Ted Johns Coming Back To Blyth Festival For Limited Performance

by Bob Montgomery

The Blyth Festival’s best known playwright is coming to Blyth in September to mark the Festival’s 50th anniversary.

Ted Johns will be appearing at the Phillips Studio on Dinsley Street for a 50th Anniversary presentation called Jokes and Quotes for the 50th on September 5th, 6th and 7th. Johns says the Festival has changed with each of the five decades and in the early days the Festival was not universally popular. Because it was community-owned there were a lot of groups in the village that felt they had a stake in the Festival and there were some people who were opposed to it.

“If the village council had been more sophisticated they would have brought in a consultant who would have told them that Blyth was the last place on earth where you should start a theatre. It didn't have any high-end restaurants, it didn't have any accommodation and it didn't have a tradition of theatre, it didn't have any beaches or recreational areas or tourism, nobody went there. If you're going to do it, do it in Goderich, or Bayfield or Kincardine or some place where there was some place for tourists to come.” And Johns adds, the assumption would have been that the whole point of the project was tourism. But at some point, very early on, they figured out that it was a farmers theatre and their base audience was, in fact, farmers.

Johns also points out one of the challenges for the producers at the Blyth Festival is to make the plays a little bit new each year because Blyth Festival audiences have already seen a lot of shows. But if they deviate a bit too far from what they do well, the audience will not be happy. Or as he says “One shouldn't judge the success of a show by how many people showed up for the first act, it's how many stayed around for the second.”

Jokes and Quotes for the 50th will be presented at the Phillips Studio on Dinsley Street at seven o'clock on September 5th, at two in the afternoon on September 6th and at seven o'clock on September 7th. More information can be found on the Blyth Festival website.