2024 will be a busy as Blyth Festival celebrates 50 Seasons!
The Farm Show: Then & Now – Harvest Stage
by Theatre Passe Muraille with additions by the 2024 Company
Runs from Wednesday, June 12 to Sunday, August 4, 2024
Arguably the most influential play in Canadian theatre, The Farm Show was originally produced in a barn just fifteen minutes outside of Blyth, and was directly responsible for the founding of the Festival. This gentle adaptation brings you the original in its glory, and shines on a light on its singular legacy in our community. Come see the show that inspired the very dream of the Blyth Festival.
Saving Graceland – World Premiere – Memorial Hall Stage
by Gil Garratt
Runs from Wednesday, June 19 to Saturday, August 3, 2024
It’s 2019 in Clinton, ON. Newly retired and ready for adventure, Gord and Orillia have been Elvis fans since they were teenagers. In twenty-five years, they’ve never missed their annual pilgrimage to the Collingwood Elvis Festival. Just as they’re readying to embrace a well-deserved vacation, their young grandchild arrives unexpectedly on their doorstep, upending their future plans in ways they never dreamed. A family drama about the King and kincare.
The Golden Anniversaries – World Premiere – Memorial Hall Stage
by Mark Crawford
Runs from Thursday, July 4 to Sunday, August 4, 2024
From the author of The New Canadian Curling Club and The Birds and the Bees comes a new play about love and laughs in the golden years. For as long as they have been married, Glen and Sandy Golden have been celebrating their wedding anniversary by coming to the same cottage on the lake for an annual weekend of quiet romance. And this year marks a major milestone: 50 years of wedded bliss. Well…mostly bliss…er…there was that one time…oh, don’t get me started! Join the Goldens for a night of he-said, she-said, remember-whens, what-happens-now, and a long-term love for the ages.
Resort to Murder – World Premiere – Memorial Hall Stage
by Birgitte Solem
Runs from Wednesday, July 24 to Saturday, August 31, 2024
A laugh-a-minute murder mystery. When Brett and Viv inherit an old family mansion on Lake Huron, they dream of starting a country resort, but the couple have very different visions of what a tourist destination should be. For Viv: a spa, and quiet retreat. For Brett: a murder mystery themed escape room…obviously. Just a few nights before they welcome their first guests, Brett and Viv gather their reluctant staff in the attic for a trial run. When a sudden storm rolls in off the lake, the lights go out, and the doors lock, their light-hearted game suddenly turns into an electrifying night of murderous confessions, twists and turns that will leave you breathless. Enjoy your stay!
The Trials of Maggie Pollock – World Premiere – Memorial Hall Stage
by Beverley Cooper
Runs from Wednesday, July 31 to Thursday, August 29, 2024
Seer? Swindler? Sorcerer? The true story of the last woman in Canada to be convicted of witchcraft…and who just so happened to have been born in Blyth! Arrested on her home farm just outside of town, held in the historic Gaol near Lake Huron, and tried in Goderich court, her case went all the way to the Supreme Court of Ontario. Long after the arrival of the telephone, the motor-car, and the electric light bulb, Maggie Pollock faced off against official superstition in Canada’s courts.
Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes – World Premiere – Harvest Stage (outdoors) and Memorial Hall
by Alison Lawrence, inspired by the book by Bonnie Sitter & Shirleyan English
Runs from Wednesday, August 14 to Saturday, August 31, 2024 on the Harvest Stage and Tuesday, September 3-7, 2024 indoors at Memorial Hall
Inspired by the book by Bonnie Sitter & Shirleyan English, Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of the Ontario Farmerettes; this nostalgic play dramatizes the incredible stories of Canada’s Farmerettes; young women all over the country who left the big cities to work as farm labourers on Canadian farms as part of the war effort during WW2. Many of these young women learned a lot more than how to dig potatoes, pull carrots, and muck a stall; they learned essential truths about who they were, who they wanted to be, and what true and lasting friendships looked like. A play about coming of age as young women in a time of change.