Blyth Festival 2024: Alicia Salvador will make her professional debut this summer in two roles in the same play
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
Alicia Salvador will be making her Blyth Festival debut this summer as a member of the cast of Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes. Notably, however, she will not be making her professional theatre debut here - that will come just one month earlier as a member of the cast of the exact same show, but at 4th Line Theatre in the Peterborough area.
The show, written by Alison Lawrence and based on the book of the same name by Bonnie Sitter and Shirleyan English, has been co-produced by the two theatres. Its run at 4th Line will begin in July before it will hit the Blyth Festival’s Harvest Stage in August.
Interestingly, Salvador will be playing different roles in the shows. At 4th Line, she will be playing the roles of Liz and Lucy, while in Blyth she’ll take on the roles of Ted and Sue. Despite the unusual circumstances, Salvador thinks that playing the two roles will help her better understand the play as a whole.
The young Salvador, however, is no stranger to the work of the Blyth Festival. In 2020, she was part of The Drawer Boy audience when it was produced outdoors at the Harvest Stage. She has family members who have been long-time supporters of the Festival and was brought to the production as a guest. She said it was an amazing time and a great production, so when she found out she had booked a role in Blyth, she couldn’t have been happier.
The news came in February. She knew she had booked the role at 4th Line and heard that the Blyth Festival wanted her to read for one of the roles. When she booked that role too, she knew she’d have an eventful and fulfilling summer ahead of her.
Salvador grew up in Toronto and took a shine to art, dance and music lessons very early in her life. When she was in Grade 8, one of Salvador’s dance instructors approached her parents and suggested perhaps enrolling her in professional drama education, seeing her potential, even at such a young age.
Her parents listened and soon enough Salvador spent two summers as a member of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s summer theatre camp.
Not only did she learn a lot and have the opportunity to see many of the shows and meet the professionals behind them, but she found herself inculcated in the arts culture of an arts-forward community like Stratford and she was hooked.
And while Salvador has her hands full with the two shows this summer, she hopes to get even more out of them as someone who is half Japanese-Canadian. The experience for people like her during the Second World War in Canada was unique and it’s even part of the second half of the play that Lawrence has written. To be able to bring that unique perspective and viewpoint to the stage - in her first professional experience no less - is something she considers very important. Indeed, her own grandparents were in British Columbia during the war, so being part of a play that will help tell that side of the story holds a lot of significance for Salvador.
Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes opens on Friday, Aug. 16 after preview performances on Aug. 14 and 15. The show closes on Saturday, Sept. 7. It will close the Blyth Festival season.