Blyth Festival 2024: Janet-Laine Green to make Blyth debut in 'Golden Anniversaries'
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Blyth’s 50th anniversary season is going to be bringing quite a few Festival favourites back to Blyth for a board-treading bonanza but, when it came to casting Sandy, the female lead in Mark Crawford’s The Golden Anniversaries, the Festival decided to shake things up by bringing in veteran actor Janet-Laine Green. The Golden Anniversaries has already been getting a lot of attention from curious theatre fans who have been wondering about how this play, a comedy about a couple doing their best to try and celebrate their lives together, is going to relate to the Festival’s own golden anniversary. Was it commissioned as a complement to the grand event, or is it just kismet?
With the show still a few weeks away from starting up production, Green, every bit the leading lady, was kind enough to play host to The Citizen in the glorious garden of her secluded home in Sebringville for a chat about the upcoming show.
Looking cool, crisp and collected, Green expressed her excitement about finally getting to step out onto the Festival’s stage on such an auspicious anniversary. “This is going to be my first go round at Blyth!” she exclaimed. “We’ve seen a few productions there, but when I got this job offer, we drove out to Blyth, and we kind of, you know, passed by the theatre to see, and I said ‘this theatre has been here for 50 years - that’s unbelievable! Something is obviously special about this particular place. But it’s such a tiny town!”
That tiny town is about to become the “It Spot” for Canadian theatre, and Green’s magnetic personality is going to be a big part of the gravity pulling people in. Her voice has the charmingly conspiratorial tone of a person sharing a secret with just you, even when she’s addressing an entire audience.
Green, who originally hails from Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, has really done it all since the moment she decided to bail on the idea of ballet and pursue a career as an actor. “I was a little ham as a ballerina,” she admitted. “I needed to be the main girl. The Prima Donna.” Once it became clear that it wasn’t in the cards, Green settled on becoming an excellent performer of stage and screen instead, and has since been everything from the voice of one of the Care Bears to Blanche Dubois, the latter being one of her all-time favourite characters. “I love her fall, her clinging to life... she never goes away.”
As an actor who has spent a fair amount of time both on stage and on the screen, Green sees benefits to both worlds.“With film, you have to be in the moment.” The downside of that, for Green, comes after that moment, in the long wait for the film to come out, to see how people feel about that moment. “I love the stage - the immediacy. When you get a laugh and actually get a laugh. Or when the audience is silent.” The Blyth audience awaiting Green’s turn as Sandy Golden has, historically, responded to the work of playwright Mark Crawford with a great deal of positivity, and it’s feeling like Green’s aura of studious mirthfulness is going to be a great match for Crawford’s slyly hilarious approach to life’s odd little moments.
Green also loves the way that theatrical pieces come together. Having to practice together for an extended period of time creates a very different experience than working on a film, where most of the rehearsing is done alone. “In theatre, that rehearsal period creates more in-depth characters, and you grow as characters, together. There’s just a lot more to it.” The Blyth Festival’s rural setting isn’t just the backdrop for the theatre to exist against - it creates a close-knit environment that fosters a feeling of community amongst that season’s cast and creative team, as though they are the citizens of a town within the town of Blyth. That sense of community is something that is lacking in the urban theatre landscape, and has a habit of bringing great talent back to town, time and again.
One of the things that Green loves about theatre is the way it moves people. “Everybody should see theatre - you’ll be surprised at how it affects you. If I can open up people’s hearts, and I get to be open, and honest, and clear... I’ve done my job.”
There are stakes being raised to make this season a special one, such as the decision to go for a daring quadruple-mandate move by staging four original works by Canadian playwrights, one of them being The Golden Anniversaries. Green has already been proactively considering how to conquer the extra challenges that come along with bringing new works to life. “New plays need a lot of work,” she explained. “There might be changes to your lines right up to opening night.”
In order to get ahead of the game, she’s already been meeting with her on-stage husband, Jim Mezon, who will be playing Glen Golden. “Jim and I are trying to learn the lines. It’s a two-hander!” As to whether the play was requested by the Festival or brought about by the hands of fate, Green says we’ll have to go to the source. “You’ll have to ask Mark.”
It may be Green’s first time being stage married to veteran thespian Mezon, but she will be able to draw a lot from her years of experience being married to her actual husband, actor and writer Booth Savage. “[Savage] is a really good writer. When I was younger, I felt more competitive with him and his writing, but now, I just love what he writes. He still gives me too many notes, though!”
Janet-Laine Green will be starring opposite Jim Mezon in Mark Crawford’s The Golden Anniversaries for the Blyth Festival’s 50th anniversary season, from July 4 to Aug. 4, and Green is certain that this show is one that’s going to resonate with people, calling it, “an honest look at a long-time marriage... I think people will see themselves in this one.”