BF26: Severn Thompson continues directing excellence with 'Curveball'
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Before becoming involved with Curveball: The Fast-Pitch Ladies from the Factory Floor, Severn Thompson didn’t spend much time thinking about baseball at all. “Prior to this project, my baseball experience was limited to a family reunion: the Thompson family ball game. It happens every year, and we are all required to play baseball,” the Blyth Festival veteran recollected. “When I started on this project five years ago, I started to follow the Blue Jays quite closely, and I’ve been a more involved fan ever since!”
Thompson may be at the directorial helm of Curveball this season, but she’s been one of this show’s writers for a fair while longer. The origins of Blyth’s sporty new baseball extravaganza trace back to the early days of the pandemic. It’s not surprising that, when COVID-19 shuttered theatres around the world, that artistic minds would begin to focus on athletic subjects.
Suddenly, something like a simple game of baseball had become as fantastical as the plot of A Midsummer’s Night Dream. “During the pandemic, when we were all trying to figure out what to do, Kelly McIntosh reached out to me to see if I would be interested in creating this collective play with her and some folks from Stratford about this ball team from the 1940s and 1950s”, Thompson told The Citizen. “Most of our work on it in the early days was learning about it through online research.”
Despite those limitations, the original team knew it had to find ways to gather the narrative threads of this still-living history and knit them together into a theatrical garment that would bring the fascinating true story of the Kroehler Girls to life. “One of our actors has an aunt who was on the team in the 1950s,” she explained. “We used all the research we could get our hands on… we did a lot of this on Zoom. Eventually, we put together and performed a one-hour production in 2021, at Here For Now [in Stratford], under a tent… we rehearsed at a safe distance from each other, outside in yards.”
Now, the show is continuing to evolve in Blyth, where the rehearsal process reflects the fluid nature of new work. “This is a really interesting part of the early days - we’ve only had two days so far of rehearsal, and it is such a new work”, Thompson pointed out. “We have new music still being created by the amazing Dayna Manning as we are going along. It involves a half a day of exploring the music. We have an incredible roster of actors, who are musically talented - vocally as well as playing instruments. We’re exploring their voices, and the music, and learning the pieces. And then, in the afternoons, we look at the script and we discuss the piece.”
For her, one of the most rewarding aspects of bringing the true story of the Kroehler Girls to the stage is the team dynamic. “It’s our first time as a group of theatre creators - there are five of us that have written this show now, and to put this into the hands of other actors, who are new to the process, is really exciting,” Thompson confessed. “We get to hear their questions and their impressions, and then we go off and we do some little rewrites, and then we continue on.”
She believes that this constant cycle of feedback and revision creates stronger shows. “It’s an advantage, actually, of the repertory system for new works,” Thompson explained. “It allows us writers to go off, and make adjustments, and then we can return with more answers, and more of the play, more of the script, ready to go.”
The collaborative model mirrors a traditional writers’ room, which Thompson feels brings an energy that is very different from solo creation. “There are real benefits in the energy that is produced when creating as a group, and that you can bounce ideas off of each other and pieces of writing,” she told The Citizen. “You get feedback right away. When you’re by yourself, creating, you don’t get that immediate feedback.”
She’s found that collaboration also requires a lot of trust. “When you do want to make changes, you start to have to trust each other,” she pointed out. “We trust that we understand where we want to go with the script, because that’s a lot of people to check in with each time we may want to make a change.” In addition to McIntosh and Manning, Curveball is also being written by Stacy Smith and Andy Pogson, who starred in the 2021 precursor to the play.
In her role as director, Thompson must also sit at the centre of the collaborative process, shaping performances, design and the overall vision of the piece. “Talking to the designers, the technical aspects of it, the creation of a new piece, working with actors - bringing all the pieces together is very rewarding,” she declared. “Having been an actor myself, it’s fun to see other actors in their process coming to life.”
Thompson makes it clear that creating a work like Curveball doesn’t end when the curtain rises on opening night. “Theatre is not complete without a live audience. With television and film, they need it, but they are not creating with it. We can only create up to a certain point in rehearsals, and then we have to see what happens with the alchemy of an audience, because that is going to identify what the show truly is,” she informed The Citizen. “Then, we’ll need to make changes and some of those changes will happen in previews. That’s why we’re really fortunate to have a couple of previews as part of our process. Then, the actors will continue to develop the play with the audience as the run goes on… the first run of a show of a new play is so important for that reason.”
At its core, Curveball, like Thompson, is rooted in the rural experience. “Rural theatre requires a voice just as any other group. A lot of the plays and TV shows and films take place in urban settings or in the suburbs,” she pointed out. “To have the rural experience is very distinct, and the audience we have, in particular, really responds well to it, and appreciates it. That feedback from the audience is so immediate, and it is so rewarding to have that conversation about rural life, and the changes within it… one of the things we hope to do is, by showing personal, local stories, to encourage people to find out what their own stories are.”
Like any good story, the themes of Curveball reach beyond simple geography. “Whenever you look at something specific, it will have parallels in other worlds, including in cities and urban settings. We are people looking for things, and there are changes happening for everybody,” Thompson said. The play is also arriving at a moment when women’s professional sports are gaining renewed attention. It offers a look back at a time when that momentum had already begun. “What we’re looking at is the 1950s, but we’re also looking into the future. It’s a really effective way to look at where we are presently, and where we’re going.”
The Blyth Festival has long stood as a cornerstone of local storytelling, but its rural reach extends far beyond Huron County. The Blyth Festival is the setting, but it’s also a character. It’s not just telling local stories to local people - it’s revealing rural life to a whole lot of urban people. Of all the actors, all the craftspeople, all the artisans who have come from cities all over, how many choose to stay? How many have felt this town became their town?
Thompson’s parents, Paul Thompson and Anne Anglin are an early example of this phenomenon - they came from Toronto to collaboratively create The Farm Show in the early 1970s and never quite left. The Farm Show ended up directly influencing the founders of The Blyth Festival to create a theatre that tells local stories to local people.
Severn’s parents both found great success as artists in an urban setting - Anne as an actor of both stage and screen, and Paul as the artistic director of Theatre Passe Muraille, among other things. But they always come back to Blyth. And whenever they do, audiences come out to see them. Paul has created hit Blyth Festival plays like Death of the Hired Man and The Outdoor Donnellys, while Anne received rave reviews for her performances in plays like Cakewalk and The Tomorrow Box.
As a result, some of Severn’s first memories are of creating rural theatre in Huron County. “My earliest memory is going on tour with what probably was the very first Young Company,” she recalled.
“Obviously, there were days before that, but what was truly memorable is - we all piled into a van, and we would tour campsites. I couldn’t say for sure which campsites those were, but we brought our theatre magic - we brought the gift of theatre to campsites as kids, and we had such a good time.”
In the years since, Severn has built her life around the art of stage and screen. She attended the National Theatre School and the Birmingham Conservatory at the Stratford Festival, and she also has a Master of Fine Arts in Stage Direction from York University. Currently, she is the Associate Assistant Director at the Blyth Festival, where she spearheads new play development.
Curveball will also be a Blyth Festival first! “People should come see Curveball to watch our first musical out on the outdoor Harvest Stage - these are incredibly talented actors and musicians, ” Severn advised. “In 1953, what these women achieved - winning two major titles - it was just such an accomplishment. To do a story that is inspired by real people, and some of these women are still with us, that is a real honour.”