The European Premiere of
THE DRAWER BOY
by Michael Healey
10 Sept - 20 Oct 2001
In 1995 I was an actor in the Blyth Festival company for just over four months. Located in a rural Ontario community near Lake Huron, The Blyth Festival has produced Canadian works for over twenty-five years.
The Farm Show was developed in 1972 by Toronto actors who lived and worked with farmers from that area, and the show was first put on in a barn on a farm nearby. The Artistic Direcror of the Blyth Festival in 1995 was Janet Amos, who was a member of the original Farm Show company. So I heard about the Farm Show a lot during that summer of 1995, from locals as weil as from the peopie with whom I was working.
At the same time, I had an idea for a play abo ur two bachelor farmers, slightly isolated, whose lives are governed by myth and ritual. Their myths were in the srories they told each other daily, their ritual consisted mainly of the preparation of the same meals, over and over. I was interested in setting up their life, slightly away from society, and seeing what might happen when society intrudes.
Meanwhile, I was also writing a column for the Blyth weekly newspaper, mainly abour how weird it was to be an urban individualliving rurally for a long period of time. All of these things came together eventually, and I had the basic elements forThe Drawer Boy.
The Blyth Festival gave me a small commission to write a first draft, and a year later we held a workshop, bringing together actors, a director (Miles Potter, who I’d met the summer before, and another member of that original Farm Show collective), and my very young script. After a couple of times through the text, we’d talk abour it, I’d go away and write some more, they’d read the new material, we’d talk, and I’d write some more. After a very intense couple of weeks, the script had grown up a bit.
The following January, Facrory Theatre in Toronto agreed ro finance another workshop, and we essentially followed the same process. At the end was a public reading of the play. Late that year, when Theatre Passe Muraille had committed ro producing the play, I made further revisions, always in consultation with Miles Potter. More workshop time was provided by TPM, prior ro rehearsals, and changes in the script were made right up until opening night.
Among the reading I did when working on the play (aside, obviously from the script of The Farm Show) were several books by Oliver Sacks, the noted neuropsychiatrist. His investigation of short term memory loss in books like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (especially but not exclusively in an essay entitled The Lost Mariner), became information I relied heavily on while trying to flesh out the character of Angus.
The Farm Show was developed in 1972 by Toronto actors who lived and worked with farmers from that area, and the show was first put on in a barn on a farm nearby. The Artistic Direcror of the Blyth Festival in 1995 was Janet Amos, who was a member of the original Farm Show company. So I heard about the Farm Show a lot during that summer of 1995, from locals as weil as from the peopie with whom I was working.
At the same time, I had an idea for a play abo ur two bachelor farmers, slightly isolated, whose lives are governed by myth and ritual. Their myths were in the srories they told each other daily, their ritual consisted mainly of the preparation of the same meals, over and over. I was interested in setting up their life, slightly away from society, and seeing what might happen when society intrudes.
Meanwhile, I was also writing a column for the Blyth weekly newspaper, mainly abour how weird it was to be an urban individualliving rurally for a long period of time. All of these things came together eventually, and I had the basic elements forThe Drawer Boy.
The Blyth Festival gave me a small commission to write a first draft, and a year later we held a workshop, bringing together actors, a director (Miles Potter, who I’d met the summer before, and another member of that original Farm Show collective), and my very young script. After a couple of times through the text, we’d talk abour it, I’d go away and write some more, they’d read the new material, we’d talk, and I’d write some more. After a very intense couple of weeks, the script had grown up a bit.
The following January, Facrory Theatre in Toronto agreed ro finance another workshop, and we essentially followed the same process. At the end was a public reading of the play. Late that year, when Theatre Passe Muraille had committed ro producing the play, I made further revisions, always in consultation with Miles Potter. More workshop time was provided by TPM, prior ro rehearsals, and changes in the script were made right up until opening night.
Among the reading I did when working on the play (aside, obviously from the script of The Farm Show) were several books by Oliver Sacks, the noted neuropsychiatrist. His investigation of short term memory loss in books like The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (especially but not exclusively in an essay entitled The Lost Mariner), became information I relied heavily on while trying to flesh out the character of Angus.
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