March 27, 2023

2. All The World's a Stage - World Theatre Day

2. All The World's a Stage - World Theatre Day
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Season 1 Arts & Culture Community Members GDCI Alumni Goderich Human Interest Music Theatre

Sometimes I think that if all the world really is a stage ... then whoever does the casting needs to be fired.

Since I was a very young man, theatre has been something that helped to pull me to a place of safety and belonging when the world was more than I could handle. This week, three amazing men to chat with. Gil Garratt, Artistic Director of the Blyth Festival Theatre, my old drama teacher Warren Robinson who along with his wife Eleanor, and Phil McMillan at GDCI in Goderich, nourished a young mans dreams of acting, singing and creating ... and our mutual friend and a fellow drama teacher from GDCI David Armour. It's all about the theatre this week on "A Life That's Good." #WorldTheatreDay

 

Transcript
Hi there.I'm Phil Main and welcome to A Life That's Good.
It might surprise you to learn that I was a bit of a Class Clown.Uh-huh.Yeah.I was that kid, that was told on many occasions that I needed to turn around and stop talking because I was never going to find a job where I would get paid to talk.
My public school report cards are full of comments.Along that theme, Philip needs to learn that putting things on paper is just as important as delivering them orally talking.Apparently, was something I was excelling.As early as great, two and three.
My mom tells me when I was about four years old while on a family Drive, I said something from the back seat that made everybody in the car laughs, and she tells me at that moment, I sat up and said, hey, I like that.I believe it was in that moment that I first somehow knew my purpose.I don't know.
Is class clown, a purpose? It wasn't until grade 7 When my teacher Miss Brown tired of keeping me after school to clean chalkboards, and clap the brushes for my incessant jabbering decided that maybe it was a different kind of clapping my young exuberant nature was starving for, and long story short
She put me on stage for the first time. I can't say that I remember a lot about the play itself, or the process of putting it together. But the peacock in me will never forget the spotlight that first law for the Applause, as we celebrate World Theatre day.
My heart is flooded with the warmest thoughts of the theater and finding my people there.I'll be forever grateful to those who believed in me and taught me to at least occasionally believe in myself.This week on the program, we will chat with one of those people.
My old Drama teacher Warren Robinson, who along with his wife Eleanor and Phillip McMillan at GDCI in Goderich nourished a young man's dreams of acting, singing, and creating. Joining Warren will be our mutual friend and fellow Drama teacher at GDCI
David armor. And in just moments I'm going to chat theater with the artistic director of the blithe Festival theater Gil Garrett And a director, playwright award-winning actor.Theater administrator Gill has worked across Canada and internationally with a career.
That's been dedicated.Primarily to the development of new Canadian plays.Gil has been with the Blyth Festival since 1999.It's all things theater this week on A Life, That's Good.Yeah, like it's been a hard winter.
Yeah, I lost my beloved father about a month ago today.He was an amazing man and I'll tell you this on his deathbed.Yeah, like final breaths, it's got this mask on.
He died at home, but he's got this oxygen mask and I'll stuff.And he gets me to take it off and because it were just the two of us and he wants to say something to me and And he says he gets his mask off and he says, I need you to promise me something and I said, of course, that like anything at all, he said I need you to promise me.
That you'll change the oil on this snow blower and your mother doesn't know how to do it and there's two empty Peach cans under my red toolbox.And if you put the old oil into one of them and I gave me these elaborate instructions on how to change your oil in a snow blower.
And and you know, in the moment I was like a course that like whatever you want.Yeah.But the more I reflected on it, it's like The most dad thing he could have most definitely going to be done and also like we had no unfinished business.Right.Like that there was nothing between us that was like we didn't we didn't have there was no like you know, last-minute atonement or apologies or things that we had, we were really, you know, clear with each other and there were there was there was none of that stuff.
And, you know, in a lot of ways like one of the things that I miss about it, most right now is taking care Are of him is like in his last year, like last couple of years, I was there a lot looking after him and it's kind of a thing that I know that there's a real privilege in that 2.
March 27th is World Theater Day, celebrate theater.And you telling that story and I'm seeing it on stage.Not because I'm I'm feeling like I want to trivialize it but just just because of how much theater is reflective of Our Lives of everyday, every moment.
All those poignant like that poignant moment that that got me right here, like so many shows.Do you know when it shows?Good.Yeah.How it connects with that innermost.That biggest part of your heart, it's that that piece of intimacy, right?I mean, like, that's one of the things that I really found very quickly when all the has closed and we had no shows going on anywhere.
And I just watched that happen all over the world.Was the biggest thing for me, you know, after reflecting on it, you know?Yeah.First you should have missed the all the people, all the stuff, all of the tickets are now, how are we going to keep these businesses afloat, and then at a certain point, you know, the disaster of that settles and you look around and realize that the real absence is intimacy is people are not having that.
