The Next Chapter
A Matching Gift Campaign for New Play Development
A rare opportunity to double your gift
Or call 1.877.862.5984
This is a moment for Canadian stories
Right now, there’s a shift happening across the country.
People are asking bigger questions than usual. Questions about who we are, what we stand for, and what kind of future we’re trying to build. You can hear these questions in conversations across the country – at kitchen tables, coffee shops, and everywhere in between.
But these questions aren’t just political and economic. They’re cultural too.
Why cultural?
Because before a country can move forward, it has to be able to imagine itself clearly. It has to see its own people, its own values, and its own contradictions reflected back with some honesty.
That’s exactly what artists do. And it’s why this is a moment we haven’t seen since the Massey Commission of the early 1950s.
Gil Garratt
Artistic Director Gil Garratt
A Leadership Match is already underway
In response to this moment, a group of leadership donors has stepped forward to strengthen new play development here at Blyth. And they’re inviting you to join them.
Together, they’ve committed $250,000 to match new gifts, dollar for dollar, up to $250,000.
That means every gift you make today will be doubled, helping us reach a $500,000 goal for new play development.
It’s a powerful show of confidence in this work, and an open invitation to build it together. We couldn’t be more grateful.
If you’ve been part of supporting Blyth before, as a Member or through last year’s year-end appeal (or maybe both), this might be a natural next step for you.
Cameron Laurie, Jonathan Goad, and Randy Hughson in The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey. Costume design by Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston. Photo: Terry Manzo
Landon Doak, Geoffrey Armour, Fiona Mongillo, Hallie Seline and Jamie Mac in The Farm Show: Then & Now by Theatre Passe Muraille, with additions by the Company. Costume design by Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston. Photo: Gemma James Smith
Or call 1.877.862.5984
Why Canadian stories matter
Matthew Gin, Omar Alex Khan, Lorne Kennedy, Parmida Vand, and Marcia Johnson in The New Canadian Curling Club by Mark Crawford, with Artistic Director Gil Garratt. Set design by Steve Lucas, Costume design by Michelle Bohn. Photo: Terry Manzo
Every time we sit down in a theatre, we imagine together. We listen, we recognize ourselves, and we leave seeing the world a little differently.
It’s easy to pass this off as just entertainment. But it’s not. It’s actually how a culture thinks.
If we aren’t seeing our own stories on our own stages, we begin to rely on other people’s stories to understand ourselves. Not all at once, but gradually.
Canada has extraordinary playwrights. That has never been the issue.
What we haven’t had is the space to bring those stories fully to life, at scale. Too often, Canadian plays are pushed into smaller spaces, while our largest stages are filled with work from elsewhere.
At a certain point, that stops being harmless.
Or call 1.877.862.5984
A Special Conversation from The Blyth Insider
This conversation was never intended for public release.
It began as a private discussion between Gil Garratt and Joanne Wallace while developing this campaign. But it quickly became something much deeper: an unusually candid exploration of Canadian stories, artistic risk, imagination, and what’s really happening inside Canada’s theatre ecosystem right now.
In the end, we’ve made the unusual decision to share the recording, because we felt our closest friends, allies and supporters might value hearing the conversation exactly as it happened – unfiltered and messy as it is.
We hope it gives you that insider feeling we strive to give all our donors, while pulling back the curtain on the thinking, questioning, and dreaming that shapes the work happening at the Blyth Festival every day.
What Blyth makes possible
Lucy Hill, Autumn Davis, Shelayna Christante, and Charlotte Dennis in Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes by Alison Lawrence. Set and costume design by Kelly Wolf. Photo: Gil Garratt
Masae Day, Landon Doak, and Michelle Fisk in The Wind Coming Over the Sea by Emma Donoghue. Set and lighting design by Ken MacKenzie, costume design by Meghan Choma. Photo: Lyon Smith
At the Blyth Festival, we’ve made a different choice.
For more than 50 years, Canadian stories have been at the centre of our work, on the main stage and in front of full houses.
Behind every production is a long process of creation. Right now, more than a dozen new plays are in development here. Each one is shaped differently, depending on what the work needs.
Over time, Blyth has become the primary place in this country where this happens. We are responsible for more than one quarter of all new plays commissioned through the Playwright’s Guild of Canada – and we don’t stop there. We develop the work, produce it, and bring it to the stage.
Because that’s the only way Canadian work takes hold, and moves into the public imagination. It doesn’t happen if the story stays on a page in a playwright’s bottom drawer.
This is the work our leadership donors are inviting you into.
Or call 1.877.862.5984
With Gratitude
Thanks to you, the Blyth Festival isn’t just a theatre — it’s a living, breathing act of belief in Canadian identity.
From all of us here at Blyth: thank you for standing with us, for believing in our artists, and for keeping this Canadian legacy strong.
Blyth Festival is a registered Canadian charity, supported by you. All donations above $20 receive a full tax receipt.
Header image: The Company of The Donnelly Trilogy by James Reaney, adapted and abridged by Gil Garratt. Costume design by Jennifer Triemstra-Johnston. Photo: Terry Manzo.