Season Preview: A First Look at Blyth 2026

Welcome back! Artistic Director Gil Garratt joins us for a full preview of the Blyth Festival’s 2026 season — five shows, four (and a half!) world premieres, and a summer full of stories. 

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Podcast regular (and Blyth Fest Artistic Director) Gil Garratt is here to walk us through all five shows in the 2026 season. And, as always, he’s got stories.

From a powerful true story of young women taking on a factory in Centralia… to a prairie comedy about drought and desperation… to a brand-new musical about baseball and Shakespeare (yes, really)… it’s a season full of heart, humour, and some big, bold ideas.

There’s also a small-town political satire involving a cat running for mayor — and a hilarious, heartfelt solo show about leaving home and figuring out who you are.

In other words: it’s Blyth.

Four (and a half!) world premieres. A whole new group of artists joining the company. And that particular kind of summer magic that seems to happen here every year.

Dive in, have a listen, and start planning your visit. We can’t wait to welcome you back.

Tickets on sale now!
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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:  Gotta Give Me Something, (theme); River Run Dry via Epidemic Sound; Eleanor Plunkett, Emmett Cooke via Shockwave Sound; Ode to the Pozo Pioneers, John Starcluster, via Shockwave Sound.

Transcript

Season Preview - A First Look at Blyth 2026

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

Blyth festival, 2026 season, Gil Garrett, Sisters of 78, Dry Streak, Curveball, Last Mayor of Rusty River, Off Island Odyssey, world premiere, repertory theatre, Kristin de Silva, Leanne Minogue, Justin Shaw, Huron County, Theatre Aquarius.

SPEAKERS

Joanne Wallace, Gil Garratt, Speaker 1

Joanne Wallace  00:05

Hi everyone. I'm Joanne Wallace, and this is the Blyth festival podcast presented by Tuckersmith communications Co-op. This is our 2026 season preview episode, and artistic director Gil Garrett is here to walk us through the five new shows you can see this summer in beautiful Blyth, Ontario, buckle up, because it's going to be another incredible season. We have two laugh out loud comedies. We have a beautiful new drama about a group of young women who walked off the job and into Canadian Labour history, and a brand new musical about women's factory League Baseball colliding with an upstart Shakespeare Theatre in 1950 Stratford, Ontario. There's lots to discuss, so let's get to it. Gil Garrett, welcome back. Thanks for being here. I'm so grateful to be here. We are here to talk about the five shows that you've programmed this summer. But first I wanted to ask you, like, how do you do this? How do you like programme a season? Do you pick one show and build around it, or do you do you have a theme in mind? How does it work?

Gil Garratt  01:16

Essentially, the very first thing that I try to keep in mind, we've got a constant, you know, thanks to tremendous support from our donors and from the councils and all the work we were able to do with playwrights, we have a stable of work and development all of the time, which is a thrilling, inspiring thing to have at your disposal. So we've got a host of writers who are working on all kinds of amazing projects. And really, when it comes time to put a season together, the audience is front of mind, right? That's, that's the thing I'm thinking about the most. And what are some of the things I know folks are concerned about, and those things are important to me. And I think about, well, how can we address some of those issues that I see in the community. And then on top of that is, is, for lack of a better term, is ensuring variety. I want to make sure that folks get to have, you know, work that is, you know, inspiring and pithy, that is going to give them lots to think about. I'm also want to make sure that they get lots of opportunity to laugh heartily together and then thinking about things like with a rep season. You know, how do all these roles work together? And I always want to make sure that actors get the opportunity to play in multiple plays and to play multiple roles.

Joanne Wallace  02:38

Can you just say a few words about a rep system, in case our audiences don't know what that is, yeah.

Gil Garratt  02:42

So essentially, what it means is, in a conventional theatre, you rehearse one show, then you mount that show, and it goes up, and audiences come and see that show, and then you rehearse the next show, and you mount that show, and it goes up and throughout a season, whereas at Blyth as a repertory theatre, and there's still a few repertory theatres in the country. Essentially, what we do is we rehearse a bunch of shows at the same time, and then we open them pretty close to each other, and then we run them in such a way that you can come in the afternoon and see one show and come back in the evening and see a different show, and maybe come back the next afternoon and see a different show after that. So it affords audiences the opportunity to see again a variety of shows you see a bunch of different works.

