Abbey’s Road

Festival Players’ artistic director is excited about the upcoming season

When you ask Graham Abbey about how he found the County, his answer is familiar. His discovery of the County was the result of a desire to just “get away” for the day. Even on the day he was leaving, packing the car with his wife, Michelle Giroux, their baby girl and their two dogs, he was thinking to himself “what are we doing?” He found the last room in the basement of some hotel in the area and started on his trip.

Graham Abbey (R) with wife, Michelle Giroux, and daughter Vivienne.

“Something was driving us to get out of town that day and we were amazed when we found the County. We stopped at the Waupoos Cider Company and we walked around that property for a bit. I sat on a hill and thought to myself, there is something spiritual about this place.”

After that, the hook was set for Abbey— and it was only a matter of time before he began thinking about starting a new chapter in the County. A chapter that begins with a theatre company that is already well-established in our community. When the announcement was made that Abbey had taken the role of Artistic Director of the Festival Players Theatre Company, the excitement was palpable. Abbey is one of the country’s better known theatre actor/directors. He made his name at the Stratford Theatre Festival, where he started acting at the age of 11 with a small role in A Midsummer Night’s Dream as a forest gnome. He returned the following season and was also enrolled in the Stratford Secondary School, but left after his second season. Abbey eventually went to Queen’s University and graduated with a degree in Political Science.

He returned to the theatre in 1997, and never looked back. His career blossomed and thrived at Stratford, and he is still a member of the company today. He has performed in over 30 theatre productions and has an extensive resume in film and television, the most well known being the character Gray Jackson on the TV series The Border. This season, Stratford has him working with legendary Canadian director Robert LePage in Coriolanus, as well performing in a version of The Tempest where everyone is cross-cast. The men play women roles and the women play men roles. It’s always been a way of levelling the playing field with actors and gender roles. That production has him working with other iconic Canadian actors like Martha Henry and Brent Carver.

Abbey’s first season with Festival Players as artistic director was a great introduction to what he can do, and the company had a very successful year, selling out most of the shows under the tent. This season the focus is shifting to activating indoor venues around the County for theatre.

“I’d like the set places of permanence for the venues we use. The Regent is perfect for our larger scale performances and shows that have bigger draws. I want people to get different experiences from each venue. In Picton, you can do some shopping beforehand and eat somewhere on Main Street. In Wellington, it may be going for a walk and grabbing a beer at The Midtown.”

Last week, Abbey and Festival Players announced its first wave of programming for the 2018 season, featuring world-class talent and a return to the Regent Theatre stage. Three shows were announced, and all three are worthy of international acclaim. For the first show in July, broadway actor and Tony award winner Brent Carver (Kiss of the Spider Woman) joins the Art Of Time ensemble for a night of song. Carver has hand-picked the songs for the evening and they include music by Jaques Briel, Leonard Cohen, Janis Ian, Lennon and McCartney. This will be the first and only Eastern Ontario performance of this hugely popular concert.

The second show welcomes back Bruce Dow to the Wellington United Church to perform his new show A Funny Proposition for three performances in late July. Dow is a master of the cabaret form, and his musicals are heralded as fearless, intimate and energetic. The third performances is back at the Regent Theatre. It features a two-week run of Blind Date starring Christy Bruce. This show is coming straight from sold-out runs in New York, London’s West End and Toronto. In this show audiences experience the exhilaration and excitement of new love as the main character goes on a blind date with someone plucked right out of the audience.

The second wave of announcements will be activating smaller venues like the church in Wellington and the newly designed intimate studio-space in Wellington to be opened later this year.

Abbey is very thankful for the support of the community. “The response has been really great. Everything is growing in the right direction. Now it depends on where we want to take it in the next three to five years. We need to focus on growing the infrastructure of the company to allow the bigger talents to come to the County, and it’s all about having spaces to play. By keeping the venues consistent, people will come to know that these are the places to come to for theatre,” he says.

While most people would see this as a challenge, Abbey sees it as an opportunity to connect and engage the community. Things on the horizon could be an eventual shuttle service, and there is discussion of a young people’s academy down the road. Abbey grew up in a small town not unlike those in the County where theatre wasn’t prevalent, but when exposed to it, the actor/director immediately knew his calling. The hope is that he can do the same thing for people out here as well.

“The County is an amazing place and doesn’t need any more attention drawn to it. My hope is that locals and tourists alike can see the benefits of having a theatre company that is passionate and driven to bring the best shows possible to the area.”

The road that led Abbey to the County is the same road that many people have taken to get here. The allure of this area is one that gets under your skin, and it creates thoughts and ideas that can be pursued if one is brave enough. All you have to do is jump and have faith in what you’re doing.