There's it's incredible when you really break it down.Right now, we've been doing this for thousands of years is We walk into a dark room and we all sit there and pretend we aren't there and try to imagine what it is to be in the shoes of someone who is laying out imagining a life on stage, right?
It's a fascinating thing.You know, I've talked about it before I was like as like the flight simulator for your heart, right?As you go.And imagine what it is to take that flight right to be that person to have that life too.To do those things and we don't do that anywhere else in our lives.
It's incredible fight for myself.I don't know if this is true for you.I'm so I loved theater so much I connect with it.So I read something recently, the last couple of months that there was a very large percentage of human beings on our planet, that have no internal dialogue happening as they go through their day.
I have a constant internal, there's a constant play happening in my head, I imagine all Things.Imagine all the people, all the possible scenarios.I go home from something and I sit there and there's this whole thing planned out in my head.Yeah, like this inner dialogue / play, I want to call it right?
Right.And and so theater, never really stopped for me.Sure sure.Sure well but but I know what you mean.The whole fact that when things got really mean in the world, we all were desperate for art.Yeah.Doesn't even consider desperate.
Come together.Yeah.Right.And to share those things too.Like, you know, nothing more intimate than art.No, really, no, really truly and it's one of those things that also were you can't, you can't do it alone, you really can do right?Like there's and, and to do it with strangers.
I think that's the other piece of it that I've found really kind of I had scratching.Right?Is wouldn't well, we do a season at blah live, you know, especially pre-pandemic.We had And people coming out to the theater in the summer.And so you're sitting in that theater side by side by side, by side by people, who you've never met by people whose lives, you've never intersected with, and all of you are there together to take in the same experience.
And it's, it's this kind of equalizing force.That is so potent and beautiful, right?And to watch an audience like like this, nothing like laughing with an audience, right?Like if I have one of the room is, Laughing together crying together.
I mean all those sorts of pieces even the listening together, right?Like when we did that show in 2019 the the wet law for peace in the wake of what laufer there was an incredible thing that lots of audience members came and talked to us about which was the silence in the room because that show is so electric.
And people were, you know, there were so many points where you could hear a pin drop in that room.And it's because everyone in the space was Leaning into it and an extraordinary way.It's beautiful.It is really really beautiful.Gil Garrett.
You you right sure.Do you direct?Yeah you perform.Yeah, you take tickets.You do what you do all the things if you if you had to pick one thing.If somebody said, all right, you can only do this one thing that you can only write or you can only act or you can only direct or could you do it or it might be torture.
But would you pick One thing that's your first love, you know.Oh man that would be really, really challenging because they're all.So intertwined I mean writing is extraordinary and special to me and I think is probably of all of it.The most compulsive, nothing that I can't not do right.
Um, you know but the other thing which is such a privilege of my job is I get to give gigs to other artists.Yeah.And that is such a privilege.That's an incredible thing.To be able to sort of pick up the phone and call somebody and say, hey, this beautiful thing that you've been, you know, secretly making in your room for five years, seven years, 10 years.
We want to put it on stage next summer and to be able to offer that to people is, is it just fills the, well, no question that.And being able to, you know, put young artists on stage is huge.
Put Young, Artists and older artists.And that's the other gift that I had, right?Like I did my first.Season at blah live in the summer of 99 started, working with artists in 98 and I got to work with so many incredible senior artists over the years writing people like David Fox, rest in peace, you know, Jerry Franken refugees like these amazing people, right?
Well, I got to spend time on stage with and backstage with, and, and get to know and learn from just a real Incredible Gift and to be able to, then open the door for other people to have those kinds of Experiences.That's that's an amazing.
Amazing privilege.For me it was a public school teacher, great 70s, Class Clown so she beautiful heart of Lee.How's she going to Corral this?How she going to direct all this energy to had?And she just kept me after class one day and said we're doing a play and you're in it.
Yeah.And that first time on stage, the first time somebody laughed and I was on stage is something that tweaked in me.Me.And I thought this is my, there's I'm home.This is where I belong.I don't think I knew it in those terms but what was that for you?What was your did you have an epiphany?
As a young I was really blessed.I had, you know, it's funny, my parents had never been to a play in their lives.They had we, you know, had hardly any books at home that was just not a part of our life growing up and I had a couple of teachers Who really changed my life in a similar way?
There was one in particular who I grew up in Scarborough and we had some challenges growing up.And I had this this teacher who came to my parents and said their opening this new public art school in Toronto.
And and she actually at that time, thought that I had a talent for visual art and she wanted me to go to this school and my parents.At the time couldn't see how they could swing it and so they didn't.And then the next year that teacher went back and said, you know, that's cool, still there, like think about it and my parents still said, You know, we really can't swing it.
