Curveball: Stratford's Softball Sweethearts Meet the Bard

Everybody, play ball!

Step into the world of Curveball - a lively new Canadian musical set in 1950s Stratford, where a championship women's ball team and a brand-new Shakespeare festival are about to collide.

Playwright Kelly McIntosh and singer-songwriter Dayna Manning talk about how this show has grown, from its early days as a one-act play to the full-scale musical you'll see on Blyth's Harvest Stage this summer.

It's a story about a scrappy team on the comeback trail, a town in transition, and the young women who helped build something lasting - whether anyone was paying attention or not. You'll learn about the real history behind the show, the collaborative process, and why this moment still feels surprisingly current.

And yes, there's a love story between a ball player and a spear carrier.

Have a listen, and get ready for one of the most joyful, big-hearted shows of the summer.

Apology to all Curveball co-writers

In this recording, we incorrectly identified Kelly McIntosh as the lead writer on this project. In fact, from the beginning, Curveball has been a collaboration between writers Andy Pogson, Stacy Smith and Kelly McIntosh, with additional writing and dramaturgical work provided by Severn Thompson. 

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Credits
 Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace
 Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music Credits

Take Me out to the Ballgame, Helen Dell, Dodger Stadium Organist. Take Me Out To The Ball Game (piano), Lorie Line Music. A Dream Lives In Your Heart,  Dayna Manning. 

Transcript

Joanne Wallace  00:08

Hi, I'm Joanne Wallace. Welcome to the Blythe festival podcast presented by Tucker Smith communications Co Op. Today we're heading into the world of curve ball. This is a brand new Canadian musical set in 1950s Stratford. It's a moment when a scrappy women's softball team and a brand new Shakespeare Theater are about to collide. Curveball is also a story that's been growing for a while. It began as a one act play called craylor Girls, which was originally produced by our friends at here for now, theater in Stratford now Blythe is helping the original creators develop it into a full scale musical, and today I'll be chatting with two of the artists behind that journey. Joining me in just a moment, will be Kelly McIntosh, the lead writer on this project, and Dana Manning, who's writing the music. Kelly is an actor and playwright, well known to Blythe audiences. She was the driving force behind our 2019 hit in the wake of Wettlaufer, and she was last seen on our stages in 2022 in drew Hayden Taylor's hilarious cottagers and Indians. And these days, when she's not penning musical romances about ladies softball, she's the managing director of the Stratford Perth Museum. Dana is a Juno Award nominated Canadian singer songwriter who really needs no introduction.

Joanne Wallace  01:35

Dana Kelly, welcome and thanks for being here. Hi, Joanne. Hi Joanne. I'm so glad you're both here. Kelly, let's get started. First of all, can you give us the elevator pitch for this show? Like, what's it about and what our audience is going to see? 

Kelly McIntosh  01:48

Curve ball is a fast paced, beautiful, dramatic, funny play about a women's factory team just after World War Two, who have suffered a devastating loss, and it's their comeback year at the same time that the town is getting ready for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to go on in a tent, and these two opposing forces, there's conflict, there's romance. I mean, it's a really pivotal moment in stratford's history. It's also a pivotal moment in professional women's ball for arts and culture and really coming out of those wartime years.

Joanne Wallace  02:29

So we've got a small factory town post war years, we've got a women's baseball team that is town heroes, and we've got an upstart Shakespeare Festival, which nobody thought was going to go anywhere. All of this stuff is colliding at the same time. Who's our main protagonist?

Joanne Wallace  02:51

Well, we really are following the story of a character named honey Heinrich. Honey is the star batter on the team. She's one of the characters that has bridged the wartime team into this now modern 50s team, and she's got her sights on a career in professional baseball, which was still a possibility at the time. However, honey has some things that you know the audience will discover that that she's got to contend with to be able to get past her freezing at the plate when the chips are down. Is she based on a real person? Then she's inspired by a photograph of a real person who I hadn't met or during that through the process of the play, I didn't get a chance to find her or speak with her. Eventually I found her daughter. But what we do with this work is, you know, for me, I look at photographs and it gives me, it gives me instinctual information about the characters, and then we look at the historical context that they're living in, and we interview and speak to so many women that it really fills out the world that they were living in, the loves they had, the challenges that they were facing, the realities of being on that ball team,

Joanne Wallace  04:03

When you put all of that into the smaller piece, the shorter piece, did you already know it had scope to be something bigger?

