Blyth Festival 2025: Howe fell in love with Cruickshank's story, now he's telling it

BY SCOTT STEPHENSON

When actor and playwright Nathan Howe first came out to Huron County, he’d just moved to Toronto from Saskatoon. It being his first time travelling around the province, he trusted Google to get him there. “It was my first time in Blyth - I didn’t know anybody, and I didn’t really have any Ontario experience. All of a sudden, I was off the highway, driving concession roads to get me to a farmhouse outside of town - I didn’t know what I was getting into!” he declared.

 

Howe went on to spend three seasons performing in Blyth before COVID temporarily truncated the Festival’s ability to stage large productions. “I think I spent more time in Blyth those first three years I lived in Ontario than I did in my home in Toronto! I was going to come back in 2020, but no one was allowed to come back,” he recalled.

 

Now, Howe has made another big move - from Toronto to Vancouver! Even though he’s still settling into his new digs, the siren song of Huron County has brought him back to Blyth once again, this time, as the playwright behind Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story.   

 

Howe recalls the moment he learned about the endlessly interesting story of Wilford Thomas “Doc” Cruickshank. “I was one of the collective members for Wing Night at the Boot, and I was writing the music for that show, and started kind of looking around at the musical history in the area,” he recollected. “We got to tour the Barn Dance Museum in Wingham, and then, we go upstairs, and the CKNX Studio was there!” he recalled. “There were no lights on in the room, so I was searching around with my phone flashlight, and they had all the old cameras set up there, and I was like, ‘what is this?’ I’ve just been kind of fascinated since. The next year was when I started my research in earnest. I got a recommender grant, which is a grant through the Ontario Arts Council… I got a recommender from Blyth that basically paid for little research trips here and there. I got some music digitized, and I started writing then.”

 

While North Huron has since closed the museum that inspired Howe to write Radio Town, he’s been hunting through the archives of the Huron County Museum in Goderich in search of information about Wingham’s most prolific inventor. “There’s a lot of old newspaper stuff on the online archives as well. And I’ve got my CKNX Radio and Television book - it’s always at the top of the pile on my shelf,” he pointed out. 

 

Of course, certain practicalities of the stage need to be considered when attempting to tell a decades-spanning story that, in real life, included hundreds, if not thousands, of people. “There’s a bit of time-warping, to keep the character count down,” Howe confessed. “There’s a few characters who arrive in the timeline of the play a lot earlier than they did in real life. But there’s only seven actors!”

 

Howe has found the entire playwriting process to be thoroughly enjoyable, and he had some advice for any aspiring young playwrights out there. “Keep writing,” he advised. “Keep searching for stories. What grabs you, and in what way? Whenever you start a story, ask yourself ‘why?’ before you put the pen to the page - that really can propel the thing forward.”

 

This season also marks the reunion of Howe and Festival mainstay J.D. Nicholsen, who is directing  Radio Town’s inaugural run. “We were in Mr. New Year’s Eve, about Guy Lombardo, in 2017. That was a great time! And then, because we do new work in Blyth, while we were rehearsing this play and trying to wrestle this story into existence, people were getting their characters cut. They were like ‘I don’t have any reason to be in this scene’ - okay, you’re out!  So my first experience with J.D, with Jack, was how intensely focused on the story he was,” Howe explained. That’s why I was so excited to work with him again - it’s just story, story, story. Nothing else matters - your glory moment doesn’t count if it doesn’t push the story forward. It’s a great pairing for me!”

 

By seeking to tell such a local story on the stage at Memorial Hall, it’s clear that Howe has taken the Blyth Festival’s mandate to heart. “Rural theatre is important because rural people are important,” he pointed out. “Specifically, a festival that brings new plays into the world is important. A lot of the big shows are American and British, so a rural theatre like this, making new stuff and really punching above its weight, is important for the theatre ecology as a whole…. The stories are about the people who are coming to the theatre - there’s this connection to the audience. You remember this, you were there for that. It’s kind of the reason why I focused on Doc’s story specifically - I felt like it’s kind of like the story of the Festival.”

 

Howe has followed his inspiration, done his homework, and is happy with how the production is coming along - all he needs is an audience with an interest in local lore. “I hope that they will connect fully and immediately with the play!” he exclaimed. “The thing that really attracted me to the Doc Cruickshank story is that he could have gone to Ottawa, or Toronto, where there actually was radio, instead of sticking around and creating a whole industry in Wingham. He was really locally-focused. He stayed.”