And then the next year, again, same teacher did it again.Well, and my parents bit and I got to go and audition for this school called the Claude Watson School for the Arts.And I would take a bus all the way from Scarborough to like, you know, it was like an hour and a half each way, and I got to this school and my doors just blew off.
I'd never seen anything like it.I've never experienced anything like it.And I met this teacher there and then Paul Como and he actually he taught at the school but he also ran a Theater Company downtown.And he was doing a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream and he cast me in the show to play Francis flute.
The bellows-mender.Yeah.So I was 13 years old and I got to be in the show and I got to go.Go downtown to like blue around Bathurst and downtown Toronto every night to do this show.And I got to have also this experience of, not only being in that play.
First play ever, never done this before, but I also had, there was a in the dressing room was all of the other, you know, rude Mechanicals, who are part of that, you know.Yeah, part of Francis flute scenes.Yeah.So All these young amateur theater guys who he's hanging out with and I got to spend time with all of these professional artists and they were the coolest people I've ever met in my life and they were like, lending me, their making me mixtapes, they were giving me, you know, telling me dirty jokes.
They're like, all of all of the stuff that happens in a dressing room and lending me books.I was the other big one and I came out of that experience like you know, there was no going back after that.Was sort of, you know, I'd had the taste of what it, what it was and I'd seen this other world and like I had bit deep into the Apple at that point and there was no real way to go back, right?
And after that I just I fell so deeply in love with the theater and I started immediately to write for the stage.I mean at that point, like as a teenager, I had of several plays produce at my high school.
We have reran like a one-act play Festival that our school.All original content and then and then actually you know, it's funny.I had another teacher at high school who really gave me a separate.Gift of the theater.
Was a wonderful teacher named Paula Citron.And she actually is a Critic for the Globe and Mail and still comes and goes it reviews.But she's she actually, we were doing these when I play festivals.And and I, you know, I might say I was getting a bit of a chip on my shoulder about it all and she She came to me that year and she said, you're not allowed to play any roles on stage this year, you can still be a part of all this, but no rolls for you and and it actually forced me into the backstage.
And so I ended up.She's first of all she brought me on to work on props for that summer and then everything became one of those people that actually makes the show happened.It was unsung, but that totally a lot II.Sometimes I know this A sports metaphor metaphor of.And sometimes compare, all those people to like their the lineman, you know, the quarterback gets all the attention and nobody knows the lineman's name.
But if it's not for the lineman that quarterback is toast, it's that's it.That's perfect.Totally totally.That's experiencing that was incredible right?Like to actually see a what it took to put that show on.Yeah which was a huge education, but beyond that was to find for myself the satisfaction of that, right?
The satisfaction of being able to sit at the back of the house.It's right with a whole audience who's and they're having a great old time, watch those actors shine watch that set Sparkle, watch the audience, have an incredible experience and feel like you've been responsible for it, but don't need to take that bow and that's it.
That's an incredible thing.And actually has served me over the years and an amazing way in the theater and taught me.I think the most important thing which means you're leaning into team sports.Like, I think that's one of the things in the theater also is is, is community.
Is that your working together, right?Common goal.Absolutely.Okay.Gonna give Gill a little bit of a break here for a few minutes, and then have him come back and we will discuss the 2023 season.
At the Blythe Festival theater.Some great shows on the way, he'll be back with all of that.But in the meantime, going to step back in time just a little They are often the first people to introduce us to the theater to know it, learn it understand the dramatic arts and and to fall in love with them our teachers and though I was never his student, I have worked with him for merge edci Drama teacher, David armor and here with him, the man who was instrumental in nourishing, my love for the theater.
My High School Drama teacher from GDC.I in Goderich.Each Warren Robinson.Warren.When was it that you took over the drama duties at GDC?I in 1969.And where did you come from?I come from Sudbury and interesting me, my High School drama was done in French entirely real.
I didn't do any English drama until I was in my early twenties and where did you come from David?Well my family moved around a lot and my dad worked for the railroad.Well, I suppose you could say, I'm originally from Sarnia, but when I was coming here, I was coming from the area around Toronto.
Teaching in Brampton Mayfield Secondary School, which had a regional arts program and we kind of wanted to move closer to the lake.So, we did.And I was teaching first at Bluewater, which was inside the fence at the correctional center and where I ran a drama club and A Fencing Club and then I met Warren at a professional development thing.
He and his band Homespun were presenting a thing about folk music and And and traditional songs and I informed them that I really liked what they were doing and I think I thought I should be part of the band and shortly thereafter.
He was a four-year.You're a great singer.Well, thank you.Been told that a couple of times I guess you both have that you get.It's not like you're just like drama teachers.Your actors and your writers and your singers and your musicians, right?Yes.All the all the Arts.He thinks that's right.
It's a thing.Yeah, none of it.None of my wife.And said, warn, you have so many wonderful qualities, but none of them ever make us any money or save us any money.So you had to do something to put the food on the table.Exactly.And teaching it was and I know a few kids are probably very grateful.