Joanne Wallace  04:10

One thing I haven't said so far is the remarkable thing about the crayla girls is they were champions. And all through the war years and into the early 50s, they were so celebrated they would be, you know, the leaders in the parade, they were huge parties were thrown for them at the owners of crayolar manufacturing.

Joanne Wallace  04:31

At what point did you realize that this story wanted music? It wanted to be a musical

Joanne Wallace  04:37

right out of the gate. In fact, something that I do as a writer is I will write a song about a main character that I'm exploring in one of these collective creations that I do, and the song tries to encapsulate the themes, the overall themes of the show. So that song was written, I did call my good friend Dana Manning. Say, Hey, how would you feel about writing some music for this play that Andy and Stacey and I are creating, but she just she wasn't available at the time, so we had the song, and that one song became the the theme that came up throughout the show. So it was sort of like a one song for the show, sort of a situation. Severin Thompson, who directed the original production. Knew that she needed like a drum kit on stage. We knew that we were going to need to make those pops, those sounds of bat swinging. So there's the musicality of the percussive sound of ball itself. There's also the multiple cheers that the women would, you know, create, that we recreated in our own way. So, musicality, tempo, rhythm, percussiveness is always really been deeply ingrained in what we do and what we share.

Joanne Wallace  05:47

Okay, let's, let's see what Dana has to say about this. So Kelly says that you were involved from this, in this project, right from the beginning. When did you feel like you were going to be able to dig into it?

Dayna Manning  06:01

It was years, kind of years later, a couple years later, where we talked about actually rewriting it with music, and I was available, and kind of really had vivid memories of seeing the play. I don't know how to describe it. Beyond that, I really wasn't like working from a script. The first few songs that I wrote for the play, I was working through the emotions that I felt when I saw the play, so the first couple songs came out pretty easily. And also, I'm a closet baseball fanatic. So when I was a kid, that was my sport, that's the team I played on. I waited at the mother's restaurant to get Ernie Witt, the catcher of the Blue Jays, signature when I was six on my baseball hat. Like I love baseball. So I know, I know what it kind of takes to move a baseball game musically, if that makes sense. So for me, there's a combination of these, these really beautiful kind of acoustic folky songs, and then these really wild 50s inspired baseball songs that can move the play along. So it was just a fun opportunity for me to write a little bit differently than I normally do. Well,

Joanne Wallace  07:18

I was going to ask you about that. Like I know that your music has always been very story focused and community centered. So how do you take those skills and interests as a singer songwriter and recording artist and translate them into writing a score for musical theater?

Dayna Manning  07:38

I feel like it all comes from the same place. I don't know how to explain it well, the one thing also is, I'm a massive theater fan. I've seen every single musical that's ever come to this city. I, in fact, some of them I've seen seven times. I love them so much. I've seen everything applied. I've just, I've I'm huge. It's kind of a combo of these, like things I'm a really big fan of, and the opportunity of a skill that I have to put them all together sounds

Joanne Wallace  08:08

like a perfect storm, like a perfect

Dayna Manning  08:11

it feels like a perfect match to me. Yeah. Oh, that's fantastic, yeah. And so I think when we first started working, we would work on certain scenes, and then I would write a song for that scene, or sometimes I would write a song. I'm like, guys, I don't really sure where this song goes, but I know it has to do with the play. So here, here's a here's this. What can you do with it? So it's a lot of collaborative working, and I feel, I almost feel the same as the writers on the play, but I just have a different skill.

Joanne Wallace  08:41

Is it different, though, than your normal music writing? Like, do you?

Dayna Manning  08:45

Yeah, in fact, I feel like I've actually outwritten My playability, like, what I can even play on a piano, or anything, like, I'm really writing some wild stuff for this.