Joanne Wallace  03:31

Let's dig into what you've chosen for us this year, the first show opening on our stage is a brand new world premiere, new piece from Kristin de Silva, who's actually one of Canada's most produced playwrights, but this is her first show at Blyth, very first. Absolutely. Okay. It's called Sisters of 78 and what is this story all about?

Gil Garratt  03:54

So this is based on an actual event that happened in 1978 just south of the village of Blyth in the town of Centralia. At the time, there was an auto parts manufacturing plant in Centralia that was owned by a company called fleck manufacturing, and essentially, the working conditions in the building were terrible up to the point where it was actually people referred to that factory as the butcher shop because of the number of injuries and things that would take place there. And there was a night shift working in the plant that was 83 women all around the age of the average age of women working in the plant was 22 years old, so these were young women working in terrible conditions, and they decided to form a union to join with what was then the United Auto Workers, the UAW and they actually got enough signatures joined the Union and. Then they got locked out by the company, and this ended up with this enormous strike. They were out for over 200 days on the line these young women, and they were confronted with colossal resistance and up to like including they had, at 1.5 100 opp officers show up to break up the line of 8322 year old women.

Joanne Wallace  05:27

But also, that story didn't just stay in Centralia, did it?

Gil Garratt  05:30

No, you had sympathy strikes happening all over the place. You had, you know, a whole bunch of people from the community came to Centralia to join the lines and stand in solidarity with those young women. And in the end, they won the contract. And, yeah, I mean, and it changed the face of labour history. I think in this in this country, it was very impactful strike,

Joanne Wallace  05:54

yeah, okay, so this really important piece of history happening right next,

Gil Garratt  05:59

right down the road, and Kristin came to me wanting to write a play about this very thing. And she has done a tremendous job of not only capturing the history and details about what went on at that time in terms of these negotiations and the factory and all that stuff. On top of that, she's written a beautiful, moving, funny, incredible play about a young woman named Maeve, who she has a daughter named Janie, and she has and she's living with her mother in law, Margaret, and she is trying to figure out what to do. Her husband has gone off to become an RCMP officer. He's gone off into training. While he's in basic training, she is trying to hold down the fort, and she is desperate, needs money, and so she sees that there's an opening at the at the factory, and she goes and she gets a job working at Fleck, and she gets to know all these other women on the line. That's one of the most fun parts of the play is really all of these relationships of the young women who work on that line and and all kind of the hilarious things they get up to and the discoveries they make as they start to come together and form the solidarity form this sisterhood,

Joanne Wallace  07:20

I understand we're touring this show to Hamilton later this year, which is not something that Blyth has done for quite a long time. So can you talk to us a bit about that?

Gil Garratt  07:30

We're absolutely thrilled, I mean, to be able to bring this particular show, a show that is about, you know, a major labour action in Canada's history, to bring it to, you know, Hamilton, to the hammer, to steel town. I mean, that's very exciting. And really, I have to thank you know the folks at Theatre Aquarius, and Mary Frances Moore, who is directing the show at Blyth. She's also the artistic director of Aquarius, and she got so excited about the play, and wanted to bring it there. And so we've come up with a plan to be able to actually take this production, which is going to open the 2026, season, at Blyth, and then, you know, late in September, beginning of October, we are going to bring it to Hamilton. Nice, really exciting.

Joanne Wallace  08:17

So what? Why is it important to look at this history right now,

Gil Garratt  08:24

oh, so many reasons. I think that really, you know, we talk a lot about the cost of living crisis right now that folks are going through. And we talk about, you know, stagnant wages, and we talk about the housing crisis, and we talk about all these kind of huge, intimidating, collective action problems, and I don't think we spend enough time talking about collective action solutions. And the Sisters of 78 is a prime example of women coming together and changing their community and changing the country through their solidarity. All right,

Joanne Wallace  08:58

that is Kristin de Silva's Sisters of 78 opening June 12, on the Margaret Stevens stage in Blyth, and running until August 9. And if you don't manage to catch it there, you can see it in Hamilton at Theatre Aquarius this fall.

