The Blyth Festival Podcast
Conversations with artists, friends and supporters of Canada's Blyth Festival - Canada's experts in telling Canada's stories.
The Blyth Festival Podcast
Canadian Theatre Icon James Roy on the Founding of the Blyth Festival
Fifty years ago this summer, an actor, a playwright and a newspaper editor walked into a bar ....
OK, kidding, it wasn't a bar. But James Roy, Anne Chislett and Keith Roulston DID sit down in Keith's living room and decide to start a summer theatre festival in Blyth, Ontario. Miraculously, nobody told them they were crazy. Fifty years later, theatre-lovers around the world are still enjoying the fruits of their hard work and imagination.
Join host Joanne Wallace for an intimate chat with James, who became Blyth's founding Artistic Director. He'll share the inside story on how the festival came into being, who rallied around the cause and became the new theatre's greatest champions, and exactly how director Paul Thompson once talked some local farmers into hoisting two live cows on and off stage every night - for art.
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More about James Roy at Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia
Credits: Research/writing/host: Joanne Wallace | Sound design/production/editing: Jim Park
Music: Million Things I'd Rather Do, Binkley, via Epidemic Sound | Theme Achaidh Cheide, (c) Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 3.0
So we needed a break, we need to say, we have stories we need to tell and work as theatre practitioners. Canadians are just as good as anybody else in the world. And that's what I've learned spending time because I did later on go to go to England and work for a season in theater there. And the big lesson I took away was for good, but we're just as good. So what are we afraid of?
JW:Hi, welcome to the blind festival Podcast. I'm Joanne Wallace. That was James Roy. He was blind, its very first artistic director. And he'll join me in just a moment with the story of how the blind festival came into being back in the summer of 1975. But first, as a founding, the Blythe festival wasn't enough to cement his reputation in Canadian theatre history. James is also a bit of a legend in both theatre and broadcasting circles. After his tenure at Blythe he served as Artistic Director at both the belfry Theatre in Victoria and the Manitoba Theatre Center in Winnipeg. After that, he toured the country for the better part of two decades, leaving a trail of successful productions in his wake. More recently, James worked with CBC Radio arts and entertainment as executive producer of Morningside drama. There he produced a string of award winning radio plays, including the much beloved Afghanistan. So you're in for a treat with today's conversation. Not only does James explain how he decided to dedicate live to producing only new local Canadian work, he also elaborates on how visionary that decision turned out to be. And make sure you stay right to the end. James has a great story about how Paul Thompson once taught some local farmers into lifting to live cows onto the stage. James Roy, welcome to the show. And thanks for being here.
James Roy:I'm delighted to be here. Joanne,
JW:I want to get right to this story of how you got involved with this slightly crazy idea of starting a theatre festival in the unlikely town of Blythe, Ontario. But I understand you actually grew up in the area is that right?
James Roy:I did most of my going up here as a little bit of it was further south south of Sarnia. But my early years and then late my last year of high school, we're all in the Clinton live area. My actually was born and brought up on a farm near lawns borough, which is sort of between Blythe and Clinton.
JW:How did you get an interested in theater in the first place growing up in this rural community?
James Roy:I saw my first play when I was in grade nine. By that time, I was going to high school in Sarnia. Remember I said I spent some years so south of Sarnia. And it was the glass. It was The Glass Menagerie, Tennessee Williams play and it was reportedly a very, very good production done by the school's Theatre Group Theatre drama club. And I was absolutely floored by it. I just and it's one of those sort of apocryphal experiences that I'm glad I had, but not everybody has. And I literally walked out in the theater at the age of 14. And I said, I'm going to do that. And I was pretty single minded. after that. I was in the drama club in high school, both in Sarnia and Clinton. I went into theater at university, and I was determined that that's what I was going to do for a living without really considering the fact that it was not watching a living. And there wasn't actually that much theater in those days for the Tamarack had already been University, it was a little bit better. But when they even when I went into university, there wasn't much going other than Stratford Festival, which had started by then. But it was kind of kind of like, well, what they did Shakespeare, which was wonderful. We all knew he was great literature, but it was sort of an experience that didn't have a lot to say to me as a rural teenager.
