Shaw Festival gets U.S. spotlight
Canada’s Shaw Festival gets prime-time exposure this weekend on PBS stations throughout the United States with a lively hourlong documentary hailing it as one of North America’s outstanding theatre companies.
The Shaw Festival: Behind The Curtain, which airs at 9 p.m. Friday in major cities and in weekend spots elsewhere, documents the Niagara-on-theLake festival’s half-century and takes an in-depth look at the creative nuts and bolts of a summer institution that attracts theatrego- ers from across Canada, the U.S. and even from abroad.
It features comments from current artistic director Jackie Maxwell, former artistic director Christopher Newton, general manager Elaine Calder and actors and designers.
It focuses on two of the Shaw’s best 2012 productions — William Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba and Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler — tracing their progress through early rehearsals, set and costume designs, right down to the tricky challenge of deciding whether to show blood during Hedda’s climactic suicide scene.
The documentary does not forget moments of intimacy — an actor cycling along a rural road, memorizing his lines; the Ohio couple who has been coming to the festival for more than 30 years; the remarkable prop and costume warehouse.
The program also functions as a tourist brochure for the gorgeous 19th century town of Niagara-onthe Lake, which welcomes up to a quarter of a million visitors annually for a 10play repertory season in four theatres.
The documentary was initiated by WNED Buffalo on behalf of PBS, and produced by Forevergreen Television and Film Productions in association with Canada’s Rogers Broadcasting.
WNED president Donald K. Boswell calls the Shaw Festival one of the “most respected repertory theatres in the world.”