L.M. Montgomery Research Group

I’ve received e-mail notifications of the following exhibit, conference, and play series:

From Irene Gammel: A notification that the “Reflecting on Anne of Green Gables” exhibit, co-curated by June Creelman and Irene Gammel, opened on 4 June 2008 at Library and Archives Canada (395 Wellington St., Ottawa) and will be available until 1 March 2009. More details are available on LAC’s webpage devoted to the exhibit and in a Reuters article covering the exhibit.

From Eric Bungay: The preliminary program for “From Canada to the World: The Cultural Influence of Lucy Maud Montgomery,” which will take place in October 2008 at the University of Guelph, has been posted. Registration information should be made available within ten days.

From Sally Cole: The L.M. Montgomery Theatre has opened up in Cavendish, PE, for a series of shows staged in a former church where Montgomery worshiped, part of the Avonlea Village outside the outskirts of the town. The theatre is staging plays popular in the year Anne of Green Gables was published, with The Wind in the Willows scheduled to open the season. An article has been published in today’s Guardian.

Posted today at CBC.ca:

A new theatre festival soon to begin in Cavendish, P.E.I., will present a suite of plays dating from the lifetime of Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of Anne of Green Gables.

The Island community, already a mecca for Anne lovers from around the world, is beginning the new summer theatre festival in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of Anne of Green Gables.

Duncan McIntosh, a director of theatre, opera and special events, is the artistic director.

He plans a season based on playwrights who inspired L.M. Montgomery, who lived from 1874 to 1942, or whose works were influenced by the writer.

The first season will include:

• The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, dating from 1908, in a new adaptation by McIntosh.
• The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, first performed 1895.
• Village Wooing by George Bernard Shaw, written in 1933.

Previews begin June 20 with the season to run from June 27 to Aug. 31. Anne of Green Gables was first published on June 20, 1908.

A 200-seat theatre has been created in the Church at Avonlea Village, a church built in 1872 and moved from its original location in Long River.

“It was a church that Montgomery attended, that she dreamed and hoped and prayed and imagined her immortal stories in, this church,” McIntosh told CBC News.

“And we as a community of Cavendish thought this was a perfect place to make our contribution to the celebration of the 100th anniversary.”

McIntosh, who directed the dedication ceremonies of Canada’s war memorial in Vimy, France, also directed the world premiere of Anne and Gilbert, a spinoff of the long-running Anne musical in Charlottetown.

He is a past artistic director of the Charlottetown Festival, the Citadel Theatre in Edmonton and Theatre Plus in Toronto, and has been a resident director at the Canadian Film Centre and the Canadian Opera Company in Toronto.

Elizabeth Mawson, who played Marilla Cuthbert in Anne of Green Gables: The Musical at the Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown between 1971 and 2003, died on Saturday in Toronto at the age of 81. Obituaries can be found at CBC.ca and at the websites for the Globe and Mail and the Charlottetown Guardian.

From The Journal Pioneer: Cavendish to get new Anne anniversary theatre—Darlene Shea.

CAVENDISH — To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the publication of “Anne of Green Gables”, a new theatre will be opening this summer in Cavendish. The Montgomery Theatre will provide a venue to present plays from the life and times of the book’s author, Lucy M. Montgomery. The idea of the theatre was hatched in the summer of 2007 when a group of tourism operators from the Cavendish area met to plan a community commemoration project to mark the centennial.The group also met with internationally acclaimed artistic director Duncan McIntosh, to come up with plans for the theatre.

This new cultural initiative will be launched on Thursday at 10 a.m. at Avonlea Church in Avonlea Village, Cavendish.

“We have a video of a phone sex ad where the woman is played by Anne of Green Gables,” Van Bon Bon says, laughing. “It’s part of exploring those inappropriate dreams we all have. I’m a huge fan of Anne of Green Gables, so it distresses me to sexualize her in this manner — but it’s too damn funny!”

Read all about it here. We’ll try to get tickets.

Amazon.ca has a listing for Don Harron’s book A Hundred Things You Didn’t Know about Anne of Green Gables, the Musical, scheduled for publication on 1 April 2008 by White Knight Books. More information about this book will be posted here when it becomes available.

This article from 31 July 2007 appeared on the CBC website:

Anne and Gilbert, the musical featuring fictional redhead Anne Shirley that started its Summerside run earlier this month, has gone green.

Producer Campbell Webster has purchased just over $300 in carbon credits to help offset fuel and other energy usage during staging of the theatre production, and ease the effects on the environment.

Campbell Webster, the producer of Anne and Gilbert, bought $300 worth of carbon credits.
(CBC News)

“There’s a certain elegance to it. It can be a simple way to offset the carbon fuels that you use,” Webster told CBC News.

Being staged at the Harbourfront Jubilee Theatre from July 15 to Sept. 19, Anne and Gilbert is a love story based on Lucy Maud Montgomery’s popular Anne of Green Gables book series.

Carbon credits are vouchers used to sponsor clean-energy research and projects, in an effort to counterbalance carbon emissions produced by activities such as driving or air travel.

Webster purchased his credits from Planetair, a non-profit Montreal company dedicated to reducing greenhouse gases.

Rebecca Parent, who plays Anne in this year’s production, has a two-hour round-trip drive to the Summerside theatre each day, and said the carbon credits will help the environmental cause.

“We can’t completely cut out our carbon emissions,” Parent said. “Knowing that what we are putting out into the atmosphere is being offset, obviously, by this project makes you feel better about yourself.”

Webster said the production will continue to seek ways to offset its carbon footprint, adding he hopes to purchase more credits next year to help compensate for the fossil fuels burned by the stage lighting.

From CBC website:

Elaine Campbell, a co-creator of the longest running musical in Canadian history, Anne of Green Gables, died Friday in Charlottetown.

Campbell was one of the lyricists for the musical and part of the team — consisting of her husband, Norman Campbell, Don Harron, Mavor Moore and Alan Lund — that brought the internationally famous L.M. Montgomery book to Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre of the Arts in the 1960s. The show is now in its 43rd year.

Harron, the only surviving member of the creative team, said Elaine Campbell shaped the character of Anne.

“She brought a sensitivity. Norman and I were showoffs and Elaine was not. And she brought a real sense of the inner Anne,” he said. “She doesn’t get enough credit for what she did.”

Campbell, who was born in northern Ontario in 1925, spent her summers in Prince Edward Island and her winters in Toronto.

She wrote lyrics for three other musicals and contributed to specials for CBC Television, Rideau Hall and two Royal galas. She also established an endowment fund to the Confederation Centre in her husband’s name.

Her connection with Prince Edward Island, and the festival, was maintained for over 40 years.

“She’s never missed an opening that I know of in terms of the opening of the summer festival,” said Wayne Hambly, chair of the board of the Confederation Centre.

“Every year she comes down from Toronto to stay at their summer home. She brings to the centre a great level of excitement and a great level of pride in the accomplishments of the cast and crew.”

Campbell is best-known as a writer for the theatre and patron of the arts.

However, she also served with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the Second World War, spent time on the board of the National Ballet of Canada and was a Jane Austin scholar.

She was an avid traveller. Her final trip, in the last year of her life, was to Libya.

Campbell leaves five children and one grandchild. There will be a private celebration of her life held on P.E.I. A public event will take place later in Toronto.

Anne of Green Gables News - Topix is a site yuka found with updated AoGG information on the net.

Beth C. forwarded this review to me, and so thought it would be of interest.

http://www.talkinbroadway.com/ob/03_29_07.html

For a complete list of theatrical adaptations of L.M. Montgomery’s work, see the theatre section of An L.M. Montgomery Resource Page.