JW:So it's the early 70s. There's not a lot going on in the theatre scene in Canada, but you're dedicated and you're determined you're going to have a life in this world. So what did you do after you finished your theater degree?
James Roy:Well, another funny story, another apocryphal story, I guess, and it's a question of being in the right place at the right time. In this instance, I had in the middle of university, I took a year off and spent it in Europe where I didn't work in theater, I barely saw theater, I had no money and I was fairly divorced by I was fascinated by learning about other cultures. When I came back in the summer to Clinton, my brother and my best friend and Clinton said, oh, there's this theater group, doing a play in Ray birds barn. And we thought we'd ride our bicycles out to see it tomorrow, if you want to come and I said, Yes, of course, I'll do that. So I went out. And without having any idea what I was going to see, I saw the very first production of the farm show, in the barn sitting in the bow, surrounded by an audience and local people and people who were being portrayed in the play. So when I got out of university, I thought, Oh, well, Phil passported. Oh, Paul Thompson. Oh, yeah. Well, I saw the farm Sean from Clinton, right. Well, he knows about Clinton. So I called him up. And I wasn't overly brave person. But I phoned him up. But I said, I introduced myself. But I said, I'm from Clinton. I probably said, I saw the farm show, but I don't remember. And he said, Yeah, come on down. So I went down to see him. And he, which I realized subsequently is typical. Paul, he sort of said, yeah, come on. Yeah. And we'll see what we can do whatever. And he cuz I'd studied design in university as well as directing. He put me on working on them Donnelly's, which was being remounted in Toronto at that time as a sort of design assistant. So basically, I was, I was sort of a golfer. I mean, I did some carpentry. I did this. I did, I was told, but I got to sit in rehearsals a lot. And watch them improvise, which was fascinating. And then I didn't know what to do next. And by now we're in the spring of 75. And he said, You know, there's these people and blinds that they got to build and they want to they don't know what to do with it. They've got this blind and boring Hall. And I said, okay, yeah, sure. I said, um, I said, Who should I talk to? And he said, Well, why you should talk to Keith Rolster, who's the newspaper editor. So I got to hold Keith rented a car and went up, along with my wife at the time. And so we had a conversation with Keith Ralston. And Keith, to his credit, didn't say, who are you? And why should I listen to you? And your along at his school, and all the questions that he could have asked,
JW:How old were you at this? James? Sorry, how old were you at when all this was going on?
James Roy:I was 24. And I turned 25 During the first season, because I have a summer birthday. So I was 24. And so So anyway, so I said, Okay, well, let's see if we can do this. And there was no question. Nobody said, I mean, what do you got to do for plays? Or how are you gonna get the money and we talked about money. I said, I heard there's this thing called the Ontario Arts Arts Council. I know they give grants, so I'm just gonna go talk to them. So back to trawl, I went into the Ontario Arts Council, met the associate theatre officer, a wonderful woman named Laura Clark. And I said, I have this idea of great theater, which I had seen when I was there meeting with Keith and really, really liked it. And I said, I won't start a summer theater there this summer. And she also did not say, Who do you think you are? What, what a silly idea. She said, Well, okay, what you need to do is you need to set up a board of directors you need to incorporate. And then you can apply for a grant from us the Ontario Arts Council. So I would back up, talk to Keith, we sat around his living room with he drew up a list with some input from me, but basically, it's Keith's List of 19 people, all people who lived in the community with exception, one person from garbage. And we went around the next day and asked them all to be on the board of this new theater. And they all said yes, which even at the time seemed a little bit incredible. In retrospect, it seems absolutely unbelievable. And none of them said, What a ridiculous idea. So So and one of the people on the board course we've got a local lawyer, and so he did the incorporation that took a couple of months, whatever to come to, I went back and apply to the Arts Council and we got a $2,000 grant $1,000 outright and $1,000 matching money raised in the community. And we didn't think we were rich, but we certainly thought it was enough to get a score. It's funny how just a little bit of just a little bit of a foundation, a little bit of help, and you go yeah, we can do this.
