Blyth Festival 2025: Louise Guinand returns to where it began for 'Quiet in the Land'

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

It’s tough to beat the original, so when Artistic Director Gil Garratt decided that the Blyth Festival would remount Anne Chislett’s Quiet in the Land this season, he went back to where it all began for the show’s lighting: Louise Guinand.

 

Now, Guinand’s lighting credits top 500 productions throughout North America over three decades. But back in 1981, she was just breaking into the business after studying at Queen’s University and Montreal’s National Theatre School of Canada, and the powers that be took a chance on a young lighting designer for Quiet in the Land. For that reason, not just the Blyth Festival, but Quiet in the Land specifically occupy special real estate in Guinand’s heart, to the point that she would endure rather challenging scheduling to create the opportunity for her to return this season to light the show once more.

 

In her early days on the job, all those years ago, Guinand admits that she had jitters about the scale of the work in front of her and moments of doubt that she was even able to do the job she had been hired to do. However, set designer Jack Ferguson was a beacon of hope for her and an encouraging force on the creative team behind the scenes. She began as an assistant and then worked her way up to being a lighting designer and now, over 500 productions later, the rest is history.

 

She would continue working with the Blyth Festival for many seasons, remembering back to those early seasons with Janet Amos as the artistic director and how supportive she was as Guinand continued to learn the ropes. From there, Guinand’s role in the world of Canadian theatre only grew and grew and grew.

 

The Peterborough native has since worked on nearly 30 seasons at the Stratford Festival and many of the country’s most prestigious theatres on numerous occasions. She has over a dozen credits at the Shaw Festival and has also designed lighting for shows at Canadian Stage, the National Arts Centre, the Tarragon Theatre, the Citadel Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, the Manitoba Theatre Centre, the Soulpepper Theatre Company, Factory Theatre, the Vancouver Playhouse and much more.

 

And yet, in her extensive experience, there are few outdoor lighting productions, though, notably, not none. Guinand said her challenge is to work with the natural light of the area, as the sun goes down, depending on the season, along with the lighting work she’ll be doing. 

 

In 1990, Guinand worked on a high-profile production of Shakespeare’s Richard III for the New York Shakespeare Festival at the Delacorte Theatre in Central Park. It starred a relatively young Denzel Washington, who was also lighting up the big screen at the same time as the star of Spike Lee’s Mo’ Better Blues.

 

Guinand said that was a challenge that she embraced and she’s happy to return to outdoor theatre in Blyth with a show with which she is very familiar.

 

It all came about when Guinand was working with Associate Artistic Director Severn Thompson last summer and Thompson mentioned that the Festival was maybe going to be remounting Quiet in the Land for the 2025 season. Guinand was intrigued and wanted to be involved, Garratt called her and asked her if she could fit it into her schedule and, soon enough, Guinand had punched her ticket to return to Blyth. 

 

One thing that neither Guinand nor Thompson knew at the time was that it would be Thompson who would be directing the show, so the pair will be reunited once again later this summer.

 

Guinand said that her lighting design will be unique in that it won’t play much of a role in the first half of the show, which will still be under the evening sun. However, as the sun goes down and the stage darkens, her work will be more noticable. 

 

As for the show itself, she’s happy to see it come back. While it means a lot to her and her career personally, Guinand said there’s no denying that it’s a beautiful piece of theatre and simply one of the best Canadian plays ever written. Not only that, but many of the themes, such as the decision whether or not to go to war, the work of pacifism in the face of war and the importance of family and community, are just as relevant today as they were when the play was first produced in the early 1980s and the early 1900s when the play is set.