Joanne Wallace  08:56

Do we do we know if there's going to be, like, a pit band or, like, what's going to happen in the production? Or is that a

Dayna Manning  09:03

I think a lot of actors will will be musicians as well, and I think, I think that I might be a musician in the play. Yeah.

Joanne Wallace  09:11

Oh, what is this breaking news? Are you going to be on stage?

Dayna Manning  09:16

I don't know. I don't know what they're going

Joanne Wallace  09:18

to do. Okay, audiences, stay tuned. We might have more information for you on that, an opportunity to see Dana Manning on stage in the Blythe festival. I'm going to move back over to Kelly, because you brought up Dana this process of collaboration. And Kelly, you've mentioned that you are a member of a team of writers putting this story together. And I, I can't imagine what that must be like, either really chaotic or really creative, or both, or what. But can you speak a bit about what the collaborative process is like for audiences who might be curious about, how do writers work together to create something like this?

Joanne Wallace  09:57

Well, we've really. Transition from that thing I was speaking about earlier, where, and remember, this was, this was 2021, end of 2020, we were meeting as writers on Zoom, which was a new thing at the time, with Severn Thompson, and we were in our in our rooms, in our kitchens, and we were improvising on Zoom together. So

Joanne Wallace  10:22

let me just explain to our audience that Severn is the Associate Artistic Director at the Blythe Festival, and she handles the new play development portfolio. So she is the person on the ground who works with writers as they're developing new work.

Joanne Wallace  10:36

Normally, in a very different scenario, people are in a room together, or they're on their feet improvising. And so Severn was actually, this may be one of the first Canadian plays that was ever created in this way. And I'm telling you, we were like throwing ourselves across the room onto beds, pretending to slide. We were we were zooming in experts, like baseball experts, and I was working on my swing because I knew I was going to be we were the three of us, Stacy Smith Andy Pogson and I, we were the cast. So it was like three middle aged actors who were going to go out there and and play, you know, I think we probably had about 20 characters. So we were all covering the team, like Stacy Smith and I were the team. I think we've got six women in the cast coming in this time around. But anyway, we started that way. So we had to figure out this whole new way of of writing. And then we've transitioned, over time toward, guess, we got closer to opening and then through this process of really being more in a traditional way on our laptops, where we get together on a zoom, or we get together, you know, my house, and we talk it through, we rewrite together in the way that you might see people do, like on TV. You know, we're

Joanne Wallace  11:44

in a writer's room, yeah, but

Joanne Wallace  11:45

what? But there's one thing I want to share that's really interesting, because we've been at it for so long. Stacy recently remarked that we're at a point now with the show like normally, Stacey would write for her characters, and she would make up all the lines for Georgie and Nora, and I would be making up all the lines for Wanda and honey and now, and for Andy coach now we are able to write in each other's voices. It's like we share a brain, and we have all of those characters in our heads. And it's, it's, it's kind it's a, it's a beautiful thing that's happened. It's been a lot of work, but I think that the audience is going to really, really reap the rewards of how hard we have worked on this show. You know,

Joanne Wallace  12:31

well, the characters are so vivid to me already, and I've only read just a draft of the script. And you mentioned, well, we've talked about honey. She's the main protagonist, and she's the story revolves around her, but there's Georgie, who's the the star new pitcher.

Joanne Wallace  12:48

She thinks she's she

Joanne Wallace  12:49

thinks she's a star. She is pretty cocky. But there's also this whole tension with the new theater festival coming to town. We're going to talk about that a little bit more after the break. But Dana, let me just ask you, first about all of these voices. How has that been for you to write in different voices? Is that something you've experienced before?

Dayna Manning  13:16

No, it's actually wild to me that someone else is going to sing all my songs. I haven't really done that a lot, so it's extremely exciting for me. It's very, very easy for me, though, to find the empathy and find that character's mindset. I don't know why. I just feel really familiar with the play. I feel like the characters are really distinct. So I mean, as I think that's my job as a songwriter always is to figure out what's that thing that makes this common, this experience of being here, common for all of us. And so if I can try to tap into that from each character's perspective, then then we're good. I think,

Joanne Wallace  14:02

all right, we're going to take a quick break now, but don't go away. We'll be right back with lots more from Dana Manning and Kelly McIntosh, including something about Georgie, the so called star pitcher, and a burgeoning romance with a spear carrying actor. So don't go away. We'll be right back. 