JW:So you, you have this lovely grant from the Ontario Arts Council, but you also had to raise money matching funds in the community. Can you just speak a little little bit about how that rolled out. So.
James Roy:So when we actually started to get together in blind to actually do this, then and shows that it failed her as the administrator, we had a very small staff, I was the artistic director, she was administrator, Keith was the chair of the board of directors. So it failed and to raise the $1,000. And it's, it was a lot more money than than it is now, because we're talking 50 years ago. And also, there's not Well, let me put it this way. There, there may be a tradition of giving donations or money in rural areas, but there certainly was our tradition of giving money to theaters. So it was it seemed monumental, however, everybody was really wonderful. And so and spent multiple afternoons going around from house to house, working on a list that teeth and some other board members are drawn up, and asking people for a donation. And it always involved glasses of tea cups of tea, and almost always should walk away with 25 and $50. And then she goes to the next house and of course that the next visit always had to start with her going to the to the to the washroom.
JW:I was gonna say I think I know what his story is going.
James Roy:It's true. She went to so much tea. I mean, she wasn't she wasn't particularly a tea drinker. She didn't hate tea, but I mean, tea. Tea was it. So that's and so we raised the second, we raised $1,000. And we were able to draw on the second $1,000 from the Ontario Arts
JW:Council. That's a wonderful story that, yeah, it speaks to the generosity of the community. And I wouldn't want to talk about a book that some more later on. But let's just go back to the story you were telling about how you were deciding what to program like you're there in Blythe, you've got the theatre, you've got the funding, you've got the actors. What did you do next? And how did you decide what to put on that stage that summer? Well,
James Roy:we should do a surefire yet. So I thought, well, we'll do the most trap, because that's a surefire hit it been running for 25 or 30 years in the West End, London couldn't fail. And on top of that, I could only afford four actors. But I could use people in the local drama group to flesh out the cast, which is also good, because then their friends would want to come and see it, and so on. So, so that was my reasoning. And then I thought, what do I really want to do? What else could I do? And I already had a feeling that I wanted to do something that was about Bly about that area, and, and something new. So I was at my mother's place and Clinton and notice on her bookshelf, a series of three anecdotal books memoirs, written by a man named Harry J. Boyle. And I, and the the lead what was called mostly included, and I thought, oh, yeah, yeah, I remember reading the so I picked up the book, at least two it was all anecdotal stories about a he grew up about six or seven miles west of blog. And I thought, yeah, I can make a plan for this short bite off. Let's do it. So that became my second play. And, amazingly, people only confessed to me afterwards how cluding Keith, how nervous they were. We were nervous, but of course, as a director, and certainly and and as well, but we're always nervous with show so and I refuse to deal with the fact that this was a new show in a in a previously non existent Theatre Company. I just didn't think about that, because it would have been too depressing. So I didn't think so. So we were set up then for the, for the first for the opening night of most, which was mostly in clover at the blade Memorial Hall. And so the Memorial Hall had been built as a memorial to the to the veterans or the people and the veterans that people killed. First World War. Lots of places put the Cenotaph monument applied had this idea to put up a to build a building as a memorial.
JW:Now this is actually one of my favorite parts of the Blythe story is the building of Memorial Hall as a memorial to the war dead because they the story as I've heard it is instead of putting up a cenotaph, they wanted a living, breathing building that would serve the community and in which the community could come together. Absolutely.
James Roy:And an on the back wall is still the list of the of the Local people guide still there, prominently.
JW:Okay, so there you are, and you're ready to roll. You've got this brand new untried piece called mostly in clover, and the most drop. It's early July in Blythe, Ontario. And you've, you told me earlier, I just want you to tell this story about how many seats you had sold, and how maybe you were a little nervous about that.
