Johns explores Blyth Festival's 50-year history with three intimate speaking engagements

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

If you go by what Google says, Blyth’s Phillips Studio at 209 Dinsley Street was a photography studio that is now permanently closed. But don't tell that to the crowd of interested listeners that came to the space last week to hear a little bit of humourous history about the Blyth Festival from the mouth and mind of noted writer Ted Johns, who originally hails from Seaforth.

 

Johns offered his orations as a trio of un-identical talks on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday under the billing of ”Jokes and Quotes for the Fiftieth.”

 

There were certainly plenty of jokes, a few quotes, and a whole lot of interesting history. Of course, anyone familiar with one of Johns’ plays knew not to expect a straightforward take on local lore. His work tends to treat reality with a hearty dose of hilarity before being presented to an audience, whether it be his 1977 hit He Won’t Come in From the Barn, which spun a yarn about a farmer who decides one day to just stay in, or 2004’s Cricket and Claudette, which considered what life might be like working at the local garbage dump.

 

At the centre of this one-man show is a charming man with a lot to say about the evolution of the Blyth Festival. Johns is most certainly an authority on the history of rural theatre - not only was he part of the touring company for The Farm Show back in the 1970s, he also had a hand in the conception of the seminal show. That’s right, this Ted Johns and the Ted Johns that egged on a young, Russian-cinema-enraged Paul Thompson to write a play about tractors are one and the same! Johns’ first Blyth Festival play was 1978’s hyper topical The School Show, which saw expectant audiences lined up around the block outside Memorial Hall. Although he lives in Toronto now, Johns still keeps up with the goings-on in Blyth. So, suffice to say, he’s a man with more than a few fingers in the pie of local theatrical history.

 

The Citizen sent a scout to the Friday afternoon show, and observed that the audience, many of whom had a personal connection to the Festival’s history, was very receptive to Johns’ oral history. He welcomed onlooker participation, and engaged in several full-out conversations with the curious crowd. It was a great atmosphere that made for a funny, intimate afternoon affair that was enjoyed by all. The event also attracted Blyth Festival bigwigs Gil Garratt and Janet Amos, the latter of whom is, admittedly, married to Johns.

 

Johns spoke about how, these days, it would be impossible for a 22-year-old, fresh-out-of-school young person to be put in charge of an entire theatre festival, as Blyth did 50 years ago when it entrusted the programming at Memorial Hall to a young James Roy, who went on to set the mandate for local, new works about rural life that continues to this day.

 

He also talked about the various periods of growth that have made the Blyth Festival what it is today. One of his favourite additions over the years is the Phillips Studio itself, where his show was taking place. It proved to be a very interesting experience to hear the history of the very building within which one was currently sitting. The Phillips Studio was originally known as The Garage, as that’s what it was when the Festival first took possession of it. Johns detailed the effort that was put in to turn the auto shop into a multi-use performance space that has gone on to host some of the Festival’s most experimental work.

 

At one point, a discussion broke out as to whether or not a particular member of the audience would have seen Johns in The Farm Show at such-and-such farm on such-and-such date led to a bit of timeline-oriented confusion, which eventually sorted itself out when another member of the public pointed out that there was more than one run of The Farm Show. During the debate, it seemed that audience member Landon Doak, who performed in this year’s The Farm Show: Then and Now, likely could have cleared things up post haste, as they just spent their summer up to their elbows in the storied history of The Farm Show. Perhaps Doak would have chimed in to the conversation, had they not been the only person in attendance who arrived after the show had already begun.