AlvegoRoot’s Take the Big Picture returns on Saturday June 27th.
AlvegoRoot Theatre’s adaptation of James Reaney’sTake the Big Picture returns for an encore performance on Saturday June 27th at 2:00 pm at the Manor Park Memorial Hall in London.
Director Adam Corrigan Holowitz says “If you missed the play, now is your chance to see this off-the-wall comedy that left audiences buzzing. If you saw the play already, you can now see it again — we have already had several repeat audience members.”
“It was very exciting to experience audiences engaging with this play, and it became clear that this unusual tale is a story for adults told as if it were a children’s story. Within this playful, hilarious, and sprawling epic, Reaney explores many contemporary issues with sharp and generous humour.”
When: Saturday June 27 at 2:00 pm Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street West
AlvegoRoot Theatre’s Take the Big Picture June 10-14
June 10-14 at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, Alvegoroot Theatre presents Take the Big Picture, a two-act play based on James Reaney’s 1986 children’s novel. Director Adam Corrigan Holowitz describes his adaptation as a story about a family in conflict with the modern world:
The story: The Delahay family is more than a little off balance and seventeen-year-old Colin is doing everything he can to keep his family heading in a somewhat logical direction. The chaos devised by his little brothers, “The Terrible Triplets”, sends his mother into a nervous breakdown and their grandmother banishes the rest of the family to British Columbia.
Safe from the temptations of the modern world, Colin begins reforming his brothers and persuades his father to learn to drive. Now the family is racing down the Trans-Canada back to London, before their house falls in the river and the frayed ends of their lives unravel beyond repair.
The characters: Most of the responsibility for getting the family through their trials and tribulations falls to the eldest son, 17-year-old Colin. It is the stories Colin tells which begins to bring the family back together.
Four intrepid actors play all the characters. The combinations of characters that the actors portray is very intentional. Tina Sterling plays both Grandmother and all three Triplets who operate like a playful three-headed monster. This highlights both the contrasts between these characters and also the similarities in how the Triplets and Grandmother are extremely independent and self-determined.
Taylor Bogaert plays both Andre, the father, and Colin, the son, and in that we see how father and son are similar but also that they belong to different generations. Over the course of the play Andre comes to realize that there are parts of the modern world that he will never understand. The Delahays are eccentric and unmanageable and the actor’s task of depicting the family onstage carries the same frenetic energy as the family themselves. My hope is that this will be equally as thrilling for the audience and actors.
The play will be performed indoors in the Historic Village Hall and goes on rain or shine!
Written and directed by Adam Corrigan Holowitz.
Performed byTaylor Bogaert, Alexandrea Marsh, Kydra Ryan, andTina Sterling.
Where: The Historic Village Hall at Fanshawe Pioneer Village, 1424 Clarke Road, London, Ontario.
When: Evening performances on Wednesday June 10 to Friday June 12 at 7:30 pm; Matinees on Saturday June 13 and Sunday June 14 at 3:00 pm.
James Reaney’s “I know an experience” is the 24th brush stroke from his long poem “Brush Stokes Decorating a Fan.”
(x) I know an experience That brings my 2 butterfly wings Tight together Then open Now shut Dull blur Sudden bright. Over the years our selves Have been blended By all this together, Pleated & unpleating, Opening & closing, Tight together, Loose apart— Two sides of a breath
James Reaney (2005)
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to soprano Sonja Gustafson perform “I know an experience” set to music by Stephen Holowitz and Oliver Whitehead at James Reaney: Words & Music, November 15, 2020 at Words Festival.
Stephen Holowitz (piano), Sonja Gustafson (soprano), Oliver Whitehead (guitar), and Ingrid Crozman (flute), November 15, 2020 at Wordsfest in London, Ontario.
Thanks to Josh Lambier and the Words Festival for sharing this music-poem marvel from the virtual 2020 James Reaney (1926-2008) Memorial Lecture. This is an online event in #Jamie2026, the year-long celebration of James Reaney’s centenary. James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney would have been 100 years old on September 1st.
To celebrateNational Poetry Month, here is the “April” eclogue from James Reaney’s long poem A Suit of Nettles.
April
ARGUMENT: With Duncan as judge the geese hold a bardic contest in honour of Spring.
[DUNCAN RAYMOND VALANCY]
Here is a kernel of the hardest winter wheat
Found in the yard delicious for to eat.
It I will give to that most poetic gander
Who this season sings as well as swam Leander.
