Blyth Festival 2025: Masae Day made an impression in 'The Donnellys', now she's back
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
For her Blyth Festival debut, Vancouver-based actor Masae Day made a big impression in 2023’s The Donnellys: A Trilogy, in which she played as both Maggie Thompson and Bridget Donnelly. This year, she’s already deep into rehearsals for both Anne Chislett’s Quiet in the Land and Emma Donaghue’s The Wind Coming Over the Sea. Later in the season, she’ll be breaking out her famed fiddle once again in Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story by Nathan Howe.
While most every actor who works in Blyth comes away from the experience with a deep sense of cast camaraderie, being a member of the sprawling Donnellys team really drove the notion home for Day. “The group of actors we had was really special - we didn’t have any really big conflicts between us or anything. We were all playing a giant family, and we became very family-like over the summer - just a really lovely experience. There’s a few other Donnelly folks back this year, and it’s great to see them again!”
At this point in the production process, Day isn’t really sure how many roles she’ll actually be playing. “Lydia is the only character I’m playing in Quiet in the Land,” she explained, “but I play a bunch of different characters in The Wind Coming Over the Sea, and probably in Radio Town as well.” One thing’s for sure: she’s having a great time working her way through the varied coterie of characters she’ll be inhabiting this Festival season. “It’s going really well. I’m really enjoying working with everybody,” she said.
While preparations for Radio Town have not yet begun, Day has been familiarizing herself with the remarkable local story of Doc Cruickshank and CKNX - the rural media empire he spent decades building in nearby Wingham, and it’s a story that she feels parallels the story of the Blyth Festival itself. “The way the community supports this theatre and the way people come from all the surrounding areas to see the shows and especially the way that they seem to program here to reflect the surrounding audience is really a special thing,” she pointed out. “That radio station also grew from its surrounding community, and started helping local artists and stuff. I’m excited to dive into the story later.”
Day comes from a musical family, so it shouldn't take her long to get into the swing of things once Radio Town really starts to sing. “My parents both played instruments - not fully professionally, but my mom played violin off and on since she was a kid. My dad had a jazz band in Toronto before I was born - he played electric bass and trumpet. He kept that up a bit over the years, and they were both very supportive of my interest in music and everything,” she explained. “I’ve been involved in various bits of performing arts since I was a kid - I started out aiming to be a classical violinist, and went to music school, and also did ballet as a kid. And some theatre classes, partially through a theatre company called Bard on the Beach in Vancouver, they had Shakespeare classes for kids, and it was a lot of fun. And then, after music school, I wound up kind of changing directions and decided to go to theatre school, so I could explore being part of the story that’s happening on stage, as well as on the sidelines, playing the violin.”
Her role in Quiet in the Land means that Day will be returning to the Harvest Stage, where she made her Blyth Festival debut in the Donnellys: A Trilogy. “The Harvest Stage is just a really beautiful place to perform - when the weather co-operates,” she said. “There’s the challenges of working outside, and the joys of working outside - some magical things happen! And then there’s weather. It’s both a challenge and a joy.”
To prepare for her role as Amish teenager Lydia Brubacher in Quiet in the Land, Day has been doing a lot of research. “I’ve been looking up lots of things about the rules of being Amish, and as much detail about that sort of community as I can find out. I think we’re all kind of doing that for the show. A little bit of working on a German accent for some lines, because, when the characters are speaking English to English-speaking characters in the play, then we have to speak with a little bit of an accent. Some characters more than others, but my character’s not very good at English, and she has a bit of a stronger accent. She’s a fun character - I’m enjoying her… it’s a beautiful script.”
Day also thinks that theatre can be a vital tool in the preservation of Canadian history that could otherwise be lost to time. “The shows that I’m getting to be part of here, and The Donnellys, too, are all about little pieces of Canadian history that can help bring those moments and those stories to life for people now who maybe didn’t know about them. There’s some really special plays happening here that you couldn’t see in other places - specifically Canadian work. And getting to see them here is a magical thing. We have two brand new Canadian shows in the season this year, plus some fantastic re-explorations of really beautiful Canadian writing.”
She may really enjoy the working environment in Blyth, but, in Day’s opinion, how does life on Ontario’s West Coast compare with Canada's actual West Coast? “I find those signs very entertaining,” she laughed. “I don’t think it’s really a coast. Being a person that comes from the West Coast… it’s not really a coast, guys. But it is lovely. I haven’t done it yet this year, because it’s been kind of chilly, but we did lots of beach days by Lake Huron last time I was here, and it was lovely!”