The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

Essential Canadian Classic

True story: Fifty years ago this very summer, a group of actors made a pilgrimage of sorts from downtown Toronto to Huron County. They were bent on learning all they could about farming and rural life and turning what they learned into a piece of theatre. The result was The Farm Show.  and it inspired Blyth’s founders to launch the festival we now know and love.

Years later, playwright Michael Healey came to Blyth as a young actor and met many of the people whose stories had inspired the original Farm Show. He wrote The Drawer Boy as a tribute to the power of art to heal hearts and minds, and to inspire an entire community. The Drawer Boy was originally commissioned by Blyth and has gone on to achieve international renown as one of the best Canadian plays ever written.

We are thrilled to bring you a new outdoor production of it this summer on the Harvest Stage.

The Drawer Boy was originally produced at Theatre Passe Muraille in Toronto in February 1999.
The Drawer Boy is staged by arrangement with Marquis Literary (Colin Rivers) www.MQlit.ca and Gary Goddard Agency (Pam Winter) www.ggagency.ca

Approx. 2h 15min with intermission

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Photo credit:Terry Manzo

The Drawer Boy Pre-Show Music:
Roulette’s/Drops of Brandy – bones/fiddlesticks
               Ojibwe tunes from Ebb and Flow Manitoba
Old Time Ontario Jig set: Old Red Barn/Rippling Water Jig/Old Box Stove (Ward Allen)   – washboard, farm implement percussion, bones, piano
Scottish Set: My Ain Kind Dearie/Space Available (Marcel Doucette)           
Old Time Reel Set: Ragtime Annie/Angus Campbell (Scott Skinner)/Whitefish in the Rapids/SnowflakeBreakdown (Wally Traugett)
Maiden’s Prayer                                                                                         

The Drawer Boy Intermission Music:
Maple Sugar (Ward Allen)/Redwing               – farm implement percussion, bones, piano

NOTE: All the music in the play itself is original, composed by Graham Hargrove and Anne Lederman

Production Co-Sponsor