I'm grateful to those kids looting this guy.Some of the early plays we did were so much fun as you done a few before I came along, just to just a few about a dozen or so many of you, written full-length plays.I've written, I'm on my 18th at the moment and those I ink 10 of them are musicals and I've done about a dozen one-act plays and then I've done for Dave I've done what half a dozen adaptations.
Are my petitions yeah back in the early 2000s, I love sometimes teaching classical theater to kids, you know.But I'm always looking for the unusual in that context and Warren was really great in helping to adapt plays to a length that we could that we could handle.
Right?So you know, they'd be like 111, act versions of things like doctor Faustus or some of the Greek plays like lysistrata and the aura stea do you write as well, David?I do.Yeah.Not nearly as prolific Lee is Warren but I've written a few pieces.
I did a piece with some kids.Just this fault that we'd we actually developed with gear braid called The Boy in the bag, which is a retelling of the story of tillison.And it's full of music and magic and puppets and whatnot.Great fun story.
But we needed a play for young people and gear, braid, and four weeks before we were to open, and I didn't have a play.But I had this story.And so, I just sat down and I wrote a script and then I took it to the, to the young people in gear braid and they went boo, yeah, let's play with this.
So we workshopped it for three weeks and at the end of it, you know, had a piece that quickly.Became a favorite of mine for those unfamiliar with gear braid.What is that gear braid was a professional theater company that there was West McVicker alner.
My wife, Dave and I started and I ran the Summers of 2006 and 2007 and include things like a walkabout historical walkabouts or 2 km walk with about a dozen scenes at the crowd would suddenly come upon and it was extremely successful but we just couldn't handle the high overhead.
It costs, right?This is all going godrich, are some godrich s at out of the Livery theater and also, a lot of the historical jail.He'll of West McVicker.He's a good man, he's one of the best and also fabulous singer.By the way here, that's one of the things that I love about theater is the, the family, the community, that, that, it builds have.
So many people, you're walking down the street and got richer content, wherever, you might be in.You just running into all these people, you see on your local stages.Small stages.Like the one at the livery.There's nothing quite so heavy as shared inspiration, right?You know, whether you're in a and there's kind of a home team aspect that's involved there to, you know, like going to athlete see a play and he plays great going to whistle.
See a play where, you know somebody in it.Yeah is awesome.We hadn't really because you're just sitting there pulling for them, like you're pulling for the hockey team, you know what I mean?Yeah, I suppose that that's sort of counter to the whole illusion of the theater thing but that said it's a lot of fun.But for the participants, the people who are who are making the played, the reason I think for the for the the intimacy of that connection is because shared inspiration bonds people together faster and harder than anything.
So if you've been in a show with somebody and it moved you and you had to work like the devil together to make it to make it work.That's not a bond.You can break.I you probably surprise you both to know.I was a bit of a Class Clown and I'll talk to the judge chocolate.
Let It Snow A sense to me.And my my teacher Miss Brown.I used to keep me after class to clap brushes and clean blackboards to dredge time to wait.If you know, and then one night, I'm clean the Blackboard.She said, I've got another idea.We need to find an outlet for all that energy.
You have, we're doing a play and you're in it and I remember people ask for fide but standing on stage and the first time people laughed, the first time there was Applause.It's kind of addictive.The next half of that lesson, though.
Is that when you when the other half of that lesson, when you, this is that this happened to me again Applause.Really liked it and stuff like that.And the next thing that my teacher did was stick me backstage, and said, no, you can't perform.I said, but I was going to audition and he said, yeah, I know, I don't want to see her audition.
I want you to work in.I want you to work backstage and I said, but well, no, I don't think I'm into that.And she says, well then say goodbye to the stage because I'm not going to put you on.Again oh you learn to love your your alignment don't yet.Because you do then with that and you know it helped with the Endorphin addition of being on the stage you know and and the ego addiction of getting applauded it was it was a hard lesson I didn't like it at all at all at all and I resented it a little I was just thinking of a shared experience, the three of us had in theater because it in a way it kind of tied back to high school experience was one.
Best things about high school theater is, is getting to travel to competitions, or to perform another school.And that being away with other people, really, really bonds you and we did remember the Centenary of the great storm.
In 2013.We did the great storm which I had written and Dave had one of the lead roles in and you had the other lead role, you were sort of head of the Scottish family fell and the poor Irish family was was headed up by Dave and Susan Carradine.
Typecasting Typecast.Yeah, and we took it to Sarnia as well and perform there and that experience of going away was really a bonding experience was fabulous.Being on a bus with all you're going to say family because you become like family.
Don't they definitely that was interesting for me, too.Because as I said, I'd come from Sonia.I still have plenty of family there and none of them because when I A teenager in Sarnia, I wasn't doing this.None of them, even though they're involved in the theater, many of them in the Little Theater in Sarnia, at the, the old Imperial theater there.
