BF23: Mark Crawford returns to the stage at the Blyth Festival
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
Mark Crawford is no stranger to Blyth Festival audiences, and is one of their beloved sons, but this summer he’ll be back in a strictly acting capacity in Chronicles of Sarnia.
Crawford is the mind behind plays like Stag and Doe, The New Canadian Curling Club, Bed and Breakfast and The Birds and the Bees, all of which have been produced at the Blyth Festival. Known primarily as a playwright whose works are produced all over the world, he’s been spending the last year or so primarily as an actor in the massive Mirvish production of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which will conclude its run in Toronto this summer - in fact, just days before rehearsals begin in Blyth for Chronicles of Sarnia.
In Chronicles, Crawford will play Markus. A Sarnia native, Markus left his hometown for Toronto for many years, but, for reasons that will only be revealed to those who see the play, he has returned home to work at Winners and live with his mother.
Crawford says he was happy to receive the call from the Festival, which has been his unofficial home for a number of years. And, when he first read a script for the show, he said he couldn’t wait to be a part of it.
He also says it will be nice to be part of the cast of someone else’s play. There is an isolation that comes, at times, he said, in writing your own play, which he also loves, but he says the opportunity to be part of the cast and not have to worry about tweaking the material on an ongoing basis will be a nice change of pace.
This is especially true when taking into consideration what Crawford’s last year has been like. As a cast member for Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, he has performed in eight shows a week, every week in Toronto, with the occasional break for vacation. When the run concludes on July 2 (rehearsals for Chronicles of Sarnia begin on July 10), Crawford said that he and the cast have calculated that they have collectively performed in the show over 430 times.
Working on that show, he said, has been an experience unto itself. Being a member of such a large cast on such an extravagant production has been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, he said, and one he’ll never forget. However, he’s happy to be getting back to basics at the Festival, which will be a nice capper for the summer.
Crawford hasn’t just been acting during this last year, however. He wrote and starred in Chase the Ace, a one-man show that premiered on the Blyth Festival’s Harvest Stage during the 2021 season, and he recently wrote The Gig, which was produced at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton.
The Gig tells the story of a trio of drag queens who were hired to perform at a function, which, unbeknownst to them, was a campaign fundraiser for one of the country’s most conservative politicians.
Crawford would write the play in the mornings before heading into Toronto for his nightly shows. However, when the play went into production, things got even more hectic. He would travel to Hamilton to be part of the production, making rewrites on the train, only to then take the train to Toronto in the late afternoon to make the warm-up and show. Those were long days, he admits.
Chronicles of Sarnia opens on the Memorial Hall stage on Saturday, Aug. 5 at 2 p.m.