistant direct all the new play workshops - I’d just done a variety of things.”
For a while, de Vries questioned whether she’d spent too much time trying to figure out what she wanted to do. “At one point, I was thinking - ‘what a waste, so far, of my life.’ But I came to realize, very soon, that actually, it’s great. I’ve met so many different kinds of people from all walks of life, and had various careers, and it’s all inspired me as a playwright and as a director. I think it’s so important, when you’re doing theatre, that you’re not just navel-gazing. Like, we’re not just talking about ourselves as artists, you know? And that’s one of the reasons why I connected so strongly with Blyth - there’s so many different kinds of people who live in and around Huron County.”
She vividly recalls the first time she came to Blyth, in the summer of 1991. “I was in the back of Brian Richmond’s car, because he was going to Blyth to direct The Stone Angel, by James Nichol, and I was the assistant director. It was one of my first assistant director gigs. And I had been working with them while they were dramaturging the piece.”
Like many members of the Festival’s creative team over the years, de Vries spent her first season boarding with a local family - the Laidlaws. “It was a great way to get to know the people. And it was a great cast and company that year. It was just amazing, and I felt completely at home - I grew up on a farm, and Blyth just felt like a home place to me.”
De Vries frequently found herself drawn back to Blyth over the years. “After 1991, I was playwright in residence there a few times. And I directed a show in 1998 called The Wilbur County Blues, written by Andrew Moodie.” When she was offered the job as artistic director, she was already in the middle of a big project commissioned by the Festival - the soon-to-be-successful Kitchen Radio. “I worked on that thing for 10 years. It was suggested to me by Jennifer Triemstra-Johnson, who now lives in Blyth. And we’ve been friends for years, and she’s an amazing costume designer. And of course, we’re both Dutch... So one day she came to me and she said she had this idea for a musical based on famous country music stars - the women her mom listened to on her kitchen radio. Women like Dolly Parton, and Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette, and Patsy Cline. And I just thought it was such a cool idea - a play about how music brought women together, and strengthened friendships in the community.”
The artistic director at the time, Eric Coates, commissioned Kitchen Radio. “It was intended to be produced in 2013, which turned out to be the final season that he programmed. But then they decided to remount Dear Johnny Deere, which had been fabulously successful. And then he left, and then they hired Peter for a year, and then they hired me. And Peter kind of looked after the 2013 season, so, in 2014, I said ‘OK, I’m going to produce Kitchen Radio. That’s going to be my first thing.’ I think it’s really important, as an artistic director, to continue to work as an artist, and not just be overwhelmed by producing and management stuff.”
De Vries took the responsibility of programming the Festival’s 40th anniversary season seriously. “It was so special to be there at that time, and to be responsible for putting together an anniversary season to reflect that,” she explained. “What’s so special about the Blyth Festival is that it’s dedicated to new, Canadian theatre - to developing and premiering new Canadian work, which is still very rare in the Canadian theatrical landscape. And not only that, but work that reflects the Blyth community, and the rural life. The lives of farmers and families. And it doesn’t shy away from difficult issues - it really puts real stories on the stage.”
When planning her season, de Vries always kept the community first and foremost in her mind. “The other special thing about Blyth, of course, is the audience - the community. I felt that from the moment I walked into the place in 1991. They want new, Canadian work. And for the 40th anniversary, we really wanted to celebrate that. And Deb Sholdice was my general manager. And so the two of us really put our heads together to really focus on celebrating those 40 years, and the best way to do that was to premiere three new works that summer.”
She felt that her recently-commissioned play fit the bill. “I wanted to do Kitchen Radio because it was written for the Blyth audience. In fact, some of the characters were written in honour of some of the people who I had grown to love in Blyth, like Marg Webster, who we lost that year. She was such a huge supporter of the Festival, and a member of the board. She really inspired me. The character of Maggie was inspired by Marg.”
She also felt that it was important to celebrate the real foundation of the Festival. “We also wanted to honour Blyth Memorial Hall, as a memorial hall - as a living cenotaph. So I decided to do Billy Bishop Goes to War. And I invited Janet Amos to direct it. And she did just a beautiful job. I really couldn’t have done that season without Janet. It was so funny, and it was so powerful. Jack Nicholsen was Billy Bishop, and it was just a great show.”
To keep with the Festival’s tradition of producing at least one risky play a season, she decided to take a chance on a brand new playwright - Mark Crawford. “And then I scooped Stag and Doe,” she said proudly. “It sort of kicked off his career, that production. And I paired him with Miles Potter. I kind of wanted it to always be a mix of new and sort of long-standing Blyth artists.”
Her successor, Gil Garratt, also contributed a play to de Vries’ season. “And then the final production, on the main stage, was St. Anne’s Reel, which I directed. And it was just so great to work with David Fox, and Jack [Nicholsen], of course.”
For de Vries, the most important thing the artistic director at Blyth needs is passion - passion to see as much work as possible, to take the time to read plays, to have the desire to discover and engage truly gifted directors, designers, playwrights, actors, musicians and technical craftspeople.
She found one of the most challenging things about running things at Blyth was the balancing act required to ensure that the whole company was utilized properly across the whole season. “The way it works is you have to program the plays so that the actors are in two shows. The cast of Kitchen Radio, once we opened, began rehearsals for Stag and Doe. It was pretty much the same cast.”
She may be a bit biased, but her favourite part of that season was seeing the play she’d worked on for over a decade come to fruition. “The cast of Kitchen Radio rehearsed, and then we mounted Kitchen Radio, and had an opening night, which was such an electric experience. It was my first opening night as the artistic director, it was opening night of the 40th anniversary season, we had all the other former artistic directors in the audience, which was amazing. It was so exciting to have them there! And I will never forget the feeling of the response of the audience to the play. This sort of spontaneous outburst of standing and crying and laughing and clapping. It was just an amazing celebration of the Festival - the whole season felt like a huge celebration of the ruby anniversary.”
Though it didn’t end up happening, de Vries had some locally-relevant work planned for her second season. “When I was there, I was developing a play about the wind turbines. I don’t know if it ended up being produced, but at that time, it was a hugely divisive issue in the community. Families were divided over it. Friends and neighbours were divided over it. And I just thought it would make for an amazing play. So it’s not necessarily just feel-good stuff that makes for a great Blyth Festival play. There’s always got to be some kind of punch to it, I think. It should be something that’s inspired by, and speaks to, the Blyth audience, through the generations.”
These days, de Vries is living in Toronto, working as a location scout for the city’s booming film and television industry. She’s worked on prestige sci-fi adaptations like The Umbrella Academy and Fahrenheit 451, as well as hit films like Aaron Sorkin’s Molly’s Game. She finds that her extensive experience really comes in handy for the work she’s doing now. “I’m able to read a script, and visualize what the locations might be. And I can read a script and remember it.”
Over the years that she was involved with the Festival, de Vries held many positions, but there’s one that stands out above all others. “Even as a playwright, as a director, as an artistic director, my most favourite experience at Blyth is still just being in the audience, watching.”