They had no idea, you know, about, I mean, except to hear the fact that I was involved with theater, but they've never actually seen me in a play, or come out to a play that I had anything to do with and so they were all of them there, including my in-laws, you know, the one people catch some of Kathy's relations.
You know, caves when did you learn to act?Yeah.Where did you learn to do this?You know, and I just remember my cousin-in-law Bruce was just beside himself after the show.He was just blown away and my brother-in-law aisle and he and Bruce are buddies even though Alan lives in Toronto.
And so, Alan came down to see the show.So, yeah, it's great.And we got to perform in a place that was very important to me the evil theater in the, in the public library.In Sarnia, I used to sneak in there to play the play.And piano before they put a lock on it, did you say that your favorite show that you've written?
Or is that a fair question to even ask?It's a really hard to say it's like saying you know who's your favorite child?I think it depends on what probably from a dramatic point of view.The great storm.It's also been with me the longest because was written originally as a one-act play in the mid-70s, and then, you know, I've been done several times since as a full-length Play.
So that's been with me, the longest, but I have a real love of musicals and some of those would be, well, I'm currently just finished writing the fifth of the Kingsbridge musical series, which is called what a year, it was and really excited about that.
We're starting rehearsals the beginning of April.And, and so when it's got music in it as well, that really really turns my crank, yeah, you talk about morons.Ways might degrade storm is my favorite play of warrants and, you know, they're all great.
But the great storm is, it's very powerful.And I think probably too because you're in the place that it's about, I called faction faction.So it's using facts and hit and characters from history.But imagining what they might have said.
It's not actually don't know.It's the storm of 1913 which was the greatest freshwater disaster ever in the world and still is on our Lake hero.Happened to all actually, overall the Great Lakes but yeah, most a lot of the damage was done in here and two ships found right off the garbage Harbor because the person who was supposed to turn the lighthouse on had died and never been replaced and the person who was doing it just didn't think of it and two ships are down.
Ask you both this question, start with you or do you remember when you fell in love with theater?Do you remember that first moment that you thought I have to do this?Yeah.But my mom was from a teacher to but was my French teacher and I was in grade 11 and she said Born, do you like your French mark?It was pretty good.So I said, yeah, it's a good.
I'll see you at rehearsal on Tuesday and I'm and through 3p plastic 33 people in the play.One of whom was probably the best-looking girl in the school and I've had to hug her in the play.And the first time I did the teacher said Warren, that wasn't very enthusiastic.
I'd be insulted, if I were Cheryl Oh, so I pretty much talking about the hugger firmly.All right, I think might be in the moment.Oh, boy.What about you did it?Yeah, I think I think for me, it was sort of slower to come back.
When I first started in school, as a teacher drama was still very much under the auspices of The English Department.Correct.Usually there would be a assistant head who was in charge of who was in charge of drama, it wasn't Berated out into an arts department at that time.
And when I was at Mayfield I had a really great head of Department, named Ruth Wells.And Ruth said to me, she said David I think you have the disposition of a Drama teacher to this day.
I'm not entirely sure what that means.I think it means though that she thought I was pretty flighty but are you?Oh yeah.Oh yeah and I said, oh She says, and I have two sections of drama next year that really need to be covered.
I would be glad to put you into those if you promise to go and get the qualifications.Well, I already had a fair bit of theater in my bag because I was doing it at in college.And so I said, sure.So I started teaching drama and I think that's where it was really like the connection with the students to seeing them light up.
Oh, that's the thing.It's that moment.So you've been working really, really hard.It's not about it's for me, it's not about the audience.In rehearsal.Yeah, the moment that I'm looking for and it's that that moment when after all the work and everything else, like that all of a sudden, you, you see that they get it right, you know, the penny drops.
Yeah.That's, that's the stuff for me.Anyway, I want to talk about actual shows themselves, the scripts, or the Productions that you've seen shows, that really lights you up shows that you love and I know like you said, it's hard.
Because it's like, choosing your favorite child.But if I had to pick, I'd probably pick A Chorus Line, musical love it.Show about getting in a show about the stresses of all of that and the pressures of life and trying to find out who you are and a lot of things that I think we all go through.
But what about you to?What's a show?If you could pick one, do your best pick a show that really connects with you that you really love, but I was fortunate to be in this show twice my all-time, Favorite, it's Fiddler on the Roof.I've got to was portion to play the role of tevye into shows, 25 years apart.
The first one directed by my wife, Eleanor the second one by Dave and it's, it was like coming home even though I'm not Jewish that, they've said that when the second time he directed me said, moron you really are the papaya that's kind of your personality.