Joanne Wallace  09:20

What have we got next? Our second show is something called dry streak, and it's a comedy, and I it's a brand new rewrite of what's been actually one of the most popular plays across this country, but it is appearing on our stages in Blyth for the first time. So what can you tell us

Gil Garratt  09:38

about this? So this very, very funny play was written by a woman named Leanne Minogue. And Leanne herself is a farmer and to this day, and actually a very popular agriculture journalist too, is written for every agriculture periodical you can think of. The Western producer to, you know, the the chicken farmers. Anyway, she wrote this play in 2006 and it's about a small town in Saskatchewan in 1989 after years of drought. You know, everyone is is kind of at their wits end. What are they going to do the the heat and the dry and no rain? And it's set around the the family farm of the Richards family, and basically the young, youngest son, John Richards, he's long ago, moved to the city, and he decides, you know what, I'm going to go home. I'm going to help my family get through this drought. And so he goes back to the farm, and he brings along his punk rock vegetarian city girlfriend, Kate. And let's just say Kate is a bit of a not only a fish out of water, but mom and dad don't quite know how to get along with Kate, and particularly mom, olive Richards. And basically what happens is John gets dug in, trying to help out on the farm, and they're facing the situation. And every night, everyone in the town goes to the local watering hole, goes to the local bar, and they all kind of gripe about, how are we going to get through this? And one night, they're all sitting there, and Kate takes it upon herself to pledge, if it will only rain, I will run naked through the streets of town, and I won't give any more away than that. But it's a very, very funny, charming, wonderful play that also at the heart of it, I think, is about family and sacrifices, and what do we do for each other to hold together in the hardest times?

Joanne Wallace  11:46

So why? Why did you ask the playwright to read

Speaker 1  11:51

to update it? This is a wonderful question. So the play, as I said, premiered in 2006

Joanne Wallace  11:57

not said in the 80s,

Gil Garratt  11:58

and it's set in 1989 so it premiered at Persephone Theatre in Regina, and I had read it and shortlisted it a couple of times over the years as a possible fit for the season. It's very farm friendly. We recognise these characters and their struggles. And I thought, Why have I not actually gone ahead and produce it? What is, what is the thing that's stopping me? And I realised that there were some elements of the play that I thought could be updated. I thought there were also some things that elements that could be tighter, that could be stronger, that could be funnier. And I thought, well, I've never spoken to Leanne, so I picked up the phone, and I gave her a call, and I said she was going to be a very strange conversation, but I'm calling from Blyth Festival, and I have your play in front of me, and I'm curious. It's been 20 years since it premiered. Have you thought about re approaching it and doing a fresh revision. You know, you've had 20 more years of life experience, 20 more years of writing. She's written other plays since that time and and on top of that, she has now seen dozens and dozens of productions of that play. And she, to my great delight, was very excited by this whole idea. And she kind of went away. I gave her some notes that I thought, you know, I had about the play, and she said, Give me a week. And so we talked again a week later, and she had come back with this long list of things that she wanted to address in it. And so she just rolled up her sleeves and was totally game to, you know, a lot has changed over the last 20 years, and even if you're writing a play that is set in the 80s, like, how does the moment that we're in impact that? And and she had lots of wonderful insights and ideas and new jokes. And, yeah, so it's been wonderful.

Joanne Wallace  13:53

Can you talk a little bit about the importance, I don't think there's any other theatre in Canada doing this, but the importance of of that kind of work in developing our national canon of theatre.

Gil Garratt  14:08

Absolutely. I mean, you know, people have talked about how the only thing harder than getting your play produced in Canada is getting a second production. And I think that that is very, very true, and one of the one of the real difficulties that I see across the country in terms of playwrights getting their work on stage revolves around the fact that we so often require playwrights to be producers, right? You want to get your work on stage, you have to produce it yourself, right? There's lots of theatres that will rent you the space, but in terms of companies that are actually willing to throw the money behind development and producing the work and putting it up, that's it's a much smaller field. And then when you take a work that has had this kind of life and resonance so often, you know. So I love to think about the Canadian canon, the idea that we have all of these plays that speak to who we are and why we're here and what has come before us. And too rarely, the only places they ever get revived are in theatre schools. And, you know, I take something like quiet in the land from last year, or the Donnelly's trilogy, you know, in 2023 or the drawer boy, the drawer boy, you know, the Farm Show. And to breathe new life into these kinds of works and show, hey, these still have so much vitality and so much interest for us, right, that we should be shining a light back on these works. And I think inviting a playwright to re approach a work decades later. To me, it's incredibly inspiring, right? I mean, it's one of the things that's a play is only ever written down because we have to have some way to convey it to the actors. We have to have some way to convey it to the designers. We have to have some way to convey it to the marketing and everybody else. But the reality is that the play on the page is not the play. The play happens when the performers are on stage and the lights are on and the audience is in the hall, that's the play, and everything else is just kind of the blueprint of what will make a play. And so I think, yeah, being able to ask a writer to re approach and reimagine and go back out of work, to me, is incredibly inspiring. And I hope 20 years from now, someone will afford me the opportunity to re approach my own work.

