The Drawer Boy follows unlikely route to theatres

It hasn’t quite come full circle, but The Farm Show continues to create ripples in the Canadian artistic ocean.

The Farm Show was a play created after a troupe of actors from Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille ventured into rural Ontario in the summer of ’72 to learn about life in the hinterland. This became the basis of the 1999 play The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for drama.

Now the play has been adapted into a film by co-directors Arturo Pérez Torres and Aviva ArmourOstroff. Stage actor Jakob Ehman makes his film debut as Miles, who arrives on an Ontario farm in 1972 to stay with Angus (Stuart Hughes) and Morgan (Richard Clarkin).

The film took the best feature prize at the Canadian Film Festival in Toronto last March.

OPEN CITY WORKS The Drawer Boy, a film based on a play (based on another play), received the best feature prize at the Canadian Film Festival last March.