So we called you that all through high, did you know, we called you that I said, I don't pop a fuzzy.Yeah, I know how fuzzy.I killed her mrs.Fuzzy, do you think I'm not going to use that a fuzzy feelings?And Elder was mrs.Fuzzy, don't you even be thinking?I'm not going to use that Papa fuzzy and you were part of the Rat Pack how us?
Yeah.Drama Kids group group of six drama kids who were very very crazy people and very talented iPod thing.I'd like to point out a couple of local connections to one of the things I've done a lot of is writing about our local area.
So it's three plays about God.And now, the fifth fun about the Kings Bridge and Rural experience, that's something to which people find attractive is hearing about their past hearing names that are familiar.That's something that theater can bring to you.It can help you embrace your heritage and that that's that I think is a, is one of the one of the reasons why we have a mature playwrights.
I mean, do we really need to have a mature playwrights?Yes.Because what else would I do with myself, right?Yeah, but I think From a community standpoint.Someone to tell our stories because it happens to the people who are making millions of dollars writing for Hollywood are likely not going to come and talk about your Uncle Harry.
Yeah.You know but your local to write might You have said it a few times.I think about yourself maybe maybe not in these words but I've heard lots of people say it to you and I said it to you that you're the youngest eighty-year-old.I know.And I think it has a lot to do with the fact that you just never stop you.
You're not looking at.Oh I shouldn't be writing plays anymore.I'm 80.Well, when I was in university, they don't think that mattered to me were theater and and folk music.I will soon be 81 and everything in my life aside from my wonderful family.Lee is folk music and theater where I literally am the happiest man.
I know I said to Warren, who wasn't?It wasn't too terribly long after he retired, we have a, we have kind of a friendly rivalry going, you know, and have had for a long time because we like a lot of the same stuff we don't match up completely, you know, some of the stuff he likes is dumb.
But but but, you know, we match up on a lot of things.So huff and he'd done a lot of things that I wanted to do, right?And so I said to him, one day, I said Warren, I think I found the thing you suck at her and he goes oh really, what's that?
I said retirement, he was doing the Celtic Festival.In all plays and this that and the other thing I said you're busier now than you ever have been.And he says, okay this isn't retirement the time when you're supposed to do, what you want to do all day long and I said well yeah and he says well that's all I ever do, I get up and I do what I want to do and I keep doing what I want to do until I go to bed.
It's not my fingers.Damn it.Don't want it to and we should point out the both of us are very, very fortunate to have really supportive wives who also have an artistic bent both both from an organizational point of view.Musical point of view can direct etcetera.
In case of ulnar Kathy's are wonderful organizer and super supportive producer.And what have you Ed?Very hard in life to do something as intensely as Dave and I've done theater unless you Supportive family.So God bless them.Teamwork Makes the Dream work.
That's right.I've heard.What do I do?We get to your favorite show.Yeah, it's hard to say.I might my imagination.I think is a little darker than Warren's.I've shows that I've been involved with.I'm very fond of Macker.Macbeth for those who don't know what Macker is fine.
Yes and and And The Rocky Horror show.No, we did that a number of years ago and I had an absolutely amazing time doing that.Draw a boy, I saw down here in Blyth number of years ago with Lane Coleman and Jerry Franken, and, and Gil in it number of years ago.
Was, at that point in probably still is.It's, it was the best play I'd ever.Seen heels coming back in here in a minute.We, they've got some great shows lined up this year.And tell us what's happening?Yeah, we should mention that actually this will it be airing on the 27th and the next day begins?
The natural theater School drama, High School, drama festival.And there's a person we both know very well as adjudicator.A guy by the name of David armor.Oh, no way, yes, indeed, I'm looking forward to it.So forward to it, seven plays all from local from high school trips from down in Stratford all the way up here to Wing em and It's it was the heart of a lot of a lot that I was doing as a drama theater, teacher in the school and such a valuable experience.
It's great to be alive this hosting at.That's wonderful.They get to be, you know, in a professional space.Looking forward to it, man.It's going to be great.Last question, for both of you.Why do you think that theater is important, much of professional theater?But why is it important that small communities like godrich in a lot of And Kincardine have their own theater in that theater programs, remain in high schools, Community Theaters, and school theaters, programs, and things like that are inexpressibly important.
We all think of plays.And as performances things, that we go to see, right?And when we think about building theaters, we're often talking about building places for people in the community to go and seek shows.And so on, and being an audience is extremely important.
But a community theater, the heart of what its purpose is, is not about performance.It's about the actual making of theater.When you're in school, you often have an opportunity to do a play.When you graduate school, that opportunity, unless you actually go into the profession, can often just dry up unless there's a community theater, right?
And we're really lucky around.Here, there are lots and lots of Community Theaters, there's the Kincardine, Gil, There's the hawk in Lucknow jlt Goderich, Little Theater, is there, there are players and all kinds of places in Kitchener-Waterloo musical Productions, and there's a company of players in Ingersoll.