Joanne Wallace  16:38

Well, I do know that dry streak is selling quickly to our members who are able to buy tickets now, so either people have heard about it or they've read the description, and they are very interested to come and see this, because it just sounds hilarious. Okay, well, thank Gil. That is a brand new version of Leanne minogue's Dry streak opening on our indoor stage in Blyth on June 19, and running through until August 16. We're going to take a quick break now here, but don't go away. We are coming back to tell you about three more fabulous shows this summer at the Blyth festival.

Joanne Wallace  17:20

Tickets to the Blyth festival's 2026 season are on sale now, and you can get yours at www dot Blyth festival.com, or by calling our box office. And I will leave all of that information for you in the show notes. There's plenty more to come, but first a quick thank you to our presenting sponsor, Tuckersmith communications, Co Op TCC, as they are known around here, is a full service telecom provider, and they've been serving Huron County since 1909 which is pretty impressive. They started with dial up phone service, and they now offer everything from fibre optic systems to security monitoring services. And of course, they're also enormously community minded. They support dozens of local charities, and we are so proud that they are now our exclusive communications partner. So a big thank you to all the good people at TCC. And now let's get back to my conversation with Gil Garrett. Welcome back. I'm chatting with Blyth festival artistic director Gil Garrett, and he's just told us about the first two shows on this summer's playbill. We are going to move now to our outdoor harvest stage, where we're going to see something I suspect nobody in Canada has ever seen, and that is a brand new musical about baseball mixed up with Shakespeare. So what is this all about?

Gil Garratt  18:45

This is a wonderful new play called curveball. The subtitle being the fast pitching ladies of the factory floor. And this wonderful show actually started from a kind of workshop production of sorts that Kelly McIntosh and Stacy Smith and Andy Pogson did back in

Joanne Wallace  19:09

the i We should just clarify. These are the writers.

Gil Garratt  19:11

These are the writers, yep, and they were the performers too at the time. So in creating this work, essentially, what they wanted to do was tell the story of the of the craylor girls who were the craylor manufacturing was a furniture factory in Stratford, and they had a women's softball team. And Kelly wanted to capture, you know, this, this story on stage, and together that that team went and interviewed women who had actually played on that team. They also interviewed daughters and aunts and sisters and nieces and all kinds of family members associated. And they built this play to really celebrate this achievement. And as they got working on it, the other thing they wanted to try to do was it was this one. Funny tension in the in the in the city of Stratford, for many, many years, has been between the town and the theatre. And so what they did was put at this moment where this baseball team is, you know, getting going, and there is this brand new theatre company who are putting up a tent, and they want to do Shakespeare out in this in this tent. And, you know, I've been joking that it's kind of like the Capulets and the Montagues, right is. And of course, there's a romance between a young actor and a young ball player, and oh my gosh, that hopefully no one finds out. But then what they've done, really, is tried to make this portrait of this ball team and the ways in which they come together, the demons they carry, the the the heroes whose, you know, names they have up on their lockers. And kind of this, this amazing push to to become

Joanne Wallace  21:02

champions, and it's a musical as well, too, and we have somebody quite special writing the music

Gil Garratt  21:09

for us. Yeah, so Dana Manning, who is a Juno Award winning songwriter, an incredible performer. Basically, what happened was Kelly and the team made the first version at stratford's own here for now, a theatre company, and I had the good fortune of coming to see that show. Kelly and I have been friends for many, many years, and it was so exciting to me, especially in terms of the relationship between the show and the audience. And I thought, Okay, this needs another opportunity. And I approached Kelly about, you know, what do you think like? Is this thing ready to have another life? And at that point, at that point, Kelly had lots of wonderful ideas and not much on paper, and she wanted to talk to Dana about writing songs for the show. And I said, Well, you know, how many actors do you think you need? And so we talked about that. And, you know, do you want? What kind of musicians are we looking for? What kind of songs are we talking about? And from there, you know, I thought, well, this could be an amazing thing to put outdoors on the harvest stage, which coincidentally is shaped like a ball diamond. And they really took to this idea, and got running right, and we threw some development money at them to be able to workshop and spend some time writing together and grow the play. And we've got a fresh company of young performers who are going to, I think, knock it out of the park, as one might say, and

Joanne Wallace  22:52

you had to go there,

Gil Garratt  22:55

yeah, I really think it's just going to be so much fun.

