Blyth Festival 2024: Fiona Mongillo returns for 'Farm Show', 'Resort to Murder'

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

The 2024 - and 50th anniversary - season of the Blyth Festival will mark a return of sorts for Fiona Mongillo, who spent many of her summers as a young person involved with the Blyth Festival two decades ago.

 

Mongillo grew up in Lucknow and was a member of the Festival’s Young Company for five seasons. She then went on to work with Member of the Order of Canada and all-around theatre legend Paul Thompson on Hippie (written by Thompson, Jonathan Garfinkel and Kelly McIntosh), which was part of the 2003 season at the Festival.

 

She’s since spent some time away from the Festival, heading west to study at the University of British Columbia for a Bachelor of Fine Arts and then back east to earn her Master’s Degree in classical theatre at England’s London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. (She then joked that after earning her degree in classical theatre that she has then not ever used it.)
She would eventually return to the area, settling in Stratford. It’s not what she had planned, but when family called, she answered and returned to southwestern Ontario.

 

In Stratford, a town with such rich dramatic roots, Mongillo got to work on her passion for the stage. However, that passion soon led her to do her own thing pretty distinctly, as she felt she wasn’t seeing the kinds of plays she wanted to be involved in being produced. So, she decided to produce them herself.

 

Mongillo created the Here For Now Theatre in Stratford in 2012. She still serves as its artistic director. In fact, this summer, when she acts in The Farm Show: Then and Now and Resort to Murder, it will be the first summer since the theatre’s creation that she won’t be there for all of its milestones. In fact, when she spoke to The Citizen, she was tuckered out from the first day of rehearsals and saying it was the first year she’d not been there for Here For Now’s tent to go up for the season.

 

Here For Now hit its stride in 2020 - far from the story for most other theatres - when it produced its first full, full-scale repertory season of six shows. How the company was able to move ahead with this ambitious plan in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic was by producing plays on the backyard lawns of the Bruce Hotel for small, socially-distanced audiences. This is a blueprint that many other theatres, including the Blyth Festival, would incorporate in 2021 and beyond. Here For Now was ahead of the curve in terms of its foresight and therefore was able to produce theatre in 2020 when no one else could. In fact, Mongillo thinks there was a time when Here For Now was the only operating theatre in the province.

 

Mongillo said it was just a day or two before the season was due to start that restrictions were loosened ever so slightly by the provincial government, meaning they could go ahead with their plan to produce six shows outdoors.

 

Not only was Here For Now able to produce art at a time that very few could, but Mongillo and the theatre company used that opportunity to do what it could to give back to the arts community. Producing three shows a day, the theatre made sure that actors brought home as much money as they could during those uncertain times. Mongillo volunteered her time so as much revenue ended up in actors’ pockets as possible.

 

The theatre’s success has only grown since the 2020 season, with its production of Girls and Boys picked up by Toronto’s Crow’s Theatre and subsequently appearing on many of the city’s “best-of” lists for that season.

 

With the success of the theatre, Mongillo doesn’t act much for outside operations. So, when she got the call from the Blyth Festival, regardless of her reverence for the theatre, she was sure the timing wouldn’t work out. However, when she saw that it might, she began to consider it more seriously.

 

Of course she was intrigued by The Farm Show, not just because of her rich theatre background, but her history with Thompson, one of its creators. To be part of that show, in such an important anniversary season for the Blyth Festival, she said, is thrilling for her. However, she said the first of the two scripts she read was Resort to Murder and she’s so excited to be part of such a fun and unique show.

 

Really though, she said, being able to return to the Festival for its 50th anniversary season holds so much personal meaning for her. Blyth, she said, is where she first fell in love with theatre and considered it as something she wanted to do with her life. To be back all these years later, she said, is very special.

 

The Farm Show: Then and Now begins with preview performances on June 12-13 before opening on Friday, June 14. The show closes on Sunday, Aug. 4. Resort to Murder opens on July 26 after preview performances on July 24-25. It closes on Saturday, Aug. 31.