And in Saint Mary's, they're all around and it's important because then what you have is people in the community who get an opportunity to exercise that gift and that that desire to get in front of an audience and to work together on the play and too.
I share that inspiration, right?To put your question in context.If you said, why is it important?We have a gymnasium for kids to play basketball.And why is it important to have a rink for kids to play hockey?And we just assume that if it's athletic automatically, it has value.The nice thing about theater is, you're exercising at all different part of yourself.
But also think about, if you play a game, there's a winner and there's a loser, you put on a play.There's Only Winners the people who put on the plate that people who see the play.It's a no.It's a total win win win situation.It's a time when we can all feel good about ourselves.
Davis point out, quite often that Community Theater, really is about the people putting on the play.We invite people to come see the play, but it's really about we're doing it for the people who would want to do the play, who need that expression who need the chance to to use their voices in their bodies and their imaginations.
And that's Really what it's all about.It's giving ourselves that opportunity to celebrate life.Doing something, we love and inviting other people to join us.I'll close with this and a few years ago and eight or ten years ago, went through rather difficult mental health time.
I remember being at Celtic Festival after having not been there for many years and I got asked to do some MC work and it was one of the highlights of my life.I remember walking around in my little bubble, one day, just around in the, in Lion's Park, there you saw the grin on my face and you just said, you shook your hand and you looked at me and said, you kind of feel like you found your people, don't you.
And I remember saying to you, Yeah, I really do.And I had such a great time.I thought about it later and I thought, yeah, I think a better way to say it was Arie found by people because I had found my people years before when I was at pimply-faced, teenage kid, trying to walk around the high school and find out who I was and what I could do.
And I could be a part of and you and Eleanor and Phillip McMillan and a few others took me under your wing.And and, and helped me to believe in myself when I hadn't previously by putting me on a stage by encouraging me by teaching me.And And for the role that you've had, I hear your name so often David in Social Circles and almost always in a good way that ends the City Star helping young people believe in themselves and that foundationally led me to this 40-year career in radio, you both have a lot to do with a successful lives of a lot of people.
So on behalf of all of them, but can't be here.I can be sausage.Thank you.And let's get back to blyve now and did Gil Garrett the artistic director of the Blythe Festival theater.That's your official title, right?Sure is, how long you been doing that?
I've been doing that since November of 2014.Oh my, you're a couple of crazy dudes in there that do we knew before you certain to find Peter and it was that other guy.Eric somebody.Yeah.Is this like your future as far as you can see your love and Blythe?
I love it.I love it.You know, it's I can't imagine being anywhere else, really truly different.Kind of theater, isn't it?It's a different kind of theater.It's an audience that believes the theater belongs to them.That's incredible.Yeah, that's such a gift as a Creator like to actually have an audience who feels proprietorship over the place.
Yeah, you know, that's a sense of trust that comes with you and trust you to do something absolutely love and that they're hungry.Right?That's the other thing to it.Like I think one of the real Gifts of being artistic, director of black Festival is, is At that audience, you know, they're coming looking for the full meal deal, right?
They want to have, they want it laughter faces off but they also want to thank and they also want to to feel and they also want to be, you know, drawn in as deeply as they can.And that's that's not what audiences want to do everywhere.You know like when you hear audiences talking in the in the theater at blah live during a show, you know, they're not talking about like hey do you want to go and get a slice of cake after this?
Right there talking about what's happening on stage.Right?That's incredible.That's a gift.Yeah, yeah.So I'm not going to mince words.Covid sucked.Really sucks, man.God, but you found a way around it, at some level, with your outdoor, just call your Outdoor Theater.
Yeah, the Harvest dates Harvest?Yeah, we've been into that.It was a really, you know, we quickly saw that that was going to be a way that we.We weren't interested in putting plays on Zoom as we had seen.And lots of other companies attempt to, which is not to deride their efforts.
But for us, it felt really flat and both physically and emotionally.And we, you know, as we had done years ago, the outdoor Donnelly's.That was this big outdoor show that we did and we've done a bunch of other outdoor shows over the years.Many hands.
And we decided, you know what, we're going to build an outdoor stage and, and Incredibly, you know, we talked to the township and we talked to the Threshers in The the Pioneer Association and we said, listen, we want to try to build a stage out here in the fairgrounds and the Threshers, you know, beautifully gave their endorsement.
And then we went to the township and the township said, what do you need?And they basically, you know, created this least for us and handed it over and we then set about building this thing and the incredible Rush of community or surrounding it.
Like folks really, really bit in and we built this big beautiful outdoor stage or putting in permanent seats this year.It'll end up being like 416 seats which is pretty incredible.And, you know, it's a multi-level like every time that watching actors walk on it for the first time there because two stages running, then this sure are.
Wow, yeah, we'll have all of this Outdoors, we'll have our Donnelly Trilogy, they said, you know, and All of them are going to be at the fairgrounds on the Harvest stage and then we have four shows happening in Memorial Hall and this would be our first shows back in Memorial Hall Series, right?