Joanne Wallace  22:59

The harvest stage is a really special space for people who haven't been there. It is outdoors, though, but I do want to let folks know that there are only evening performances at the harvest stage. Can you just talk about that? Like, why? Oh, well,

Gil Garratt  23:15

for one thing, there's nothing quite as spectacular. I mean, our world famous Huron County sunsets, right? I mean, there's something amazing about sitting out there and seeing the sunset during the show. It's just absolutely phenomenal. On top of that, you know, walking back to your car with, you know, that full canopy of Huron County stars, there's nothing quite like it and And realistically, the other big thing is heat, right? It's a beautiful, open air outdoor stage with permanent seating. I mean, all the amenities, it's beautiful,

Joanne Wallace  23:48

but it's hot

Gil Garratt  23:49

in the daytime. It's hot in the summertime, yeah, right, so, like, we can't, we tried in the first couple years to do matinees, but it's just, it's just

Joanne Wallace  23:57

too hot out there. Okay, all right. Well, folks heard that here, music, comedy, romance, baseball, everything you want in a summer evening performance on the harvest stage in beautiful Blyth. So make sure you get your tickets. That is curveball, the fast pitch, ladies from the factory floor, that's opening June 10 and running through until the end of August. You you.

Joanne Wallace  24:26

Let's talk next about another comedy and Gill it's called the last mayor of rusty River, and I think you're sharing the writing credit for this.

Gil Garratt  24:38

I am indeed. I am indeed. This has been such a joyful project to work on. The original idea of the last mayor of rusty river came from Dave Scott, and Dave who himself actually was the mayor of Seaforth, and actually at the time he was the youngest mayor in Canada.

Joanne Wallace  24:59

He. Also written some of the most popular plays that we've ever had

Gil Garratt  25:02

on he wrote ballot stomping Tom, which was, you know, a huge hit for Blyth. He also wrote a show years ago called nothing in the paper. Dave had been a newspaper editor before he ended up as the mayor of Seaforth.

Joanne Wallace  25:17

Okay, so tell us who is the last mayor of rusty River, and what is this story all about?

Gil Garratt  25:23

So Dave had pitched this idea. We created this piece. I also got John powers, the songwriter, involved in this play, because I thought it would be fantastic to have some of John's wonderful, witty, playful songs to kind of fill this out. John and I had amazing experience working on Huron County Christmas carol together. So really, the town of rusty River is a fictional town in the actual Huron County. And basically the mayor Larry, he has been the incumbent mayor for 37 years, and so has his deputy mayor, Jerry. So Larry and Jerry, they've basically been in charge of the town for decades, and really no one runs against them, and there's two young millennial counsellors, Tim and Tina. And so they spend their first entire term discovering that they'll actually accomplish nothing, and that nothing gets done in the town, and that that's very much by design on Larry and Jerry's part. And so the play actually starts from there as the kind of at the end of Timothy in his first term. And they've just, they've had it. They're just kind of at their wits end. Okay, Gil,

Joanne Wallace  26:51

you're I can tell how enthusiastic you are, but it's essentially a small town. Well, I don't even want to say small town, because it's a comedy. It is the most hilarious thing I have read for years, but it's about people trying to make things happen, and the wheels of government and the scandal and the corruption and the nonsense that gets in their way. And I think that this will be familiar to anyone who has served in any level of government, because what's happening in rusty river is, I'm pretty sure, happening in Ottawa, absolutely, absolutely so. But, but all of this comes to a boil, comes to a boil.

Gil Garratt  27:29

And basically what happens is Tim, he reaches a point where he says, You know what, if this is all politics is, is you scratch my back, I scratch yours. Then I have the perfect candidate for mayor, and that is my cat, Captain Whiskers, and so he decides he is going to run his cat for mayor, and the town clerk looks in the rule book. Turns out the cat's over 18 and a local resident, and so the cat gets to run.

