BLYTH, ON – The Pigeon King will fly again this season at The Blyth Festival, thanks to a $60,000 grant through Celebrate Ontario 2018, a provincial program to celebrate diversity, heritage and culture.
The Pigeon King will expand the Blyth Festival 2018 season, with 19 performances from May 30 to June 15. This comes after a very successful run in 2017, and the recent announcement that this play that premiered on the Blyth Festival stage will be part of the 2018-19 National Arts Centre English Theatre season, in Ottawa.
“We are hugely grateful for this lift from Celebrate Ontario, especially as it will help us amplify this powerful, vibrant, hilarious, confounding and singularly Ontario story, putting our own community on stage. Blyth continues to grow, and extending our season in this way will not only bring more artists to live and work in town for longer, but will also help boost tourism throughout the area, offering more people even more reasons to come to Blyth,” said Gil Garratt, Artistic Director of the Blyth Festival.
This year, the province is supporting 328 festivals and events, the highest in the history of the program that celebrate Ontario’s diversity, heritage and culture.
Support from Celebrate Ontario helps festival and event organizers enhance programming, activities and services so that festivals and events can offer new experiences, reach new audiences and support jobs in their communities.
“Our government’s continued support for festivals and events is an investment in the livelihood of communities all across Ontario. Festivals and events are powerful economic drivers and play an important role in bringing communities together. Our diverse events give visitors and Ontario residents a reason to visit, discover and experience the riches of this wonderful province,” said Daiene Vernile, Minister of Tourism, Culture and Sport.
Boosting tourism through festivals and events is part of Ontario’s plan to create fairness and opportunity during this period of rapid economic change. The plan includes a higher minimum wage and better working conditions, free tuition for hundreds of thousands of students, easier access to affordable child care, and free prescription drugs for everyone under 25 through the biggest expansion of medicare in a generation.