Last Monday (May 25) would have been the official opening of the Stratford Festival for the 2020 season. It didn’t happen. Like millions of others, I have been devastated by a loss I haven’t even begun to assess, hence my delay in writing.
Everyone has public or private memories of the impact the Festival made on their lives., accumulating as it did over the years of its existence and their attendance. My memories are more private than public, surfacing from life events. I lived in Stratford for seven eventful years, you might even say formative.
I was never a member of the audience during the tent years (1953-19—), nor even present at the grand opening of the Big Top (year?), that tangible realization of the circus that theatre has always been. I didn’t get there until 1965, by which time Bill was manager of the Manitoba Theatre Centre( now Royal) and we went to see our boy, John Hirsch, co-founder of MTC, direct his first play there (The Cherry Orchard) and I learned the name of the flower that Alf Bell wore in his buttonhole (clematis).
Residents of Stratford, Alf and Dama Bell, by the way, were awarded an Order of Canada each, the only simultaneous couple that i know of, though there have been other couples, but not at the same time. They earned it by going around speaking and telling the world—well, Ontario and who ever would listen—about The Shakespearean Festival Theatre that everyone should attend. Today it might be called shilling; to the Bells it was a calling and they were proseletyzing. They always gave a post-theatre party the night after opening night. After I came to live in Stratford, I used to go over to help the Bells peel and de-vein the hundreds and hundreds of shrimp they boiled for their party. And later—but i‘m getting ahead of myself. I can see this is going to take a while.
Well, the next time we went to Stratford was Centennial Year (1967, remember?) and we took the kids, stopping in Niagara-on-the-Lake as well, en route Montreal for EXPO ‘67. By that time Hirsch was co-artistic director of the theatre, with the French-Canadian actor and director, Jean Gascon (dates). John came over to us , that is, Bill, in our B’n’B within 20 minutes of our arrival. (He had asked Bill to phone him as soon as we arrived.) That was when he suggested that we, that is, that Bill should come and “save the festival.” It wasn’t a suggestion, it was more like a command. I’m not sure how it happened, but it was swift. We visited Stratford in July; we moved there in January. That is, the children and I moved; Bill was already what he called a “theatrical yoyo’, bouncing back and forth between Winnipeg and Stratford because he was the new manager of the Stratford Festival Theatre. He always called himself Manager and not Administrative Director, as simpler and more direct. Besides, they already had one. (Might need an explanation about that.)
I was going to wait util the school year was over but the kids and I missed Bill so much that we couldn’t stand it. It was hard for the kids to put up with me without him and later, when we were all in Stratford, to put up with us facing life without our home town. We were Winnipeg-born-and-bred; we never anticipated what a wrench our departure would be. The first week after we moved, Bill had to go back To Winnipeg (the yoyo in reverse) and I said to him, “if you crash and die should I go back to Winnipeg?” I never got an answer. Five years later he did die (heart) and I couldn’t afford to return. I hoped that I would be accepted because I had a loved one in the cemetery, like roots, but it didn’t turn out that way. I began to say it was a nice place to die but I didn’t want to live there. But I kept visiting. The Festival gave me two tickets to every production, sort of as a posthumous perk. I’m sure they never expected me to live so long. (Neither did I.) That was 47 years ago.
This is too much chronology and not enough Stratford, which is what I want to write about, and the mystical, magical relationship I have had with Shakespeare and the theatre.
to be continued…