Joanne Wallace  27:55

So it's it is really hilarious, but I think people are just going to fall in love with the characters. I mean, maybe not Larry, although he's, like in a lovable, exactly lovable. He's a scoundrel. But yeah, the characters are hilarious. And the songs, speaking of John powers coming back to write the music, they are so funny.

Gil Garratt  28:19

No, I won't give it all the way. I will say, like, you know, a perfect example of how funny the songs are is somewhere in the play there is, let us say, an illicit romance that begins in the council chambers, and that is accompanied with a great number called, don't tell HR.

Joanne Wallace  28:41

Have you cast this show yet?

Gil Garratt  28:43

We have cast this show, and I am excited to reveal that the part of Larry the mayor is going to be played by the one and only Canadian icon, Ben Campbell, who is a phenomenal stage performer, who has been seen on every major stage in this country, decades at the Shaw festival. He's an amazing, amazing actor. We're also the role of the deputy mayor is going to be played by stratford's own David Kirby, who also happens to be an amazing guitar player and singer, very, very funny. And this is a kind of a return of sorts. David hasn't been on the Blyth stage in decades, so we're excited to have him back. And then we have a young Blyth power couple who we adore, Cam Laurie and Hallie Celine. And then on top of that, we've got the phenomenal Robin Craig, who is going to be playing the town clerk, and then the there's a local journalist involved in the show who has a wonderful trajectory of her own, and that will be played by the singular singing sensation, Bronte Hunter.

Joanne Wallace  29:56

And our audiences will remember Bronte bringing the hunt. Rosetown during last year's production of Huron County Christmas Carol. Yeah, she's incredible. Okay, so that is the last mayor of rusty River, co written by our very own Gil Garrett and the extremely talented playwright, author and one time mayor of Seaforth himself, David W Scott that is opening at the end of July, the Friday of the long weekend, and running through until September 13.

Joanne Wallace  30:36

We have one more show to discuss, yes, and this is called off Island Odyssey, and is coming to us is a solo show, right? Coming to us from a Prince Edward Island writer and comedian named Justin Shaw. So I'm really interested into, like, what is this all about?

Gil Garratt  30:54

Justin Shaw is, I mean, he is a hilarious storyteller. He's also been a headliner at Yuk Yuks. I mean, he's, he's an accomplished comedian as well as an actor, and we share a theatre school, the same alma mater. And Justin, I got to had, I've had folks telling me about Justin for some time, and I finally actually invited him two years ago to come and do his Christmas show. He was doing a solo Christmas show called when a creature stirred, and our creature is stirring, and I got him to come and do it, and the thing sold out almost you know, within hours of us announcing, we were very excited, and then I got to watch him, and he was so funny and charming and had such an amazing rapport with the audience, and the storytelling that he did in that piece was amazing. So after that encounter, I met with him in the lobby, and I said, you know, that was that was really fantastic, and he just did such an amazing job. And he said, Well, it was a lot more fun doing it here than at Boston Pizza, you know, okay? And we just started a rapport and a conversation, and I said, you know, what else are you working on? And so he had been sending me some stuff, and we started commissioning some work from him. And he had this pitch of a play called at that time, he was calling it, have jokes, we'll travel and the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. They their artistic director, Adam brazier, called me up and said, Hey, I heard you guys are interested in Justin. I'm really interested in Justin, and we work together to support this, this thing. And so last summer, Justin actually did have jokes. Will travel at the Confederation Centre in Charlottetown. And it was a big success. Very, very funny. And then we started working with Justin to try to get him to develop the thing further, to bring it to Blyth as off Island Odyssey.

Joanne Wallace  33:15

Okay, but what's it about? Yeah, so what

Gil Garratt  33:16

is it about? So, it is about Justin actually grew up in Prince Edward Island on a little horse farm, and Justin was the first person in his family to ever live off of the island. Justin got into theatre school in Montreal, and so then he for the first time in his life, he you know, left his parents home, and he moved to Montreal, and he lived in that city, and had kind of the experience of what that was, and many hilarious things happened to him. He then after theatre school and had a big student debt he needed

Joanne Wallace  33:54

to pay. All of these stories are what we're seeing

Gil Garratt  33:57

on stage. All of these stories are the stories that he tells at their heart, what he's really telling the story of is, what is home? What does it mean to be What does home mean? And how does the place that you're from define you, whether you like it or not? So Justin, whose family had never left the island, moves to Montreal, goes to school, ends up with student debt, finishes school, he then goes to Fort McMurray and works in the oil patch. And then he ends up meeting the love of his life, Diana, and they end up moving to Hamilton together. And so this play is really about Justin's off Island Odyssey, his journey going through all these places across the country, his like tours as a as a comedian, as an actor, and what this has all meant whenever he goes back to his home, he knows that actually being from his little town in. PEI is at the core of his being.