James Roy:One of the things I loved about Memorial Hall is it had about about 400 workable seats, it actually had a balcony, which we couldn't use at that time. But 400 seats is a lot and Blythe itself had had had it posted, you know how they, they used to post the population on the on the town, sign your way in knowing her. So to full houses. So we had, we had we'd sold about 200 seats, which is pretty good. And I think there was a lot of curiosity. And also person key people in the town that were very supportive, because they felt this would be good for Bly and one of the ones the town clerk. And Larry Walsh, and he had on the idea that since the hall had been built as a memorial, that it would be a good time, because they put a new roof on the building to rededicate the hall. So he then the town bought 200 seats, and gave them to the to the Legion, and said, Okay, we're going to rededicate. And here's your seats, so the town actually supported us on the opening date. So incredibly, we had a full house. And now it also meant that we had a rededication ceremony at the beginning. What we didn't realize and it was a hot, humid Ontario evening, as any of us who live in Ontario, or in Unreal continental climate are very familiar. So the moment we closed the door to the theater and cut off all circulation, the temperature shot up. And I mean, shot up. So it was unbelievably hot. Everybody had sweat pouring off, I'm talking about 400 people. The play started, the actors are backstage tearing their hair out, because they didn't know they're reading the code. They didn't know what was actually going to start until they got the Okay. And it's dark. And we were oh I don't know, probably no more than a minute or two in before the first laugh came. And we all relaxed a little bit. And then another laugh and another laugh and the the the show was a huge success the audience loved it absolutely loved, now a huge success, and they were willing to overlook the sheet.
JW:I'm very glad to report that we do now have air conditioning in that theater, but it must have been really hot. Thank you, James, for sharing that story. We're going to take a little break now. But don't go away. When we come back. We're going to find out what happened after that first performance and the rest of that first season. And we're also going to take a look at the crucial role that blinds community played, selling all those tickets to the Legion members and papering the house in a very innovative way. But also everything else they did to make that magic happen and continue to do to this day. And we're also going to touch on what this blind festival has grown to mean to the the future of Canadian theatre. So hold on, stay with us. You're listening to founding artistic director James Roy here on the blind festival podcast and there's plenty more to come. If you're enjoying today's conversation, please check out the other episodes in this series. There's a quick primer on all six of his summers shows in the season preview episode. There's a great bit of Canadian theatre history in my conversations with Myles Potter and Gil Garrett in the Farm Show episode. And there's lots of interesting stuff in our back catalogue from last season as well. Don't forget to get your tickets for any of the great shows appearing live this summer. They're on sale right now at www dot Bly festival.com And I'll leave the box office number for you in the show notes below. And now back to my conversation with James Roy. Welcome back, this is the Blythe festival podcast and I'm speaking today with James Roy about his experiences As the inaugural artistic director of the blind Festival, and we've just been through what happened during the very first performance of mostly in clover, James, what happened after? Well, what happened with the rest of the season?
James Roy:Well, it was very exciting, actually. So Clover did extremely well. Word spread very, very quickly. And by the second half of the run, it was selling up, which was, Don't forget 400 seats. It's pretty amazing. So clover, or sorry, the mousetrap on the other hand, did about 30% dismally. And though people enjoy it, it's a good production stuff and so on, but clear clearly for me, what people want to see is plays about them. And I had, I picked up quite a few things from my, from my theatre, university education. And one of them was realizing that how the plays that we consider classic Shakespeare, the Greek plays, the medieval plays, are included a lot of modern plays, like Neil Simon, and so on. They're actually very written for a very specific audience, and in a very specific locale, they're local. But we as Canadians, because we had no confidence, I believe in our own culture, and certainly not as theatre practitioners, that we always thought that everybody else was better. And we did couldn't possibly be as good. So why even bother trying? So, but it stuck with me that all these plays were written for a local audience. The success of the season, ie Clover did extremely well made me go, okay. That's what I can do. I don't have to look for a British playwright, or the American playwright, I can do local stories, I'm going to have to create them, I'm going to have to commission them, I'm gonna have to make them happen. But that's how you get plays. And again, that the Paul Thompson influence was, there's lots of stories around us about us, why don't we? Why don't we find them in mind that you're I thought, why don't we do this? There's lots of great stories, everybody's got stories, we'll just turn them into place. And then hopefully, they'll be good. And other people will come and see because they'll want to see oh, what's your life like, or they will have content in them that applies to everybody else's lives no matter where they're from.
