Respected star puts down roots in the County
Graham Abbey of Stratford, Groundling Theatre takes on Prince Edward County
When Graham Abbey was named incoming artistic director of the Festival Players of Prince Edward County in February, a ripple of surprise and excitement passed through the Ontario theatre world.
This summer marks Abbey’s 18th season in the Stratford Festival ensemble and he is artistic director of Toronto’s Groundling Theatre Company, whose productions of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale and Measure for Measure were rapturously received this past November. Inasmuch as Canadian classical theatre has stars, Abbey is one of them and is a much-admired figure in his artistic community.
The Festival Players is a decade-old regional summer theatre previously known for producing contemporary Canadian work. As someone with primarily Shakespearean chops, Abbey, 46, is an intriguing match for the company. His appointment also raised questions about the future of Groundling, an upstart outfit (its first full production was in 2016) with a profile on the rise.
Those who know the Festival Players were also surprised that the news release announcing Abbey’s appointment and that of Julianne Snepsts as managing director and producer did not mention the contribution of Sarah Phillips, its artistic director from 2007 to 2016 and, according to a local resident, its “heart, soul and face for nearly 10 years.”
The story of how Abbey got involved with Festival Players is part and parcel of the growing profile of Prince Edward County as a high-end tourism destination.
Though fewer than 25,000 people live there, nearly a million tourists pass through every year to enjoy its beaches, food and wine, and artistic offerings — and those numbers are growing.
Abbey visited the County, as it’s called, a little over a year ago with his wife. “I know it sounds clichéd,” he says, “but I just literally fell in love with the place. It’s a gorgeous part of the country.”
He “became obsessed” with the potential of the area and, through a local councillor, was introduced to actor Anthony Lemke, who is setting up what Abbey calls an “artistic hub” in the village of Wellington.
The vision, says Abbey, is “an arts centre that’ll be about two hours from Toronto, two hours from Ottawa, and three-and-a-half hours from Montreal, and you could incubate projects that could travel to those centres.”
In the past year, Lemke, Abbey and other partners bought four other buildings in Wellington. Abbey says the village will increasingly be the centre of Festival Players activities.
It was in the context of these entrepreneurial plans that Festival Players got wind that Abbey was interested in making further connections in the County.
“It was just kind of serendipitous,” says Lynn Sullivan, former chairperson of the Players board of directors. “We heard that Graham had been to the County and was looking for ways that he could contribute, and we needed an artistic director.”
Sullivan says Phillips “moved on to pursue other opportunities” in November. Phillips declined to comment on the circumstances of her departure, saying only it was an “honour and a privilege to work with esteemed artists, with all the passionate supporters in our community and beyond, and to share outstanding Canadian work with our audiences.”
“All of us at Festival Players have a great deal of respect for Sarah and her contribution to building the foundation of the organization,” Sullivan says, while also declining to comment further.
It is unusual for government-funded Canadian theatres to appoint leaders without advertising the positions and interviewing multiple candidates.
Last Dec. 5, Sullivan gave a grant proposal presentation to Prince Edward County Council in which she said the company was “in talks with a new artistic director,” subsequently revealed as Abbey. When asked if the circumstances of his hiring gave him pause, Abbey said it’s “hard to comment” on the question. “I guess my name came to their forefront; I don’t know how many names they had in their mix.”
He added that he has the “utmost respect for Sarah to have built this organization basically from the ground up . . . I am thankful and hopeful that I can carry on the legacy that she built. I really honour what she did as a colleague.”
Abbey’s plans begin with expanding the scope of Festival Players programming to include classics and international plays, as well as Canadian work, a return to its original mandate under founding artistic director John Burns.
Abbey is still working as an actor and associate director at Stratford this summer and is not taking over full artistic leadership of Festival Players until 2018. His friend, veter- an director John Wood, will serve as artistic director this season.
Meanwhile, Groundling will continue to produce classic plays in Toronto in the winter, Abbey confirms.
He is currently casting a production of King Lear, which he will direct in January 2018.
Abbey’s high profile and proven ability to cultivate a donor base — Groundling, which he runs with Anna Kajtar and Robert Richardson, functions solely on private and corporate funding — will be a boon to
“My dream for the County is that we can build something that, way down the road, may change others’ lives.” GRAHAM ABBEY ACTOR AND ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
the growth plans of the Festival Players and to the arts centre project with Lemke. He inherits a company with deep connections in both the County and Canadian theatre.
Neil Carbone, the county’s director of community development, says Festival Players has become part of its tourist draw.
“When you think of Prince Edward County as an experience, it is one that’s authentic, connected with people who live here and offers unique experiences. The Festival Players embodies that,” Carbone says.
“There’s something very feisty about that theatre,” says playwright John Gray ( Billy Bishop Goes to War), whose musical Amelia: The Girl Who Wants to Fly was featured in the Players’ 2010 season.
Two of Leanna Brodie’s plays have been staged by the Players. The Vancouver writer was impressed with the company’s diverse audience base: “You’ve got a strong agricultural community, well-heeled cottagers from the States, people on the new taste trail — the Drake Devonshire crowd — and then the tourists you’re hoping to flag down from the Sandbanks beaches. Getting those ducks in a row, it’s difficult.”
“Graham has taken on a Herculean task,” says John Jarvis, a Dora-winning actor who performed in a Players show last season. “To be the kind of person to hold a company together requires grit and courage, and sometimes you have to ruffle feathers.”
“I hope that the community rises to support Graham, and that he has realistic expectations of what he’s going to get,” says actor Eliza-Jane Scott. “It’s a lot of work. Say-goodbye-to-your-life kind of work.”
“I was lucky enough to grow up in a town where there was world-class theatre,” Abbey says. “We moved to Stratford when I was 9 and I was cast in productions there because I sang in the local boys’ choir. It changed my life and that’s why I do what I do today. My dream for the County is that we can build something that, way down the road, may change others’ lives.”
This summer’s Festival Players season, announced this week, will run from Aug. 1 to Sept. 3. It includes Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s, the Irish comedy Stones in his Pockets and Mary’s Wedding by Canadian writer Stephen Massicotte.