Blyth Festival 2025: Thompson has a legacy to honour with Quiet in the Land

BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN

Now with several years as its associate artistic director under her belt, Severn Thompson again has a crucial role to play in this year’s Blyth Festival season, directing Anne Chislett’s Quiet in the Land, which, in many ways, feels like the centrepiece of the entire season.

 

This season, all actors will be performing in three plays. There is the usual repertory schedule to which the Festival sets its watch, with much of the cast taking roles in the first and third and second and fourth shows. But there, right in the middle of the season, is the only outdoor show being produced on the Harvest Stage this season and the entire company will star in Quiet in the Land.

 

And, because of her family’s rich theatre history, Thompson of course has a story about being close to those original productions in the early 1980s when her parents, Paul Thompson and Anne Anglin, were regulars with the Blyth Festival, frequently directing and acting in shows each season.

 

In the original production, Thompson’s sister Rachel, now a documentarian in her own right, played a child’s role, alongside one of Ted Johns and Janet Amos’ daughter Beth. Severn says she didn’t act in the show, but she was so close to the productions and has vivid memories of her sister in them, so there is certainly a part of her brain that is occupied by memories of Quiet in the Land at the Blyth Festival.

 

So, when 2025 rolled around, Severn was happy to know that she was being considered as its director and even happier when she knew she’d gotten the job. 

 

This won’t be her first time directing a show on the Harvest Stage. She was at the helm of last year’s Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes. She says that directing shows outside requires a bit of a different style of thinking, but she’s so familiar with the stage and has directed there before that she is much more focused on the opportunities of being out at the Harvest Stage, rather than any potential challenges.

 

She thinks that, with so much of the show focused on the farming community, it will be magical to produce the show outside and is looking forward to exploring with different ideas at the Harvest Stage. Furthermore, she hopes to take advantage of the beautiful natural environment at play at the stage as the sun sets over the course of a performance.

 

While Severn has made the Blyth Festival a much bigger part of her life in recent years, becoming the associate artistic director under Artistic Director Gil Garratt, and moving to the area (in the Belgrave-area house that Ted Johns and Janet Amos once inhabited and where Severn spent many of her childhood years), she has had an illustrious career both on the stage and on the screen before pivoting to focus more on directing in recent years.

 

She first directed a show at the Blyth Festival when she led the Young Company in its revisitation to The Farm Show, a seminal moment in Canadian theatre spearheaded by her parents and several other immensely important Canadian theatre giants. She returned the following year with her Blyth Festival main stage debut, building on the work done one year earlier with Beyond The Farm Show.

 

From there, Severn continued to act and direct at the Festival before taking up permanent residence as part of the staff. Speaking of which, she says she is really settling into the role and learning so much about the behind-the-scenes aspects of running a Canadian theatre.

 

Across the country, however, Severn has acting credits at the Shaw Festival, the Stratford Festival, Theatre Passe Muraille and the Tarragon Theatre and directing credits at the National Arts Centre, Soulpepper, Canadian Stage and Bad Hats Theatre, where a show she directed won her a Dora Mavor Moore Award for directing.