The months ahead promise to be very busy for Kim Blackwell, who is directing Girl in the Goldfish Bowl — the final production of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2023-24 season.
Along with her responsibilities as managing artistic director of Millbrook’s 4th Line Theatre, Blackwell will also direct Jim Watts: Girl Reporter, the outdoor theatre’s company’s second production of its two-play summer season.
Added to Blackwell’s plate is the milestone — and the extra attention that will inevitably bring her way — as she navigates her 30th season with 4th Line Theatre, a remarkable run that has seen her direct 28 plays at the scenic Winslow Farm, 15 of those world premieres.
All this considered, it would have well understood if the 58 year old stepped away from the stage during her off-season and recharged her creative batteries. But then anyone with familiar with Blackwell’s lifelong all-in commitment to the art form knows that wasn’t going to happen.
So it is that, since January, Blackwell has been directing rehearsals for Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, the award-winning satirical comedy penned by celebrated Canadian playwright and actor Morris Panych, which opens May 3rd at the Guild Hall on Rogers Street in East City and continues until May 18th.
The play tells the story of a precocious 10-year-old girl named Iris (Lindsay Wilson) who, proclaiming “she’s in the last few days of her childhood,” lives with her depressed parents Sylvia and Owen (Nancy Towns and Peter Dolinski) in British Columbia’s ocean-side fishery town of Steveston in 1962.
Adding to the dysfunctional family is a sharp-tongued and sharp-eyed boarder named Miss Rose (Lisa Devan), Iris’ godmother, who works at a fish cannery by day and drinks at the local legion by night.
Iris believes the world has been held together by her pet goldfish Amahl. That belief is strengthened by what happens when Amahl dies: Sylvia threatens to leave the family and the Cuban missile crisis takes place, with the former Soviet Union placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and creating the imminent threat of nuclear war with the U.S.
Shortly after Amahl dies, Iris finds a strange man named Mr. Lawrence (Stew Granger) washed up on the beach, who she thinks bears an uncanny resemblance to her dead goldfish. After she brings the mysterious Mr. Lawrence home, Iris becomes convinced he is the reincarnated Amahl who will fix everything that has gone wrong in her world.
“It’s very, very funny but, at the same time, it has at its core a reflection of what was,” says Blackwell of the play’s story line. “Our protagonist, played by an adult woman, is trying to grapple with the exact moment when she stopped being a child and began the process of becoming a grown-up.”
“I had that exact moment in my life. I won’t say what it was, but I happened to be 10 as well. I’ve been asking people if there was a moment that marked the end of their childhood, either by force of circumstance or reality of life, where they took the first steps of the next chapter towards adulthood. We all have that reflective moment to think back on.”
Another theme of the play, says Blackwell, is reincarnation.
“That idea of self-discovery, of reinventing yourself,” she says, adding “Can your dead goldfish come back to life as an adult man and can he save your family?”
“Iris is incredibly bright … much older than her years. She holds her own with all of the adults in her life but yet, at the same time, she has deep innocence. That’s a combination where we find a lot of the comedy of the piece as well as a lot of the pathos.”
A huge factor in Blackwell’s taking on the role of director of Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, as opposed to taking a well-earned winter break, is her affinity for the Peterborough Theatre Guild as well as the former St. Luke’s Anglican Church building it has called home since 1965.
“I was there as a little kid doing (theatre) workshops,” she says.
“I remember having my makeup done in a Saturday morning workshop by Nancy Bethune who, to me, looked like an old lady. I didn’t take that makeup off all day because I could see the possibilities of the suspension of disbelief and the potential magic of theatre. I can draw my (theatre) career today to that Saturday morning makeup workshop.”
“I was in The Wizard of Oz when I was a teenager. When I came back (to Peterborough) from living out west, I went right back to the Guild to lick my wounds and heal. I was going to Trent and was involved backstage on a few shows. My parents had a subscription when I was a little kid. I have such a deep affection for the purple walls and the purple seats.”
First produced at the Arts Club Theatre in Vancouver in 2002, Girl in the Goldfish Bowl won a Jessie Richardson Award for achievement in professional theatre in Vancouver in 2002, a Dora Mavor Moore Award in Toronto in 2003, and the prestigious Governor General’s Award for Drama in 2004.
Panych himself has directed more than 90 productions across Canada and has written 30 plays that have been produced throughout Canada, Britain, the United States, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand in a dozen languages. His work has earned him 14 Jessie Richardson Awards and five Dora Mavor Moore Awards.
“He has a lovely wit about him and a lovely way of seeing the world,” assesses Blackwell, who saw the playwright-directed production of Girl in the Goldfish Bowl at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 2002.
“My friend Kristina Nicoll, who played the mother in Carmel (2019) at 4th Line, played Iris,” Blackwell recalls. “I sent her a message on Facebook the other day, saying how much her performance meant to me and how I haven’t forgotten it. She wrote ‘It’s a play that changed my life in so many ways’. I was also talking to a friend who I first saw it with, and he felt the same way. To imprint itself on us and stay with us — it’s an important and very special play.”
Like all associated with the production, Blackwell can’t wait for opening night.
“I stopped laughing weeks and week ago,” she says, reflecting on the amount of time she has now spent with the script and the performers. “They (cast members) so desperately will be ready for an audience to react. Comedy needs that relationship with the audience, even more than drama. I’m excited to share the amazing work of this team.”
“What I love about amateur theatre, about little theatre and the Guild, and I’ve always been in awe of it, is all of these people have full-time day jobs and they have families — they come to the theatre at night and work for months, toiling for the love of the art. Doctors and lawyers and factory workers and restaurant owners who do it for the love of it, putting in hours of their time at night and on the weekends. It’s pretty great.”
As for marking three decades at 4th Line Theatre this summer, Blackwell says she has had and continues to have “the best job going.”
“I’m so blessed to get to do the thing that I love most in the world and, for the most part, get paid for it. I love the work that I do: the telling of new Canadian stories of little-known heroes of our part of Canada.”
“The work can cause tears and stress — you’ve got make the budgets and raise money and all that — but at the heart of it I believe in the transformative power of theatre to change the world and people’s lives. I take that very seriously. What we try to do is to educate, entertain and enthrall people. If we do all three of those things, we’re cracking.”
Additional production credits for Girl in the Goldfish Bowl include Indigo Chesser and Mikayla Stoodley, who are assisting Blackwell, and Beth McMaster, Pat Hooper, Bob Campbell and Kate Suhr as production managers. The set was designed and constructed by Peter Dolinski.
The play runs at the Guild Hall at 364 Rogers Street in Peterborough’s East City from May 3 to 18, with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on May 3 and 4, 9 to 11, and 16 to 18 and 2 p.m. Sunday matinee performances on May 5 and 12.
Tickets are $30 for adults, $27 for seniors, and $20 for students and are available by calling 705-745-4211 or online at www.peterboroughtheatreguild.com.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2023-24 season.