The white geese with their orange feet on the green
Grass that grew around the pond’s glassy sheen
Chose then Valancy and Raymond to sing
And to hear them gathered about in a ring.
RAYMOND
I speak I speak of the arable earth,
Black sow goddess huge with birth;
Cry cry killdeers in her fields.
Black ogress ate her glacier lover
When the sun killed him for her;
The white owl to the dark crow yields.
Caw caw whir whir bark bark
We’re fresh out of Noah’s Ark;
Wild geese come in arrowheads
Shot from birds dead long ago
Buried in your negro snow;
Long water down the river sleds.
Black begum of a thousand dugs,
A nation at each fountain tugs;
The forests plug their gaps with leaves.
Whet whet scrape and sharpen
Hoes and rakes and plows of iron;
The farmer sows his sheaves.
Mr Sword or Mr Plow
Can settle in your haymow,
All is the same to Mother Ground.
Great goddess I from you have come,
Killdeer crow geese ditch leaf plowman
From you have come, to you return
In endless laughing weeping round.
VALANCY
Your limbs are the rivers of Eden.
From the dead we see you return and arise,
Fair girl; lost daughter:
The swallows stream through the skies,
Down dipping water,
Skimming ground, and from chimney’s foul dusk
Their cousins the swifts tumble up as the tusk
Of roar day
In bright May
Scatters them gliding from darkness to sun-cusp.
Your face unlocks the bear from his den.
The world has come in to the arms of the sun.
What now sulky earth?
All winter you lay with your face like a nun,
But now bring forth
From river up boxdrain underground
Fish crawling up that dark street without sound
To spawn
In our pond
Young suckers and sunfish within its deep round.
Your body is a bethlehem.
Come near the sun that ripened you from earth
Pushing south winds
Through lands without belief till its pretty birth
The faithful finds:
Fanatic doves, believing wrens and orioles
Devoted redwinged blackbirds with their calls,
Archilochus alexandri,
Melospiza georgiana,
All surround you with arched cries of Love’s triumphals.
Your mind is a nest of all young things, all children
Come to this meadow forest edge;
Put her together
From this squirrel corn dogtooth young sedge
And all this weather
Of the white bloodroots to be her skin
The wake robin to be her shin
Her thighs pockets
Of white violets
Her breasts the gleaming soft pearly everlasting.
For her limbs are the rivers of Eden;
Her face unlocks
The brown merry bear from his den,
From his box
The butterfly and her body is a bethlehem
Humming
With cherubim
And her mind is a cloud of all young things, all children.
The prize to this one goes cried eagerly some
And others cried that to Raymond it must come,
So that Duncan Goose turned to the plantain leaf
And chopped the prize in half with beak-thrust brief.
James Reaney, 1958
The third edition of A Suit of Nettles features charming illustrations by engraver Jim Westergard, available fromThe Porcupine’s Quill.
“Geese” Photo by Elizabeth Cooke (James Reaney’s mother), 1950 near Stratford, Ontario.Butterfly decoration by James Reaney, September 1947 (ink on yellow paper)
2026 — James Reaney’s centenary year — is off to a good start with two plays based on his work from London’s AlvegoRoot Theatre.
On February 20-21, AlvegoRoot presents two encore performances of Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996). Adam Corrigan Holowitz reprises his solo performance as Ephraim, a young traveller lost in a blizzard who strays into Donnelly country. Directed by Kydra Ryan.
AlvegoRoot Theatre reprises James Reaney’s Sleigh Without Bells on February 20-21 in London, Ontario.
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:February 20 at 7:30 pm and February 21 at2 pm.
Tickets: $30 at the door or call 519-615-2210 or order online from OnStageDirect.
AlvegoRoot’s second Reaney production this year is an adaptation of Take the Big Picture, James Reaney’s 1986 children’s novel. Take the Big Picture will be presented at Fanshawe Pioneer Village from June 10 to June 14.
Cast announcements are expected soonfor Take the Big Picture — an epic tale of six children, their parents, their grandmother, and a host of others. It appears that a sasquatch has followed the Delahay family all the way back to Antler River, Ontario after their year away in British Columbia – but quién sabe?
James Reaney’s children’s novel Take the Big Picture from 1986.
