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A visionary broadcaster. A small-town station with big dreams. A new Canadian play with live music straight from the dawn of Canadian country music.

About This Episode
In this episode, actor and playwright Nathan Howe takes us behind the scenes of his brand-new play, Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story.

The play chronicles the remarkable journey of Doc Cruickshank, the small-town visionary who founded CKNX Radio and Television in Wingham, Ontario and built it into a powerhouse of Canadian broadcasting.

We talk about:

• 📻 The history of CKNX and its role in Canadian broadcasting
  
  
• 🎶 Early Canadian country music and why it still resonates
  
  
• 🌾 How radio built — and connected — rural communities
  
  
• 🖋 The creative process behind writing Radio Town
  
  
• 🎼 The show’s live music, performed by the actors themselves — all skilled musicians playing songs from the era

Why You’ll Love This Episode
If you’re passionate about Canadian theatre, small-town stories, music history, or the roots of Canadian broadcasting, this conversation will transport you back in time and leave you eager to see what’s sure to become a new Canadian classic.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: [email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Today’s episode was recorded at  the Wild Goose Studio https://wildgoosestudiocanada.square.site/  in downtown Blyth.

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: Gotta Give Me Something, (theme); River Run Dry via Epidemic Sound; Wabash Cannonball, Al Widmeyer; Down Yonder, The Barn Dance Band, Red Wing/Crooked Stove Pipe, Bill Monkis; all from Saturday Night Barn Dance (Vols 1&2), Barn Dance Historical Society; I’ll Tell You Like It Is, Rikard From; The Waitress, Mac Taboel both via Epidemic Sound.

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Keith Roulston — playwright, journalist, and Blyth Festival co-founder — joins us to talk about his sharp, funny, and quietly moving play Powers and Gloria, now returning to the Blyth stage nearly 20 years after its premiere.

In this intimate conversation, Keith reflects on the inspiration behind the story, the complicated relationships at its heart, and what it means to revisit the play in 2025. He also shares, with striking honesty, how his own health journey — including a stroke four years ago — has deepened his understanding of Edward Powers, a character grappling with the loss of control and purpose.

Whether you’re a longtime Blyth patron or new to the Festival, this episode offers a thoughtful look at rural stories, resilience, and the heart behind Canadian theatre.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: [email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Today’s episode was recorded at  the Wild Goose Studio https://wildgoosestudiocanada.square.site/  in downtown Blyth.

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: Easy to Imagine, Gotta Give Me Something, (theme); River Run Dry. All via Epidemic Sound

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Back in 1981, the Blyth Festival premiered an unusual play about a group of immigrant Amish farmers struggling with Canada’s introduction of Conscription in 1917. 

Against all expectations, this play - Quiet in the Land - became a sensation. It played across the country and around the world, and scooped up both Governor General’s and Chalmers Canadian Play Awards.

Written by Blyth Festival founder and renowned playwright Anne Chislett, Quiet has been called “Canada’s Shakespeare.” Its complex web of interwoven stories and themes and its cast of heartwarming (and heartbreaking) characters has endeared it to audiences around the world.

In a rare interview, Anne joins director Severn Thompson in this conversation to discuss Severn’s revival of Quiet in the Land at the Blyth Festival this summer. Don't miss it.

Oh, and we had some technical difficulties during this recording. So Severn's first appearance on mic may have you wondering if she's speaking from an underwater kingdom. Don't panic. We fixed it up after the break. Thanks for your patience.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: j[email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: Peter Crosby: Almost the Same; River Run Dry: Gotta Give Me Something, (theme). All via Epidemic Sound

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You may know bestselling author Emma Donoghue for her 2010 novel Room (later an Oscar-nominated movie), or her most recent book, The Paris Express.

But Emma is also an accomplished playwright. And this summer she has a brand new work premiering right here at the Blyth Festival. 

Join me for a fascinating chat with Emma about this new work: The Wind Coming Over the Sea. The play features Emma’s trademark meticulous historical research and charts the story of real-life Irish-Canadian immigrants Jane and Henry Johnson who fled the 1840s potato famine for a dangerous new life in rural Canada.

