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
Emma Donoghue on The Wind Coming Over the Sea, premiering at the Blyth Festival
You may know bestselling author Emma Donoghue for her 2010 novel Room (later an Oscar-nominated movie), or her most recent book, The Paris Express.
But Emma is also an accomplished playwright. And this summer she has a brand new work premiering right here at the Blyth Festival.
Join me for a fascinating chat with Emma about this new work: The Wind Coming Over the Sea. The play features Emma’s trademark meticulous historical research and charts the story of real-life Irish-Canadian immigrants Jane and Henry Johnson who fled the 1840s potato famine for a dangerous new life in rural Canada.
In this chat, Emma reveals how and why she chose to write about this particular couple. She explains why she wanted to make the play “sing” as a sort of “jukebox” musical filled with traditional Irish folk tunes. And she speaks movingly about what it was like to write this sort of story when she herself is an Irish-Canadian immigrant.
You’ll also get the inside scoop on some exciting staging choices her director, Blyth Artistic Director Gil Garratt, will be using to bring this story to life.
Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com
Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: jwallace@blythfestival.com
The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!
Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park
Music: Philip Ayers: River Walk and Forever Free; River Run Dry: Gotta Give Me Something, (theme). All via Epidemic Sound;