Poems Written About The Donnellys To Assist The Renewal of The Town Hall at Exeter, Highway #4 *
I Around Borrisokane, in Eire, the roads twist After cowherds with willow gads, after wise woman’s spells, After chariots and the widest go-around found in a mare’s skin. But in Biddulph, Canada, in Mount Carmel’s brooder stove, St Peter’s fields, The roads cross at right angles, a careful Euclidean net, roods, rods Spun by surveyors out of Spider stars – Mirzak, Spicula, Thuban, Antares. Like serpents, twitchgrass roots, dragons – the Irish roads twist, The old crooked roads twist in the cage of the straight new.
II We were horsemen, dressed well and from my brother’s entire horse, From his entire horse came the colt fast fleet hoofhand with which We seized and held onto the path through Exeter down to London. We lifted the hills, creeks, rivers, slaughterhouses, taverns, We lifted their travellers and those who were asleep when we passed And those who saw us rattle by as they plowed mud or whittled. We lifted them like a graveldust pennant, we swung them up and out Till they yelled about wheels falling off, unfair competition, yah! And we lie here now – headless, still, dead, waggonless, horseless, Sleighless, hitched, stalled.
III As the dressmaker hems my muslin handkerchiefs, The night the Vigilantes burnt down one of their own barns, As I sit waiting for a cake to bake and my gentle niece with me I realize I am not doing what you want me to do. You – bored with your Calvinist shoes chewed to pieces By streets of insurance, streets of cakemix, packages, soap, sermonettes. You want me to – you project a more exciting me on me. She should be burning! Clip! Ax! Giantess! Coarse, I should curse! Why should I accept these handcuffs from you?
James Reaney, 2005
* Respectively, the three speakers of these poems are William Porte, the Lucan postmaster, Tom Donnelly and Mrs. Donnelly.
“Entire Horse” is from Souwesto Home, a collection of James Reaney’s poems from 2005 available from Brick Books.
( ( 0 ) )Listen to Jeff Culbert read “Entire Horse” and other poems from Souwesto Homehere.
All three plays from James Reaney’s The Donnelly Trilogy — Sticks and Stones, The St. Nicholas Hotel, and Handcuffs — were performed at the Blyth Festival in 2023 at Blyth’s Outdoor Harvest Stage.
“Are there any more ladies and gentlemen for Calamity Corners as ’tis sometimes called, St. John’s, Birr — my old friend Ned here calls it Bobtown, the more elegant name is Birr. Elginfield known to some as Ryan’s Corners, Lucan that classic spot if it’s not all burnt down, Clandeboye, Mooretown, Exeter and Crediton. If Ned here hasn’t sawn it to pieces, the coach is waiting for you at the front door and it pleases you.”
(Opening lines from James Reaney’s The St. Nicholas Hotel)
Summer 2023 — On the way to the Outdoor Harvest Stage on the old Blyth Fairgrounds. Photo courtesy The Blyth Festival.
James Reaney printing at the Alphabet Press print shop at 430 Talbot Street in London, Ontario (mid-1960s). Credit: London Free Press/Sun Media Corporation.
In late summer 1965, James Reaney’s Alphabet Press printed the first edition of Colleen Thibaudeau’s Lozenges: Poems in the Shapes of Things in London, Ontario. Thibaudeau’s husband James Reaney typeset the poems and also designed the cover.
In fall 2024, Hilary Neary, historian and former Alphabet Magazine designer, proposed a facsimile second edition of the original Lozenges for Colleening 2025, a celebration of the centenary of Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Printers Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario. (Photo by James Stewart Reaney)
On August 27, 2025, after many months coordinating and resourcing this venture, printers and compositors Hilary Neary, Stephen Sword, and Mike Baker (pictured above) gathered at The Forge and Anvil Museum in Sparta, Ontario to print the new second edition. The photo shows a proof from the new 2025 edition’s cover design in the foreground, and Mike Baker holding the original 1965 classic by Colleen Thibaudeau.
Copies of the new Lozenges: Poems in the Shape of Things were given out at Colleening 2025 events in London and St. Thomas.
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) Listen to Hilary Neary and Mike Baker read poems from Lozenges.
Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Train” from Lozenges (1965)Colleen Thibaudeau’s poem “The Hockey Stick” from Lozenges (1965)
Alphabet Issue 10 from July 1965 shows an announcement for Lozenges by Colleen Thibaudeau and one of her poems “The Hockey Stick” on the inside front cover.
AlvegoRoot Theatre presents Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story, October 22-26
On October 22-26, AlvegoRoot Theatre presents Sleigh Without Bells: A Donnellys Story — a short story by James Reaney from The Box Social and Other Stories (1996).