In this chat, Emma reveals how and why she chose to write about this particular couple. She explains why she wanted to make the play “sing” as a sort of “jukebox” musical filled with  traditional Irish folk tunes. And she speaks movingly about what it was like to write this sort of story when she herself is an Irish-Canadian immigrant.

You’ll also get the  inside scoop on some exciting staging choices her director, Blyth Artistic Director Gil Garratt, will be using to bring this story to life.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: [email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: Philip Ayers: River Walk and Forever Free;  River Run Dry: Gotta Give Me Something, (theme). All via Epidemic Sound;

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What do you suppose would happen if two Indigenous dudes decided to dig up the bones of Sir John A. Macdonald, and hold them ransom until the Canadian government returned something that had been stolen decades ago?

You'll have to see Drew Hayden Taylor's hilarious road trip/musical/historical comedy Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion to find out. But in the meantime, join us for an exclusive chat with Drew - one of Canada's most celebrated and prolific writers.  

You'll hear all about how an Ojibway man came to write a comedy about Canada's first Prime Minister, the importance of humour in Indigenous society, and Drew's thoughts on how opening a window between cultures can help us all better understand each other.

Also, he's funny as heck.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: [email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: Roy Edwin Williams: Appalachian Spirit, River Run Dry: Gotta Give Me Something, Wanderer's Trove: Mountain Shadows, all via Epidemic Sound;

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We’re back! And we’ve got the scoop on everything you’ll want to see this summer at Canada’s theatre - the Blyth Festival.

Podcast fave and Blyth Fest Artistic Director Gil Garratt is here with his best stories about all five shows in this season’s lineup. The playbill includes two hotly anticipated world premieres, a remounting of a renowned Canadian classic and lots more.

Dive in, and get ready for another summer of amazing Canadian theatre – all home-grown, right here in beautiful Blyth, Ontario. We can’t wait to welcome you to the theatre! 

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com 

Got something to say? Send me your thoughts any time. I read everything you write: [email protected] 

The Blyth Festival Podcast is presented by our Exclusive Communications Partner, Tuckersmith Communications Co-operative (TCC). Thank you!

Credits: Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace | Sound Designer/Engineer: Jim Park

Music: River Run Dry: Gotta Give Me Something, Easy to Imagine via Epidemic Sound; CKNX Barn Dance: "It's The Saturday Night Barn Dance, Volume 2," 1998 compilation cassette (Rodeo RPL5 8047), featuring artists who performed on the original CKNX Barn Dance, via YouTube/Golden Age Media; CKNX Circle 8 Ranch/Ernie King: My Little Red Wagon, via YouTube.

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We all know about Rosie the Riveter and the women who kept our factories afloat during WWII. But did you know thousands of young women (some as young as 16)  took to our fields and farms as well? These girls kept the country (and the troops) fed, but their contribution was largely forgotten once the war was over.

The Blyth Festival sets out to right this wrong with a new play called Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes. Written by Alison Lawrence and based on original research by local historian Bonnie Sitter, this new work brings all the hijinks and hardships of six fictionalized Farmerettes to joyous life.

Join host Joanne Wallace for a discussion with actors Lucy Hill and Alicia Salvador and director Severn Thompson about the book and the play that restore these hard-working young women to their proper place in Canada's war history.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com

We love your feedback. Send us your thoughts any time: [email protected]

The Blyth Festival is supported by many generous sponsors, along with our loyal Blyth Festival Members. Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz is sponsored by The Royal Canadian Legion Branch 420 and The Legion Ladies Auxiliary to Branch 420. Our season sponsor is Bruce Power. Thank you all for this critical support.

More about Severn Thompson, Lucy Hill and Alicia Salvador.

More about Bonnie Sitter's book and an upcoming Farmerettes documentary here.

Credits: Research/writing/host: Joanne Wallace | Sound design/production/editing: Jim Park

Music:  Wicked Man and The Nightingale is Singing Our Song, Martin Landstrom via Epidemic Sound. Ukulele music by kind permission of Heidi Wai-Yee Chan | Theme Achaidh Cheide, (c) Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Rural Ontario isn't exactly known as a hotbed of paranormal activity. But it turns out Canada's last official charge of witchcraft was laid right here in Huron County. In 1919.