JW:And that's exactly what happened. And I think is the real secret to blinds. Success is this kind of stubborn adherence to this artistic direction that you set almost, well, 50 years ago, and it's just held true. And people are fascinated to see stories about themselves. And when you go into that theater at blind if the story you're seeing isn't directly about you, it tells you something about your neighbors or your friends or somebody you know who somebody is relative and I don't know, your your world broadens. And we all kind of realize that we're all in this together. Yes,
James Roy:I told me agree. I totally agree. And I think that you say it's a stubborn inherence. I think that it is, I rephrase that as being smart informed and hearing adherence, because because it has worked well. And it continues to work well. It's always hard to find the material, but it pays off. And that is really now baked into it has been for some time baked into the live programming experience.
JW:Yeah. And then when some of the plays that are created there, take wing and fly across the country or around the world, like, you know, the jar boy and the pigeon King and whatnot. It's It's just magical.
James Roy:I was add matter of fact, just today saw posting on Facebook. I'm embarrassed to say I saw posting on Facebook about the plague we did in my last season here that I commission calls will be back before midnight. And this theatre company in Poland does it every day. They keep it in their repertoire. And they bring it out every year or two and do it and it's a huge success every single time. And you know, does it mention Bly? The the play No, but it sat in a rundown house. They'll know where which is actually based beer call. He tells me on the house that I was living in at that time north of blind. She couldn't imagine anybody living there that manage the awful things that could happen and ended up with I'll be back before midnight.
JW:There you go. People have Blythe. You've had a hand in creating a show and supporting a playwright who has written a script that has lived so long and flown so far, that it appears regularly on a stage in Poland. I don't know whether that could have happened anywhere other than Blythe Are there other shows that you had a hand in creating during your tenure that you'd like to mention?
James Roy:But yes, hard trying to think of which ones have that would certainly survived certainly plays down at subsequent seasons after I left under other artistic directors have done well. But there is submit. So my wife at the time and just lets started to write plays and did her first one for the third season. And we did it based on a Harry Boyle novel called a summer burning. And then she went on to write another play called tomorrow Botha tomorrow box, which is based on in asuran. County setting about a couple that that divorces in later years when the husband sells the farm out from under his wife, without telling her and surprises or with a condo he's bought at Florida think she'll be happy, and she divorces. So she's not happy anyway. And then of course, it led to quiet of land, which was done live in the early 80s. Also advantages of which one cup and Joseph wonderful for literature as well. So there's those I also did highlights for me were doing how I met my husband by Alice Monroe, which was the only script that she had actually adopted for performance, she adapted it for TV. And when I asked her to write a play for blind, she said, Oh, real, I don't do that. But I have this script. You could probably get it from CBC that we did on TV. So I followed up with CBC and got it and we turned it into a play, which was a very sweet and very successful. We did plays on the Dutch immigrants, we did the blind history show, which was about blind celebrating its 100th anniversary in the late 70s. I like to I like to look at my community and say, Okay, what would people like to see? Oh, there's a lot of Scots people here a lot of Scotch or people of Scotch origin. So oh, there's this play called the blood. It's strong. Well, it's a bit old, written by Alicia Sinclair. But you know what, let's add music to it. And, and, and we did, and it was a huge success and seasons two and three. The same, as I said, about doing a play about Dutch immigration, because there's many, many Dutch immigrants who came from farms in the Netherlands to work on farms and veggie owned farms in the in the Bly Clinton area, because I always believed if you could get people into the theater once, and you showed them a good time, they would come back again. And so I would try to do things that the colleague Ted, which would pull them in, and then hope that they will come back and and by and large, they did?
