Blyth Festival 2025: After a 15-year break, Michelle Fisk is back in Blyth
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
The 2025 season will not be actor Michelle Fisk’s first rodeo with the Blyth Festival, but it has been a while since she’s graced the Memorial Hall stage, and she’s happy to be back and ready for the challenges that the season is sure to bring.
Fisk will play roles in Emma Donoghue’s The Wind Coming Over The Sea and Nathan Howe’s Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story, as well as Quiet in the Land, in which all members of the company will appear. This is her first time back in Blyth since she was part of the cast of 2010’s Bordertown Café, her only show of that season.
She first graced the Memorial Hall stage in the 1989 season in James Rainey’s Sticks and Stones - the first of three Donnellys plays, which led the trilogy when the Festival remounted them in the 2023 season - and The Dreamland by Raymond Storey and John Roby.
Almost a decade later, she returned as part of the 1998 season company for Yesteryear and Thirteen Hands, followed by work in 1999 in That Summer and Every Dream. After that, she worked in one show per year in 2000 (Corker), 2001 (Cruel Tears), 2003 (Having Hope at Home), 2005 (The 13th One), 2007 (The Ballad of Stompin’ Tom), 2008 (Innocence Lost: A Play About Steven Truscott) and the aforementioned Bordertown Café in 2010.
In addition to her Blyth Festival credits, she has worked extensively as part of the Stratford Festival and in productions for the Citadel Theatre, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, the Grand Theatre in London, the Playwrights Theatre Centre, Canadian Stage, the Tarragon Theatre, the Shaw Festival, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Globe Theatre and Theatre Calgary.
Born in Vancouver, Fisk spent much of her career as an actor in Ontario, which is where she was able to find so many theatre jobs over the years, including many at Stratford, her adopted home for a time. However, as she has approached the tail end of her career and her children have returned to their mother’s ancestral homeland, she has returned to Vancouver as well to be close to them. As a result, that means that Fisk is on a five-month vacation from Vancouver to be part of the Blyth Festival company this season, which is a break she welcomes and a period she sees as a bit of a homecoming.
She studied theatre in her home province, training at the University of British Columbia and has, over the course of more than 30 years in the world of Canadian theatre, performed in nearly 150 productions.
Her relationship with Artistic Director Gil Garratt, however, goes way back. She first saw him perform in Danny, King of the Basement in the early 2000s. The show premiered at what was then the Young Peoples Theatre - now the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People - in 2001. The next year, it won several Dora Mavor Moore Awards, including a Best Actor nod for Garratt. The play has since continued to play across the country and around the world.
Little did she know then that she would be working with Garratt in Blyth extensively over the next few years - both as members of the acting company at the time. This is the first time that Fisk has been part of the Festival company since Garratt took over the top spot.
And what a time to return. Fisk is excited about the shows she’ll be a part of. When we first spoke, Fisk had just completed a few days of early rehearsals for The Wind Coming Over The Sea and said she’d had a blast, especially due to her fandom of playwright Emma Donoghue, who doubles as a bestselling novelist and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. Fisk and many of the other cast members are united in their love of Donoghue’s work and have had to pinch themselves at the prospect of working with her, all while coming to the conclusion that Donoghue is wonderfully funny, down to earth and focused on the Blyth Festival production this summer.
As for Quiet in the Land, Anne Chislett’s masterpiece that serves at the cornerstone of the season, Fisk calls it a beautiful piece of theatre with which she feels privileged to be involved.