Yes, you read that correctly. A Canadian woman was charged with witchcraft long after the telephone, the radio and the automobile had been invented. And playwright Beverley Cooper confronts this  ridiculous reality in her new play, The Trials of Maggie Pollock.

Join host Joanne Wallace as she sits down with both Beverley and the play's director Ann-Marie Kerr to explore what it takes to bring a piece of real history to life for an audience, and what it is about female power that seems to strike such fear and loathing in those around them.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com

Bus transportation available from Stratford, Kitchener and London for select  dates. Performance dates and details: https://blythfestival.com/tickets/stratford-bus/

We love your feedback. Send us your thoughts any time: [email protected]

The Blyth Festival is supported by many amazing sponsors, along with our loyal Blyth Festival Members. Maggie Pollock is sponsored by The Margaret and Andrew Stephens Foundation. Our season sponsor is Bruce Power. None of this could happen without you!

More about Beverley Cooper here, and Ann-Marie Kerr here

Credits: Research/writing/host: Joanne Wallace | Sound design/production/editing: Jim Park

Music:  Original music by kind permission of Heidi Wai-Yee Chan | Theme Achaidh Cheide, (c) Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 3.0

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Fifty years ago this summer, an actor, a playwright and a newspaper editor walked into a bar .... 

OK, kidding, it wasn't a bar. But James Roy, Anne Chislett and Keith Roulston DID sit down in Keith's living room and decide to start a summer theatre festival in Blyth, Ontario. Miraculously, nobody told them they were crazy. Fifty years later, theatre-lovers around the world are still enjoying the fruits of their hard work and imagination.

Join host Joanne Wallace for an intimate chat with James, who became Blyth's founding Artistic Director. He'll share the inside story on how the festival came into being, who rallied around the cause and became the new theatre's greatest champions, and exactly how director Paul Thompson once talked some local farmers into hoisting two live cows on and off stage every night - for art.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com

Bus transportation available from Stratford, Kitchener and London for select  dates. Performance dates and details: https://blythfestival.com/tickets/stratford-bus/

We love your feedback. Send us your thoughts any time: [email protected]

The Blyth Festival is supported by many amazing sponsors, along with our loyal Blyth Festival Members. Our season sponsor is Bruce Power. None of this could happen without you!

More about James Roy at Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia

Credits: Research/writing/host: Joanne Wallace | Sound design/production/editing: Jim Park 

Music:  Million Things I'd Rather Do, Binkley, via Epidemic Sound | Theme Achaidh Cheide, (c) Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 3.0

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In the long, hot summer of 1972, a group of barefoot Toronto actors made their way to an abandoned farm house in Clinton, Ontario. There they began a theatrical experiment that would result in a collective creation known as The Farm Show.

Quite possibly the most influential play in Canadian-theatre history, The Farm Show became a massive run-away hit and an international phenomenon. It also contained the seeds of what would become the Blyth Festival several years later.

This summer, Blyth mounts The Farm Show Then & Now, an updated version of this beloved Canadian classic.

Join host Joanne Wallace as she chats with veteran actor/director Miles Potter - who was part of the original collective 52 years ago - and Blyth Artistic Director Gil Garratt. Together they'll take  a look at The Farm Show's rich history, and give you a sneak-peak at what this summer's production holds in store.

Tickets on sale now! 1.877.862.5984 | www.blythfestival.com

Bus transportation available from Stratford, Kitchener and London for select  dates. Performance dates and details: https://blythfestival.com/tickets/stratford-bus/

We love your feedback. Send us your thoughts any time: [email protected]

The Farm Show Then & Now is sponsored by The McGavin Family and by our loyal Blyth Festival Members. Our season sponsor is the amazing Bruce Power. Thank you all. 

Credits: Research/writing/host: Joanne Wallace | Sound design/production/editing: Jim Park

Music:  Harvest Month and Ole-Time Fiddlin', River Run Dry, via Epidemic Sound | Theme Achaidh Cheide, (c) Kevin MacLeod, licensed under CC BY 3.0