Blyth Festival

The season:

WORLD PREMIERE Liars At A Funeral By Sophia Fabiilli | June 14 to July 8, 2023 @ Memorial Hall

The hilarious story of a grandmother who fakes her own death in a last-ditch hope to get her dysfunctional family in one room, but with catering and bouquets.

Full of classic farce gags (Who’s in the casket? Who’s in the closet? Who’s in the kitchen?) the play builds to a hysterically funny pitch with an unexpected revelation that brings the family together again…well sort of…mostly.

The Waltz by Marie Beath Badian | July 12-July 29, 2023 @ Memorial Hall

The Waltz is a gentle romance about a young man on his way to university in BC, who stops for one fateful night under the Prairie stars, and meets a girl he will never forget.

This gentle yet thought-provoking show is produced by Factory Theatre and directed by Nina Lee Aquino, the newly-minted Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre.

The Waltz is the second in a trilogy by Ms. Badian, the first being the hit Prairie Nurse which premiered in Blyth in 2013.

WORLD PREMIERE Chronicles Of Sarnia by Matt Murray | August 3-18, 2023 @ Memorial Hall

Passionate, retired history teacher Erin has convinced the City of Sarnia to create a 100-year time capsule for future generations to open. She organizes a town-wide meeting for community input, with a replica of the capsule itself, ready to momentously unveil.

But in spite of homemade Nanaimo bars, only her husband, a department store employee, and a young woman who is there for… complicated reasons, show up. Oh, and the janitor.

Refusing to reschedule, Erin, undaunted, takes this tiny group in hand and sets about distilling the essence of, well, of Sarnia.

The Real McCoy by Andrew Moodie | Aug. 24 – September 9 @ Memorial Hall

The true story of inventor Elijah McCoy (1843-1929), whose name became a byword for quality, as in “the real McCoy.”

Born in Colchester ON to runaway American slaves, McCoy showed so much promise as a boy in school that he won a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Edinburgh University, where he developed an abiding love for large steam engines.

After graduation, McCoy moved to the US where locomotives were radically changing the future of the growing republic. Only after emigrating did he learn that no one in the States believed a Black man could be an engineer, and so he was set to stoking boilers and shovelling coal. Nevertheless, McCoy continued to dream and ultimately devised a solution to one of the greatest obstacles facing steam engines in his day.

McCoy’s invention would go on to be sold all over the world, make him a household name and revolutionize locomotion on every continent; so long as he held to his partners’ proviso: to never tell buyers he was Black.

Award-winning playwright, Andrew Moodie last performed on the Blyth Festival stage in 2007’s World Without Shadows and wrote the 1998 hit Wilbur County Blues.

The Donnellys: A Trilogy by James Reaney, adapted and abridged by Gil Garratt. June 22 to September 1, 2023 @ The Harvest Stage

No other story from Huron County’s history burns as boldly, and this season audiences can see all three plays in three consecutive nights.

It’s been twenty years since the fairgrounds in Blyth resounded with horse hooves, and were lit up with fateful fire in the night. And in 2023, the local legend continues in three landmark productions in an unparalleled setting.

Sticks and Stones (June 22 – Sept. 1)
The St Nicholas Hotel (July 13 – Sept. 2)
Handcuffs (Aug. 1 – Sept. 3)
The epic tale of the Donnelly clan is ignited by the killing of Patrick Farrell, and follows Johannah Donnelly on her march to Goderich to save her husband from the gallows.

As the Stagecoach wars rage, the action moves through Blyth landmarks from the Queen’s Hotel to the Vigilance Society in the Cedar Swamp Schoolhouse.

All events lead to a fiery February night when justice, revenge, and murder are left indistinguishable in the ashes.

HOW MUCH

WHEN & WHERE

June 14 – September 9, 2023