Joanne Wallace  14:22

Tickets to curve ball are on sale right now at www dot Blythe festival.com, I'll leave that address and the box office phone number in the show notes for you. There's lots more to come, but first, I want to give a quick thank you to our exclusive communications partner, Tucker Smith communications, Co Op, TCC, as their known, hereabouts, is a full service telecom provider serving Huron County, and we're so grateful for their support. They not only support this podcast, but also our members newsletter and several other ways that we stay connected with you. The Blythe festival is a not for profit arts organization, and everything we do, including developing new Canadian work like curve ball, is made possible by a community of supporters, and that includes TCC, and it also includes you, whether you're a donor, a member, a sponsor, a volunteer or a patron in our audiences, this work exists because of you. So thank you for making it possible. And now back to my conversation with Kelly McIntosh and Dana Manning. 

Joanne Wallace  15:29

Welcome back. I'm chatting with playwright Kelly McIntosh and musician Dana Manning, and we're talking about their new show, curveball, opening later this summer at the Blythe festival. While we were on break, Dana was telling me something interesting about her master's research that I think is applicable here. So can you tell everyone else about that, too? Dana,

Dayna Manning  15:57

yeah, I guess around this time last year we we had two trailer trailers. We called them at the Perth Stratfor, Perth Museum, and

Joanne Wallace  16:06

these were workshops.

Dayna Manning  16:08

Yeah, we workshopped three or four scenes and songs in front of 70 community members at each of them. So we had two trailer trailers, and I did my research on kind of the participation piece of that for the audience members in Community Music, participation is highly valued so that everyone in the room can participate, even though, obviously the audience wasn't participating in creating that the art.

Joanne Wallace  16:35

So did you come out of it with a feeling of, yes, we are creating something authentic here with this story, because the community is bringing their participation to it.

Dayna Manning  16:47

Yes, and it was less important that we felt that way, but more important that they felt that way. And we found that quite a few people felt that they had contributed meaningfully to a piece of art being made.

Joanne Wallace  17:00

That's really interesting, because Blythe festival, for our audience members who are familiar with what we do, has a long history of this sort of going out into the community to find the stories that matter to people and then translating them into theater and putting them on the stage, which curiously, sometimes it sounds like, well, how is that show going to be relevant anywhere other than where it was written? But because it's so authentic, it is, which actually leads me into my next question, because this story takes place in a very particular moment in time. It's in Stratford, Ontario in 1952 right? Kelly 52 which is the first year,

Joanne Wallace  17:44

sorry,

Joanne Wallace  17:44

I'm sorry. Okay, 53

Joanne Wallace  17:45

you're right. I apologize. Our first scene is set in 1952 Okay,

Joanne Wallace  17:50

so 1952 for those of you who don't know, is the very first year of the Stratford Festival. And as you'll see when you come to see curve ball, it is also the year when the craler Girls are beginning their fight for a championship. So these two seminal events for this town are about to collide in this story and Kelly, I wonder if you can talk to us a little bit about how that comes to life on stage.

Joanne Wallace  18:16

Yeah, so 1952 you know, people who know everything about theater will know that 1953 was the first year of the Stratford Festival, but we look at the craylor girls comeback year after a devastating loss to the London auto marts in 1952 where her lead character had a meltdown. You know that's all happening. It starts very dramatically, and then, while they're rebuilding the team, they're looking out the factory window, and they're seeing this tent go up. And it's one of those things you know, as a special year 52 to 53 because Queen Elizabeth was the coronation of Queen Elizabeth was happening that year. The craler girls were working on their comeback, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival had come to town, so in the rewrite of the play that we're going to have in Blythe. This is how it's different, and this is how Dana's work, really, those Crayola conversations did help impact the writing of the work. What we discovered was we had sort of a one scener between Georgie, the rookie pitcher, and James, a young man who has come to Stratford to be part of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and is playing, he's a spear carrier, carrier, and he's in Richard the Third and they meet while he's rehearsing his lines off in the woods behind the tent, and Georgie is off collecting balls from the practice. And we discovered that this was really one of the most gripping and important scenes in the show to the audience. They loved watching the worlds come together of what we know really well. And you know, sports is bred in the bone here in our local community and in our region, really. And then this new albatross that will be the Stratford Festival, and it's so fun. Because in the factory, they joke about, Oh, it'll never last. It's gonna be a flash in the pan. But the audience, you know, the trick of this is we play with the what the audience knows historically, what is to be,

