Theatre legend Ted Johns to do a trio of talks on Blyth Festival history next month

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Ted Johns, a Canadian theatre legend and the most-produced playwright in Blyth Festival history, will be giving a trio of presentations and question-and-answer sessions at the Festival’s Phillips Studio this September as part of the Festival’s 50th anniversary season celebrations.

 

Entitled “Jokes and Quotes for the Fiftieth”, Johns will be in Blyth at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5 and Saturday, Sept. 7, as well as a 2 p.m. matinee on Friday, Sept. 6. These dates coincide with the final three performances of Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes, which will be held in Memorial Hall.

 

The whole project began a while back, said Johns in an interview with The Citizen, as he thought back to his many years with Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille - a theatre whose history is inextricably connected to the Blyth Festival - and the many plays that were produced, but never recorded; not written down, recorded for audio nor videotaped.

 

As Johns began writing about the lost projects of Theatre Passe Muraille, a more traditional linear structure emerged and what he was writing transformed into the story of the theatre through the 1970s. Of course, with his history with Huron County and, eventually, the Blyth Festival during that period, the later chapters were conducive to talking about the founding of the Blyth Festival and its early seasons.

 

He said it turned into part memoir, part analysis and part historical record. He sent it along to Festival Artistic Director Gil Garratt, who encouraged him to not only keep writing and seek a publishing partner, but to consider making public presentations in Blyth as part of the Festival’s historic golden anniversary season.

 

Johns has since crafted something that takes from his writing, but focused specifically on Blyth with a PowerPoint presentation and an opportunity for people to ask questions as Johns looks back at the history of the Festival and ahead to the path forward for the Festival. As Johns discussed theatre with The Citizen, he said that so much has changed in the world of Canadian theatre since the 1970s and being an artistic director, in many ways, has become a much more difficult job - not that it was ever an easy one. 

 

He said that the decline in local media has made it tougher for smaller theatres to reach audiences and cited stories about fellow theatre legends like Paul Thompson and Layne Coleman discussing the pitfalls of being an artistic director and knowing that it can always get worse in the most unexpected ways. But then, he said, there are the successes that can, in a way, be even more unexpected.

 

With his rich history with the Festival, Johns is in a unique position to tell the history of the Festival from the point of view of someone who was there and who lived it.

 

Of course, Johns was part of the touring company for The Farm Show in the 1970s, predating the Blyth Festival itself. He has local connections too. At one time, he had relatives who lived both just north and just south of Blyth, in addition to attending high school in nearby Mitchell.

 

His work was first produced by the Blyth Festival in 1978 with The School Show. He would go on to produce some of the Festival’s most beloved shows in the years that would follow, such as He Won’t Come in From the Barn, St. Sam of the Nuke Pile and many, many more.

 

Not insignificantly, of course, Johns has been married to Janet Amos for many years. Amos served two terms as the Festival’s artistic director, overseeing many of its most successful seasons. For The Citizen’s Blyth Festival 50th season retrospective special issue, Amos jokingly suggested that she was chosen for the job because the Festival’s Board of Directors knew that with Amos would also come Johns. 

 

As for Johns’ writing project, nothing has been confirmed yet, but he is hopeful that it will see the light of day as a book published here in Ontario. Furthermore, he hopes to, one day, tackle the next chapter of his story, which would continue with Amos’ time at the Blyth Festival and then the family’s journey east to Theatre New Brunswick and the battle to get into the regional theatres. 

 

For now, however, Johns is focused on his presentations in Blyth. If you’d like to be in the audience for this slice of nostalgia and look to the future, call the Blyth Festival at 519-523-9300 or take a chance that there may still be tickets at the door.