JW:Well, it certainly seems to have worked. And the I've heard many of our actors say that the Blythe audience is the best audience in Canada, and they just love performing on that stage in that house. And for these people who come with really open minds, to to engage with what's being offered to them. They're
James Roy:very generous. But also, don't forget that there are people now that come to Bly that had been going to see plays for 50 years. So they're also extremely sophisticated, whether or not they got the jargon. They're very sophisticated about theater. I
JW:wanted to just build on this discussion about the audience a bit and talk a little bit more about the community support. That is such a part of the not just the origin story of this festival, but of its ongoing success. And I wonder if you have any other stories about how, how the community contributed directly to getting this festival up off the ground, and keeping it running for 50 years.
James Roy:One of the most important things is actually negative in the sense that they never said this is ridiculous. Nobody ever said you're doing what in a town of 900 You got to be kidding. So that was a really big thing no many people confessed afterwards after that the first shows were open at the proceeds that that they had thought that but they'd all been too nice to say we had huge help from people in terms of looking for props help looking for when we did he wouldn't come in from the bar and we had to find a barn nearby that we put the cattle lid and then they'd be marched down to the bark step to the to because there were live cattle on stage. And so what's going
JW:to ask I've heard this story and I didn't know if it was true where they're really live cattle on the stage. They were
James Roy:live cattle to to live cattle to to a cattle bees and several chickens. And the chickens are probably more of a cattle. But anyway, so. So, uh, Paul directed this at TED John's was, was his plate, he sourced the cattle from a mirror from a farmer outside town. And then every night they would be led down to the back of the theater. And then they would be lifted up using a front end loader into the they were in a cage, they were lifted up using front end loader in the theater. And then that was reversed at the end of the show, because there was no way to get to the second floor. Otherwise,
JW:I defy any theatre company anywhere in the world, to have this level of support from its community, and its audiences that they would bring a cow and help to lift it on and off the stage at the beginning of the end of every
James Roy:row. I know that they would trust you with a cow, which was worth in those days, probably $1,000. You know. Anyway, incredible.
JW:Yeah, of course. Oh, thank you so much for that story. And
James Roy:in retrospect, it was just that that's just what we did. Right? Okay. Well, it was Paul right. Paul always had outrageous ideas. And, and, and, but they're always doable. So you just did I so. But it's
JW:it's funny, because we were interviewing Myles Potter a couple of weeks ago. And one thing that he he said to me that I unfortunately didn't make it into the final podcast, was he felt that farmers had a bit of a camaraderie, maybe with actors, because they're always improvising, too.
James Roy:So yeah, that's true. And they never make very much
JW:money. They never make very much money. And you know, everything's always going wrong when they just go, Well, we're gonna have to deal with it. Yep.
James Roy:Yeah, you're absolutely right. That's a very good observation. Yes. The only other thing I'd say there's one other thing and there were some key people in town that I, I tried to maintain a really upfront positive relationship with the town court. And there were a couple of key people, one in particular, who had been who had been instrumental in raising the money to put a new roof on the building, which is why the theater existed and had not been torn down. And her name was Evelina Webster. And she was prominent in the local women's groups, the the why the Women's Institute stuff and so on. i She was wonderful. And I would periodically when I had a problem, I would go down the street and knock on her door. And I would explain the situation to her and asked for her advice. And she was very practical, and very smart. And she was what I would call y, although in those days, that's not a word I would have used. And so that's an example of how the community for me was tied in the theater.
JW:James 50 years later, do we still need a blind festival?
James Roy:Well, the short answer is absolutely yes. And that's proven by the continued success that theater has. And they're at it's an ambitious theater be known for it. They built an outdoor stage during COVID. Most of the theaters sort of, you know, turned turtle and said, We can't do anything. We can't do anything. You have to wait to the silver Bly decide, wow, let's do an outdoor stage. So there's a real drive there, there always has been in a does connect with the spirit of the area. Farmers always fighting always a challenge, always trying to make a goal but and that kind of thing. But more importantly, in terms of the content, that it produces new plays and plays about Western Ontario, so plays that reflect Western Ontario is that I am a little sad that there have not been many other examples of this come along in Canada. So on that basis alone, the blind festival is is is beacon of hope is an important milestone and an important example to other people, because our stories wherever we are in this country, are the most important stories to our audience. And the most important things we can do as theatre practitioners, I think is to find them and tell
JW:you've directed and been artistic director in several theaters across the country. Why do you think this success of this festival has not been replicated?