Joanne Wallace  20:11

yes, okay,

Joanne Wallace  20:12

so we have followed through on that. On the romance. It's a really, it's a seminal storyline. Now, James and Georgie,

Joanne Wallace  20:19

okay? And Dana. Is there a love story for these two? I mean, a love song? Pardon

Dayna Manning  20:24

me, yes, there's a love song. I It's called in common, and they're trying to find out what they have in common. And I'll give you a few lyrical tidbits. He loves Shakespeare. I've driven through it. He played Romeo. I went to Juliet. There you go,

Joanne Wallace  20:43

for audience members who don't live in Stratford, as all three of us do, there was a school called Julie all of our schools, actually, here in Stratford, are named after Shakespeare characters. So yes, there was a Juliet

Dayna Manning  20:56

school, and there's a little hamlet town outside of town we all have to drive through to get to Toronto, called Shakespeare, yes,

Joanne Wallace  21:02

yes.

Joanne Wallace  21:02

And all of these things were created before the Stratford Festival. That's

Joanne Wallace  21:06

right, Kelly, I wanted to ask you, actually about this, the staging of this piece, and I don't know how much you'll be able to speak to to this. I know you're still writing the script, but we're going to be at Blythe putting this up on our outdoor stage, the harvest stage, and I know you've worked on that stage before as an actor. Can you talk about the challenges and opportunities of working on that space for this with this story?

Joanne Wallace  21:34

Well, what's so exciting, and I know what Severin Thompson is so excited about, is that

Joanne Wallace  21:39

severno is going to be directing, yes,

Joanne Wallace  21:40

directing. And it is shaped like a baseball diamond, because we do in this play have like, you are going to see ball happening. So, you know, we've got a first base, second base, third base and home plate. We have levels on that stage, right? So that's going to be an opportunity for the scene staged in the factory of having multi levels and looking out windows. We've got places for music to exist. And I think that's going to be a big conversation. You know, work with, with Dana and Severin. So it's, it couldn't, it couldn't be more perfect and beautiful to be outdoors on a stage that is the shape of a baseball diamond. I'm not sure I need to say too much more about that.

Joanne Wallace  22:23

What about you? Dana, have you written us any big, enormous musical numbers that could only happen outdoors?

Dayna Manning  22:30

I would like to say, yes.

Joanne Wallace  22:32

Can you tell us

Dayna Manning  22:33

one of the songs is an actual ball game happening throughout it, and it's called, you're up like you're up next.

Joanne Wallace  22:39

Okay,

Dayna Manning  22:40

yeah. And then we have one called better than Bonnie, which I think closes the first act, and it's probably my favorite.

Joanne Wallace  22:48

And can you tell us who Bonnie is and why it's important to be better than her? Maybe I'll ask Kelly that.

Dayna Manning  22:54

Yeah. Kelly would answer that question. Well,

Joanne Wallace  22:57

Bonnie Baker, the sweetheart from Saskatchewan, as one of the best known players from the All American girls professional baseball league that came sorry, is Bonnie? A real person? Bonnie Baker is a Canadian. Yeah, she's a Canadian player from Saskatchewan, one of the many Canadian women who went to play pro ball during the war years south of the border. And what's remarkable about Bonnie is she was not only a star player with a ridiculous batting average, and her stats were through the roof. She became the player manager of the Michigan Belles, and was really key in really fighting for that professional women's baseball league to carry on. And she was really responsible for the fact that it still existed the summer of 1953 so better than Bonnie is just terrific song that Dana came up with.

