The flagship play that started it all at Millbrook’s 4th Line Theatre is coming back for its sixth restaging in summer 2023 during the outdoor theatre company’s 31st season, along with the world premiere of a play about a historic 1965 strike by women workers at a Peterborough factory.
The Cavan Blazers, written by 4th Line founder Robert Winslow and directed by managing artistic director Kim Blackwell, tells the story of the 19th-century Orangemen in Cavan Township who violently tried to drive out Catholics who wanted to settle in the area.
Premiering at the Winslow Farm in 1992, that original production featured around 50 cast members (including Winslow), horses, fire, and torches — setting the outdoor stage for the 65 productions 4th Line Theatre has staged in the last 30 years in its mission to preserve and promote Canadian cultural heritage through regionally based and environmentally staged historical theatre.
“All of July (1992) when we were rehearsing, Robert would walk along the bleachers we had borrowed from the fairgounds smoking Camel cigarettes,” recalls 4th Line’s managing artistic director Kim Blackwell in a 4th Line Theatre podcast. “He was so intense, he kept just driving us all. We couldn’t cast the role of the priest, I think three people quit — he finally played the priest. We couldn’t cast the young Catholic bride, so finally the bartender at The Only Cafe (in Peterborough) agreed to do it.”
“It was craziness. Up until a few days before we opened in mid-August, I was like ‘No-one is going to come see this.’ We were sold out before we opened on the Friday (for six shows) … (CBC’s) The Journal did a big documentary, and we ended up running for six weekends that first year.”
The Cavan Blazers has since proven to be one of 4th Line’s most popular plays, restaged five times in 1993, 1996, 2001, 2004, and 2011. It returns from August 1 to 26, 2023, directed by Blackwell.
The 2023 season begins with the world premiere of The Tilco Strike, written by D’Arcy Jenish and directed by Cynthia Ashperger, who returns after directing the 2022 production of The Great Shadow.
Running from June 27 to July 22, The Tilco Strike was developed through 4th Line’s new play development program and recounts the year-long fight between 50 poorly paid women and their hard-nosed male bosses at Peterborough’s Tilco Plastics, a company determined to crush the women and their union.
The strike began in December 1965 over a $25 bonus and escalated into an epic battle between organized labour and strike-breaking employers. While the women lost their fight, the incident changed labour relations in Ontario forever.
“Both plays look at community and what it means to be part of a community, both the good and the bad of that,” Blackwell explains. “This eternal search to find a collective of like-minded people is one of the complex aspects of the human condition.”
Gift certificates for the 2023 season go on sale on Tuesday, November 1st.
Gift certificates are available for single tickets, season subscriptions, and charcuterie snack boxes. They can be purchased by phone at 705-932-4445 (toll-free at 800-814-0055), online at 4thlinetheatre.on.ca, or in person at 4th Line Theatre’s new Box Office location at 9 Tupper Street in Millbrook.
VIDEO: “Tilco Striker” – A film by Matthew Hayes