James Roy:That's a good question. Some of it I think, is timidity. Some of it is theaters star Art with a certain vision and then it gets locked in. And it's hard to change it. And particularly when you come into an existing theaters and new artistic director, the the traditional theater lives on the board, the community and spirit hard to do an about face on the eye. But beyond that, we're still at the mercy of American and British culture. It is better than when I was starting out when I'm starting out when I go to university, the big thing was, what's Canadian culture? But what does that mean? I don't know what that mean, what does it I don't know what it means to be a Canadian. What does that mean? That people would dismiss the whole argument saying, Oh, it's we get stuck on the status? Fine, who cares? Right. So that has changed somewhat, though, I do feel that we're slipping back into that. And things like streaming services. And the way that the mass entertainment has gone are not helping that either. But so we needed a break, we need to say, we have stories we need to tell and work as theatre practitioners. Canadians are just as good as anybody else in the world. And that's what I've learned spending time because they did later on go to go to England and work for a season in the theatre there. And the big lesson I took away was, they're good, but we're just as good. So what are we afraid of? And in some ways, we have an advantage because we don't have to live in the shadow, Shakespeare, the British theatre has to live in the shadow of shift in the shadow of Shakespeare. And that is a positive, but it's also a huge burden. We don't have that we have almost no history at all, in the air. So I think that's part of it as well. I think that, that there's fear, there's a lot of fear of there's a lot of money involved in in, in mounting that season or mounting a play. And I think people are afraid to take the risks often. So I don't know, I live in hope that it will all change.
JW:I think you're absolutely right. And again, another one of the magical things about Blythe is everybody who comes to take part in what we're doing, whether they're volunteering, or they're on the board or their townspeople or their sponsors or donors or audience members. All of these people are making Canadian theatre history and creating Canadian culture. So it's, it's just a wonderful thing to be celebrating that we've been doing this for 50 years.
James Roy:Absolutely. It is at the end of the first season, when we did Clover at mousetrap. I remember vividly sitting on the steps of the Royal hall with Keith Ralston. And we we started to dream about the future. Now the future for us at that time was the next season. We knew we could have won. But we actually went beyond that because it we had been we'll see clover, and as a result the season had literally been unbelievably successful given cow, given them some new theater, given we were all young beginning theatre practitioners, it had been phenomenally successful. And we were excited. However, to think that we will be there in 50 years I don't think either T Thrive would have dared to dream about that.
JW:James, this has been such a treat. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts and your memories and becoming part of this special anniversary edition of the blind festival podcast.
James Roy:Thanks very much. It's been a real pleasure a real treat for me as well to be able to look back on the past this very important cultural institution
JW:you've been listening to James Roy here on the blind festival podcast. Make sure you subscribe for future episodes. Next time I'll be speaking with playwright Beverly Cooper and director and Marie Kerr will be discussing Beverly spooky new play the trials of Maggie Pollack, which is all about a real life here on county Farm woman charged with witchcraft, not so very long ago. Later this season, we'll have an episode exploring Alison Lawrence's new play about the farmer reps. This largely forgotten army of young women kept southern Ontario's farms running while their menfolk were away in Europe fighting World War Two, and the new play is fabulous. As always, if you liked this podcast, please share it with a friend. And if you're listening on Apple podcasts, please give us a review and a rating. This helps other theater fans find us and spreads the word about the great work going on in life. Finally, If you have a private comment or a suggestion about what you'd like us to cover here, please get in touch. You can email us or reach out to us on any of our social media channels. And connecting with our community is what Blythe is all about. So don't be shy. For the Blind festival. I am Joanne Wallace. Until next time, thanks for listening