Joanne Wallace  23:47

Sorry, who's singing the song? Is it Georgie or honey?

Dayna Manning  23:49

It's kind of the whole team together.

Joanne Wallace  23:52

Yeah. Okay, so they, they're vowing they're going to be like, not just as good as Bonnie.

Dayna Manning  23:57

They're

Dayna Manning  23:58

gonna hunker down. This is our time. We're going to hunker down. We need to get it together. We're going to start by paying attention to these details, and where it's going to take us is we're going to be better than Bobby,

Joanne Wallace  24:09

yeah. And this is happening, of course, in a great moment of challenge where the team is suffering these conflicts and players getting injured and everything, and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is making the move the game time. And it's more than that too. It's also the town is shifting its focus from ball to the you know, putting their sponsorship money towards the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. They have to change the game time. People aren't getting along. Folks are getting injured. Granny's getting married like all these things are happening and and where honey reaches in her leadership is that Dana found was we're going to be like, imagine we're not only going to win this game. We're going to be we're going to be bigger. We're going to be better than Bonnie Baker. You.

Dayna Manning  25:02

It. One thing I wanted to point out is one thing that's so fun about it is that the craylor factory was at the corner of Ontario and Romeo, so right where the Bruce hotel and the Arden Park Hotel live now, and the girls played right behind there. So you know, we're playing up with this physicality, that they are a stone's throw away, and that that the theater can hear them, and just kind of showing that, you know, they're there, maybe they're fearing that they're going to have to start sharing their audience, you know. And it's just been really fun to to focus on this, these two things that happened so close to each other that, for me, is a really neat factor.

Joanne Wallace  25:39

I want to talk a bit about what's meaningful about this story today, because, like, we've, you've been just telling me about this very specific local conflict between Shakespeare Theater and, you know, a ball team that's used to leading the parades in town, like it's a, it's a an ephemeral moment in history, but there's still, I think, relevance to today, today to find in this story. But Kelly, can you talk about what, what moves you still about this story today, and what makes it something that today's audiences are going to find interesting, or they're going to feel something when they come to see it.

Speaker 1  26:28

Well,

Joanne Wallace  26:28

let's just start out with baseball is having a moment. I mean, the timing of the show being produced by the Blythe festival is fantastic. Not everybody's into ball, but I think a lot of us were really swept up by the Jays. So baseball is having a moment. And another way baseball is having a moment, because it's been 72 years since there was women's pro ball in the States, and 2026 is it's very similar to the wartime teams. I believe there's four leagues. It mirrors exactly what happened.

Joanne Wallace  27:02

So the starting up again this year.

Joanne Wallace  27:04

Yeah, professional women's ball is back after 72 years. It literally picks up right at the end of this play. That's like it? Yeah, I don't, I don't want to give too much about what happens at the end of the play, but it's been since 1954 since there was professional women's ball.

Joanne Wallace  27:22

So it's almost a meta moment. Here it

Joanne Wallace  27:25

is. And you know, I want to in terms of that heart, that heart feeling, I sent something around in our group chat to the writers yesterday, there's a phenomenal ball player from Stratford named Laurie Sipple. Laurie played on the, I think it was in the in the 90s. She was on the Olympic team the in the the Canadian Olympic team, and she coached the Olympic team in the 2000s and she's now an associate head coach in Nebraska. And she was, she's from here, and I got in touch with her to let her know that we were doing this show. And I was watching a video of Laurie talk about, you know, we can't take it for granted that players now the leagues make sure everybody's got a mitt, everybody's got a bat that is appropriate to them, everybody's got a uniform. And back in the time when the craylor girls were were surging, they didn't have that. They they had to make sacrifices. They had to, you know, play with heavier bats and different gloves and that. And part of what Laurie is saying is that we have to remember the people who came before, who helped build the sport, and without them, we wouldn't, we wouldn't have the opportunities or the chances that we have today?

Joanne Wallace  28:41

Nice, nice.

Dayna Manning  28:43

I'd love to answer that question too.

