BF23: A chance meeting brought Richards to the Blyth Festival
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
In any theatre company, those working behind the scenes are as essential to a successful season as those on stage. That fact is especially true at the Blyth Festival, where the rural setting allows a close-knit group of artisans to work in concert to turn individual dreams into a shared reality.
Festival carpenter Simon Richards is one of those integral cogs in the magic theatre machine. He is currently working closely with production manager Ryan Brink and the rest of the technical team to bring each show’s setting to life. “Don’t tell him I said this, but Ryan Brink is an exceptional Technical Director and Production Manager,” he confided.
A key part of Richards’ job is creating physical manifestations of the design team’s concepts, which is always a balancing act. “In every theatre, the designers can forget about gravity - they design these massive, floating structures without support. I’m totally there for the designer - I consider it my job to realize the designer’s vision, no matter how wacky. I do my best to keep the whack in there, but if I can’t figure it out, we have to revisit it.”
Also essential is factoring in the artists who will inhabit each stage. “I’m there to produce the designer’s vision, but make it actor-friendly - if the actor isn’t comfortable, then the set is a failure. They shouldn’t have to think about the set, they should just be on the set… we’re building collaborative art.”
This is the carpenter’s first full season building for the Festival, but it certainly isn’t his first rodeo. “I’ve pretty much always been in the business. I was 14 when I started learning how to build my own sets. I was doing theatre and augmenting it with renovations… I worked a lot for smaller theatre companies. Private shops can be a bit expensive or not want to bother with a small production. It turned out to be a kind of niche, to build these small company sets.”
When Richards told some of his Stratford-based friends that he was moving to Blyth, they recommended that he get involved with the local theatre scene. “They said you’ve got to introduce yourself to Gil Garratt. Call the Festival, he’s a great guy, and you’ll just love it.”
Upon his arrival in town, he decided to do just that, but life had other plans. “I got here in 2019, and then COVID. I was just sitting there in my kitchen, looking out the window. It was the weirdest time… I was just about to introduce myself to the Festival, and that’s when the shutdown started, which really put the kibosh on that.”
Luckily for Festival-goers, Richards wasn’t permanently discouraged from trying to get involved - he slowly began to lend out his carpentry skills for the past two seasons, and has found that his sensibilities have been a perfect match for the Blyth way of doing things. “I’ve worked in places where they’re so stuck to the procedures that they have that there’s no looking on either side. Here, if you have a problem, you’re not on your own - folks are there to provide ideas, but there’s also a lot of latitude. Here, there’s as much focus on the process as the product.”
Preparations for this season have been going very well - they might even be a bit ahead of the game. “I actually managed to get a bit of a jump on this season. I think it’s going very well. In fact, tomorrow we’re hoping to install the first set in Memorial Hall, just put it up, see if it fits, take it back down and give it to the painters - you don’t often get a chance to do that.”
One challenge that Richards has encountered is building set pieces that complement the unique performance space inside Memorial Hall. “It’s my first time building on a raked stage - in Toronto I never worked with the theatre that had one. The stage angles down towards the audience - that’s where we get the theatre terms upstage and downstage, because as you head towards the back of the stage, it’s literally upward. It must be from Shakespearean times.”
One of this season’s shows, Sophia Fabiilli’s Liars at a Funeral, follows the structure of a classic farce. For a carpenter, working on a farce means one thing - “lots of doors, and the doors have to be perpendicular and they can’t be raked, because they’re doors, and you’ve got walls going from up to down at an angle. Richards has a strategy to solve this unique geometric puzzle. “I have the contact info for a builder who worked on this stage decades ago - so I’ll be consulting him, and figure it out tomorrow.”
The seasoned carpenter is also responsible for the intricate, integral, three-quarter-inch scale model of the Harvest Stage that can be found in the Phillips Studio rehearsal space. The model has proven to be an invaluable tool so far this year. Artistic Director Gil Garratt, along with members of the cast and crew, often gaze down upon it as they plan out their next move. Constructing the impressive miniature barely felt like work to Richards. “I felt like I was being paid to play. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how lucky I am. I don’t have any money, but I’ve always been able to do the things that I want to do, and get by. Sometimes I get by nicely, sometimes barely.”
To see some of this handy man’s handiwork, check out any of the shows playing this Festival season.