Joanne Wallace  35:04

It sounds like also, it might be a bit of a exploration of Canada itself, because he he's going to all of these very different places,

Gil Garratt  35:15

absolutely and about who, who, how, where we are from helps us understand who we are. And I think for young people, especially, you know, there is that, that sense of, I've got to get out of here, you know, I've got wherever it is that they're from, right? They want to go to some place, far away, and define themselves. And the thing that I think Justin's play really speaks to is how on the other side of that adventure, that discovery that you know, no matter how far you go, there you are, right? That piece of home follows you, yeah, and if you could take that and infuse it with 10,000 hilarious jokes, then you would have off Island Odyssey.

Joanne Wallace  36:06

Okay, well, that's, that's off Island Odyssey from Prince Edward Island's Justin Shaw. And that's opening August 2 again on the long weekend in August, and running through August 30. Wow, what a season I ever every year, I think we could, we'll never top this, and yet, somehow we do, what are you most excited for?

Gil Garratt  36:29

Oh, there's so many things. I'm excited on every possible level. I mean, it's very funny, someone this past summer told me who was an audience member who had come to Bonanza weekend. For anyone who doesn't know, Bonanza weekend, there's one weekend in the middle of the summer where you can actually come and see one show, Friday night, a different show, Saturday afternoon, different show, Saturday night, and a different show. You can see

Joanne Wallace  36:55

the entire place the whole season in one weekend, and it is the long weekend in August.

Gil Garratt  36:59

Yeah, it's a thrilling time. But there was someone at Bonanza weekend last year who said to me, Gil, you have the energy of a golden retriever. And I said, thank you very much, and I've carried that forward. So my golden retriever energy, I'm excited about so many things in the season. One big one is we actually have a whole bunch of brand new performers this year. Two thirds of the acting company this year are making their Blyth festival debut. To me, that's really, really thrilling. I also am very excited about, you know the design? We don't spend enough time ever talking about production and the designs. You know what? What actually hits that stage this year, we actually have four sets across the season that are being designed by two designers. So there's some tremendous opportunity in the same way, we get to see the actors double in roles across shows. We get to see the same designers double across shows. And that's really exciting to me, too, to see that ingenuity and inventiveness, and then beyond all of that, I'm just so excited to to welcome the audience to the theatre yet again. I mean, it's, it's an amazing thing that happens in the village of Blyth every summer, when suddenly we go from, you know, a town of 1000 people to a town of 1000 people with 100 actors and artists and props makers and technicians living in it, to then suddenly having hundreds of theatre lovers and culture vultures descending on the town day after day after day. It's just it's such a place of celebration and reverie. I love it so much.

Joanne Wallace  38:50

Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about this before we wrap the

Gil Garratt  38:57

other thing that I would say I'm really excited about this summer is there is there's four. I like to think four and a half world premieres. I mean, again, you know so much of what Blyth stands for, and what Blyth has done over the decades is to develop new Canadian plays and to give those writers the opportunity to to explore and define, you know what, what we are, and to be able to welcome this many premieres on our stage, to put new plays front and centre, it's just just thrilling.

Joanne Wallace  39:34

You've been listening to artistic director Gil Garrett here on the Blyth festival podcast. Tickets are on sale right now, and they are selling briskly, so give our box office a call or head on over to www dot Blyth festival.com, to snag yours. If you've never been to Blyth, we are about two and a half hours west of Toronto, or maybe three on a bad traffic day, or about an hour and a half north. Fourth ish of London, and if you're closer than that, you're Goderich Clinton Wingham, well, we're closer than you think, so come on out and see us here on the podcast. We have lots more planned for you this season, as usual, we'll be talking to actors, directors, playwrights, and bringing you the sort of insider and background information we know you love, so stay tuned. Make sure you like and subscribe so you won't miss an episode until then. I'm Joanne Wallace, thanks for listening. You.