Joanne Wallace  28:44

All right.

Dayna Manning  28:45

I think the time that we live in right now is a bit unprecedented. And the lead song that I wrote for the play is called a dream lives in your heart. And I think that really kind of the title kind of says it all. And I see so many stories right now of rules that are changing, tariffs that are being added, different things happening in our world, where people have worked their entire life to bring a dream to life and it they're realizing that they're not going to be able to because a rule changed, or because this thing isn't going to happen the way that they thought it was going to for the rest of their lives. And I think that that's what makes this makes this a really universal story right

Speaker 1  29:24

now.

Joanne Wallace  29:41

Kelly, what do you hope audiences are going to take away from this? After they see curve ball,

Joanne Wallace  29:48

they're going to take away life is hard, and it can throw you a curve ball, but if you continue to play for. Your team. If you continue to ground yourself in community, there's comfort there, there's, you know, there's, there's a lot of hope there.

Joanne Wallace  30:11

Thank you, Dana, what do you hope audiences are going to take away from this?

Dayna Manning  30:17

I hope that they're going to feel like they went to a ball game. You know how you have to sit there and just like, what is gonna happen? Oh, my goodness, I can't believe that happened. That's what I hope that they're gonna feel like they went to a ball game, but they're at our play. Yeah,

Joanne Wallace  30:32

it's true. We watching the blue jay series like we were taking notes, like we were discovered, like the it's the amazing thing about the game is how you think you know it, and then something, something magnificent, or just so surprising happens that turns the whole thing around. So we're really going to be getting the bats going, as they like to say out there on the I went on the stage

Dayna Manning  30:51

feel empathetic, inspired and energized.

Joanne Wallace  30:56

I like what you said about different audiences for sports and arts. And I mean, this is a kind of a two solitudes in our entertainment landscape here in Canada. And I think one of the beautiful things about this show is that it's going to bring those two groups together. So if you like baseball, come and see curve ball. If you like theater, come and see curve ball. If you like musicals, come and see curve ball. If you like Dana Manning, come and see curve ball. Kelly, do you have any last words?

Joanne Wallace  31:26

Just something we haven't mentioned is that, you know, this play would not be happening for everybody to get to come and see and enjoy and have a really, you know, raucous time at if it weren't for theater companies like the Blythe festival that invest in new plays. They invest in very entertaining new plays, and often they're important conversations that need to happen, and they're it's a rarity to have a theater company that is fully focused on that and on Canadian life. So just thanks for Blythe for picking up the traces of where we left off. It here for now and helping us develop this into a beautiful show that I have ambition does go across this country, if not translated into several languages. I just want, just want people to see this show.

Joanne Wallace  32:14

All right, you heard it here first, folks, make sure you get out to Blythe to see this, this show, this summer curve ball. So you can say you were there when the first show went up and to see us out, Dana says she's brought a song along. So can you just tell us quickly, what is this song and what are we going to hear?

Dayna Manning  32:36

I consider it kind of the theme of the play. It's called a dream lives in your heart, and I did record it on my latest album, field notes that comes out in May.

Joanne Wallace  32:44

All right, thank you both so much.

Dayna Manning  32:49

I can't be everything to everyone, but I can be you've gotta know when you're feeling weak and you're at the end of your winning stream lives in your heart.

Joanne Wallace  33:35

That was Dana Manning with a beautiful new song she's written for this new production of curve ball and Kelly McIntosh, one of the writers on this project, curveball is exactly the kind of work Blythe exists to support new Canadian stories developed over time and brought to life through collaboration. Tickets are on sale right now, and we would love to have you join us this summer. Head on over to www.blythefestival.com or give our box office a call. If you've enjoyed this conversation, I will be back with plenty more this summer, so please like and subscribe so you don't miss an episode until then. I'm Joanne Wallace, thanks for listening

Speaker 1  34:14

a dream.

Speaker 2  34:16

Heart. A dream lives in your

Dayna Manning  34:30

heart, and it's on repeat.

Speaker 2  34:35

It never sleeps. It doesn't even need to leave doesn't need to be complete.