Yeah.Since March of 2020, let's talk about them quickly.What do you got going on?Or is it too soon?Is it too soon?No, no not at all.Not at all.Okay.Yeah we have some amazing shows coming up the first show out of the gates in Memorial Hall and the first show of the season is a beautiful comedy called Liars at a funeral.
Bye.Sofia for Billy.And this is a Play that actually, we had scheduled to produce, Wheat Commission, did it was going to open the 2020 season and then we lost it.So now we get to put it back on nice.And this is like, it's a comedy about a grandmother who wants to get her whole family together and try to solve their dysfunctions.
And so the way she goes about it is by faking her own death and then staging a funeral.So they all end up in the funeral home.I'm some of the stuff that were talking about both on my get off.Today, I got kind of hits home.There's a theme going on here.
Just our existential crises right, right.And then the second show is a play called the waltz by Mary Beth padian.And this is really a part of a Trilogy.Also, as a follow-up to her 2012, hit Prairie nurse.It's basically about these, these two, young Filipino students, one who's in high school and one is just on his way into and his first year of University, and he's driving across the country.
He and his mother basically tells him, you know, as you're driving through Saskatchewan, you have to drop in on all of these, you know, family friends of hers, and he's never met.And so he reluctantly agrees to do it and he ends up meeting this beautiful beautiful girl and they fall in love, it's beautiful romance.
And then we have a really funny show called Chronicles of Sarnia by a writer named Matt, Matt Murray.Yeah, Chronicles of Narnia and basically it's about A woman who is a historian.She loves hit everything about history and she decides she wants to make a time capsule for the city of Sarnia.
And she goes to municipality, they say yes, do this, the sounds great.And she's decides to hold a huge public meeting and she rents a halt, and she sets out Nanaimo bars and everything.And she's gonna take, you know, suggestions from the public.And the only people who show up are her husband reluctantly who secretly listening to a hockey game.
And then and then, of course, also there's a guy who's looking for directions, who's pokes his head in the hall and gets dragged in, and then there's a, there's another young woman who shows up and she reluctantly gets dragged in as well.And this woman decides, you know what, we're still gonna do this, I don't care that nobody came, and she comes up with the contents for the the Time Capsule of the city of Sarnia.
And then the last show indoors is a beautiful play, called The Real McCoy.And it's about the the the real life of Elijah McCoy who was an incredible inventor born in Colchester, Ontario, black man, born to runaway slaves and he actually showed such promise as a young man that he was sent away to University in Scotland and he An engineering degree and he came back to Canada ended up in the United States.
And he tried to get work on the railroads working with some of the engineers who he had studied with who over huge fans of his.But at the time, the only job of black man could have on those railroads was shoveling coal.And so he was left shoveling coal on these trains and yet he continued to have these inventions and inventions and inventions and he revolutionized train travel after that.
Had patents but basically like kept his identity a secret and that people came to this is where the term.The Real McCoy came from was people knew that his inventions were so so spectacular that they wanted they didn't want imitations.
They wanted The Real McCoy even though none of them got to know who he was himself theater, man, exchanges, us, doesn't it teaches us?It entertains us.It just grows us in all the ways.Yeah, yeah, it's incredible.And then out on the Stage, we have this Trilogy, the Donnelly Trilogy, there's no three plays.
Um, and it is gonna be absolutely incredible.There's gonna be some horses, there's going to be a big old fire, there's going to be, you know, a cast of 10 and we've got an incredible fight director, we're bringing in and yeah, this is gonna be an amazing show Donnelly.
Oh yeah, 10 fights every night and blithe and then we're gonna have also a ton of Irish music Music, like they're coming, guitars and pianos and Fiddle and you know, tons of singing.It's going to be really happy at fights but now the music I'll be there, right?
Can't wait.Yeah, a lot of people excited about theater coming back.This summer is almost here that why they're starting to get a little bit better.We're all just excited for Sunshine into theater and beer on the patio and go across to the boot and have something there gum.Yeah, and boot has a big patio.
Now, they really do and they're yeah, they're doing well a cowbell.Yeah it's all going on in Blythe.How do people connect with the Theater.The easiest way is to go to bligh's website, Blythe Festival.com.That's it.That's it.That's simple.Blythe Festival.com.
You got it.All the numbers.All the tickets.All the everything.Everything is there.Wow.Just to pleasure having you here.Go Garrett.Artistic director Bly Festival theater.Thank you, my friend for coming in.Thank you.Thank you for listening to A Life That's Good and special.
Thanks to my son at lionex productions for our theme music.Be sure to check out the photo blog at cool. 94 5.c a that accompanies our discussion this week you can click on announcers and then my name filming to go to the blog Library until next time.
Stay well.

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