Blyth Festival 2024: James MacDonald will direct Gil Garratt's 'Saving Graceland'
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
It’s a bit surprising that directing the world premiere of Gil Garratt’s Saving Graceland will be the first time James MacDonald has worked at the Blyth Festival. He’s a director and actor who’s spent his career developing new Canadian plays all over the country, which makes him a perfect fit for furthering Blyth’s lofty goal of producing new, local works that tell Canadian stories. But perhaps fate was just waiting for a particularly auspicious occasion, like the Festival’s 50th anniversary season, to bring this talented director to town.
It’s been a long time coming, but now that it’s finally happening, the man himself couldn’t be happier about the timing of this long overdue union. “I’m actually extremely honoured,” he said. “As someone who grew up learning Canadian theatre history, and has done maybe 45 new Canadian plays in my life, it feels like Blyth is, in so many ways, the spiritual home of new Canadian plays. I just have such respect for the Blyth Festival, and the people who founded [The Festival] and made it into such a great place to develop work in the 70s and 80s.”
It may be his first professional appearance in Huron County, but MacDonald’s connection to the area goes all the way back to childhood, when he would spend some of his summers in the Town of Goderich. Those family trips left a lasting impression on him. “There’s something about the Southwestern Ontario countryside that really appeals to me. I love the farm country, I love the people and all the different little towns that dot the area.”
The image of a theatre director as a demanding commander shouting orders into a bullhorn is a common trope in popular culture, but, in MacDonald’s case, that couldn’t be further from the truth. He approaches the role of director much more as a facilitator than a dictator. “I love being a director, because I love being able to work with playwrights, and I love being able to work with designers, and I love being able to work with the technicians to tell a whole story. I think I’m a good collaborator, and a team builder, and a person that works well with people that have different areas of creativity. I like to think I can help other people do their jobs.”
Going into Saving Graceland, MacDonald feels fortunate to have a great cast and a talented design team with whom to work. “If you cast the show well and you get the right people to design it, you are literally four-fifths of the way there, so it’s just a matter of shaping it.”
The chance to direct a play for the Blyth Festival is something that MacDonald views as a rare opportunity to be part of something intimate and impactful. “In small communities, theatre is all about coming together. So many people from Blyth and the surrounding area will come to see a show just to be together, and the heart of theatre is having a shared experience.”
The thing MacDonald is most excited about for his Blyth directorial debut is the material with which he’s been given to work. “When I read the play, the way Gil’s interwoven the music into it just spoke to me so much. I never made it to the Collingwood Elvis Festival, but there’s something about the evocative nature of that music. Each one of the songs that Gil’s put in the story, when I played them and read them, I’d go ‘Wow’ - it just brings back such a sense of memory and emotion. ‘Suspicious Minds’ is my all-time favourite [Elvis Presley song], so I’m glad he put it in there. Using music in plays is such a good way to evoke that emotion, and Elvis is universal.”
Saving Graceland is, on the surface, the humorous story of a couple of 21st century Elvis fans in Huron County, but it’s also a study of the way modern families have had to adapt to deal with an issue that affects so many Canadian families - the opioid crisis. MacDonald feels that Saving Graceland will not only make audiences laugh, but that laughing together will make this difficult subject easier to talk about. He thinks Garratt’s words will create a deeper emotional understanding within many audience members who have gone through the same thing that the play’s characters are going through. “He really understands how a family deals with addiction. It feels universal - everyone can understand and sympathize. But I love that it’s not a sad drama. It has a lot of humour, and there’s a lot of care… it’s an impactful story, but I also think people are going to have a really good time.” Saving Graceland is telling a story that reflects the lives of so many families nationwide, and MacDonald hopes it will make a difference. “As a Canadian artist, I truly believe that there isn’t a single thing that we do that’s more important than finding a way to tell our own stories. And theatre is the best way to do that.”
Saving Graceland is one of four original Canadian works debuting at the Festival this season, and is the latest in a long line of new plays that MacDonald has helped bring to life. He’s always felt that there’s something special about those first performances. “The idea with a new play is that they carry forward the importance of telling new stories, of telling Canadian stories. I think that aspect of it, to do something that’s never been done before, that is the most exciting thing as a director. You’re able to say, ‘Right now, this thing has only ever existed on a page, and we are going to bring it to life for the first time as an ensemble of artists, for a community, and they’re going to be the first people to ever see this play.’ And that is always extremely exciting.”