Blyth Festival 2024: Lyon Smith has decades of Festival soundscapes under his belt
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Weeks before any of the actors arrive in Blyth to begin rehearsals, a variety of skilled designers have already been coming and going, armed only with copies of the script and notes from the director, to begin the process of translating page to stage. They each bring their own personal styles, skills and perspectives to the table, with the goal of conceptualizing a single, cohesive world. With the effort of a skilled technical crew, that concept will become a tangible, temporary world that the show’s characters will find habitable.
When done well, the collected visions of the designers will create something that adds depth to the story for both the actors and the audience. While every part of the design team contributes an essential element to the immersive experience as a whole, some pieces of the theatrical puzzle are a bit less obvious to audiences than others. Impressive sets and great costumes give the crowd immediate information as to what kind of world they’ve entered, whereas the subtle effects created through things like lighting and sound may not even consciously register with crowds at all.
Sound designer Lyon Smith is always adding little details to a production to enhance the theatre experience. “You’ll think you’re hearing a bunch of birds in the distance, but it’s playback. I’m using them to tell the story and make use of the fact that we’re outdoors,” he explained. “The Harvest Stage is its own sort of unique thing. I like to use an element of nature and natural sounds to enhance what you might already be hearing, for dramatic purposes.” Smith has done the sound design for the last two productions on the Harvest Stage - 2022’s The Drawer Boy, and last year’s three-part interpretation of The Donnellys: A Trilogy. This year, he’ll be out in the Festival’s back field yet again, as Blyth celebrates its golden anniversary by mounting an updated production of the play that started it all - Theatre Passe Muraille’s The Farm Show.
Smith is excited to play his part in bringing this iconic play to life. He had read The Farm Show in high school, and was an understudy for Theatre Passe Muraille’s first production of The Drawer Boy, which includes elements of the creation of The Farm Show. “When I studied theatre, I looked up to that generation, and the inroads they made to create a new form of creation that hadn’t been employed in Canada - collective creationism. I’ve always looked at it as an amazing turning point in Canadian theatre.”
Having a theatre troupe from Toronto knocking on the doors of Huron County farmers to gather material for a play was certainly a turning point for theatre in Blyth. It was after going to a barn in Clinton to see The Farm Show that James Roy, Anne Chislett and Keith Roulston were inspired to start the Blyth Festival 50 years ago, which has gone on to stage so many shows for the people of Blyth and the surrounding area.
Producing The Farm Show: Then and Now on the Harvest Stage should make for a satisfying, full-circle experience. The glorious outdoor stage was made possible by the Festival’s many successful decades spent telling local stories, which The Farm Show inspired.
Smith will also be doing some indoor designing for Mark Crawford’s The Golden Anniversaries. “Memorial Hall is a more intimate space. Acoustically, it’s one of my favourite places to design. You can be a bit more subtle with it, because you don’t need to compete with the wind, and the elements and people going by on four-wheelers.”
Each show has different designers with different ideas, which requires a bit of co-ordination. “The metaphor I use is that I like to know we are all painting with the same medium. I don’t want to show up with metaphorical spray paint, and all the other designers are using watercolours. I like to make sure we’re on the same page.” Working on The Golden Anniversaries means one of the people he’ll be getting on the same page with will be his partner, costume designer Amanda Wong, who will also be designing the costumes for the escape room murder mystery Resort to Murder.
Smith has designed the sound for many memorable Blyth Festival shows, but it wasn’t a field he was intending to enter. “My formal training is as an actor. I was doing a show, and it was a difficult show, and I was writing all this music to express my feelings. I gave it to the director and the director thought it was great, and he used all the sound bits in the show. Then someone in the audience heard it, and they asked me if I would do it [for them], and I said ‘sure’. So I kept doing it.”
It’s now Smith’s 26th year of being involved with the Blyth Festival and even though he appreciates always being given great scripts and casts to work with, he also feels that the connection is deeper. “Blyth is my home in a lot of ways - I adopted it years ago. I feel like no matter what happens in my season, no matter how hard things get, if I can get to the village for a show, and just breathe, and slow down and enjoy being part of the community - it’s the cherry on top of my season.”