“The story strikes me as an interesting coda to the Donnelly Trilogy, and a few people I have talked to say they thought that it feels a bit like a portrait of the artist diving into the Donnelly story, falling in love with the people/characters and then having to leave them behind in the land of the dead/purgatory.”
Where: The Manor Park Memorial Hall, 11 Briscoe Street W, London, Ontario When:October 22, 23, and 24 at 7:30 pm and matinees at 2 pm on Saturday October 25 and Sunday October 26.
Tickets: $30 at the door or online from OnStageDirect.
James Reaney (left) directing Tomson Highway and others in a scene from Wacousta, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)
In 1976, James Reaney began working on Wacousta!, a new play based on John Richardson’s 1832 novel. Londoners, NDWT actors, and Western students helped develop the play through a series of workshops directed by Reaney at the University of Western Ontario’s Drama Workshop.
Playwright Tomson Highway, who was studying at Western that fall, was a member of the workshop and the Cree language coach for the play. In a later reflection on “Our Own Literature,” he recalls his early days and how the impetus to write plays came from the discovery that other Canadian writers such as Margaret Laurence wrote about what they knew.
“I was born into an oral culture and an oral language (Cree). Up where I come from, caribou country, the extreme far north of the province of Manitoba […] there is no written language, certainly no English, French, or any other European language. […]”
At age 20 while studying at the University of Manitoba, he “…came upon the writings of Margaret Laurence, whose stories took place in Neepawa, Manitoba, mere miles west of Winnipeg, a town I’d travelled through and whose cemetery I’d seen, from a distance many times and I thought that that stone angel in the imagined cemetery (never having seen it up close) must surely be the most magical stone angel in the history of the universe. […]”
“And then later on of course I met him in the flesh – shook his hand! – I met the poet/playwright James Reaney who wrote about London, Ontario where I was going to university. And then there was Michel Tremblay, over in Montreal, with that country-and-western goddess Carmen, singing her songs of love and sorrow on “the Main.”
“Well that was it. I decided that when I grew up I was gonna be like James Reaney and Michel Tremblay and Margaret Laurence and all the rest of them. I was gonna write stories that took place among my people inside the mythology of my people, vibrant, colourful – every bit as vibrant and colourful and passionate (yes, and tragic, sometimes) as people in New York and London (England) and Paris and Moscow. Yes, I decided, we were gonna have our own literature…in Cree.” [Excerpted from Reading Writers Reading: Canadian Authors” Reflections, Danielle Schaub – Photographer and Editor, University of Alberta Press and The Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2006, page 48.]
For more about Tomson Highway and his plays The Rez Sisters, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, and Kiss of the Fur Queen, see tomsonhighway.ca and the Canadian Theatre Encyclopedia.
For more about the Wacousta Workshops (Fall 1976 to Spring 1977) at Western in London, Ontario, see James Reaney’s play Wacousta![A melodrama in three acts with a description of its development in workshops], Press Porcepic Limited, 1979.
Tomson Highway: lacrosse scene for Wacousta, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)Tomson Highway and others — Wacousta workshops, Fall 1976 (Image courtesy Western University Archives, James Reaney fonds AFC 18)
Sometimes when I hold Our faded old globe That we used at school To see where oceans were And the five continents, The lines of latitude and longitude, The North Pole, the Equator and the South Pole— Sometimes when I hold this Wrecked blue cardboard pumpkin I think: here in my hands Rest the fair fields and lands Of my childhood Where still lie or still wander Old games, tops and pets; A house where I was little And afraid to swear Because God might hear and Send a bear To eat me up; Rooms where I was as old As I was high; Where I loved the pink clenches, The white, red and pink fists Of roses; where I watched the rain That Heaven’s clouds threw down In puddles and rutfuls And irregular mirrors Of soft brown glass upon the ground. The school globe is a parcel of my past, A basket of pluperfect things. And here I stand with it Sometime in the summertime All alone in an empty schoolroom Where about me hang Old maps, an abacus, pictures, Blackboards, empty desks. If I raise my hand No tall teacher will demand What I want. But if someone in authority Were here, I’d say Give me this old world back Whose husk I clasp And I’ll give you in exchange The great sad real one That’s filled Not with a child’s remembered and pleasant skies But with blood, pus, horror, death, stepmothers, and lies.
James Reaney, 1949
“The School Globe” is from The Red Heart (1949), James Reaney’s first book of poems.
James Reaney 