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.
James Stewart Reaney celebrates London’s 200th with the Forest City Fact for his father, playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney and his mother, poet Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney. May 13, 2026 in Gibbons Park in London, Ontario. (Photo by Josh Lambier)
In celebration of London’s bicentennial, the City of London launched the first Forest City Facts earlier this week at Gibbons Park on the Thames River. Each lawn sign displays a short historical fact about London people, places, and events.
Look for Forest City Facts along the Thames Valley Parkway, in green spaces and community centres and at events throughout the city during the bicentennial year.
For more about London’s bicentennial and Forest City Facts, see the City of London’sCelebrating 200 Years page.
This photo taken by Shieky Brownstone in 2000 shows James (Jamie) Crerar Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau Reaney in their backyard at 276 Huron Street in London, Ontario (Courtesy LMHS).
For more about the Forest City Facts event, see these news stories:
James Reaney at the farm near Stratford, Ontario in 1971 (TVO.org)
The Farm
James Reaney’s emblem poem “The Farm” (1969)
( ( ( 0 ) ) ) For more about James Reaney’s poems and a look back at the family farm where James Reaney grew up, see the 1971 TVOntario documentary “James Reaney” in the Canadian Writers series.
The Farm
There was a farm divided in two 1/2 of it surly brick maker owned swale & slough clay & stiff Into this from the western half Jutted an orchard of 50 young trees Captain Grape Arbour & Major Mulberry Angel greening trees in whitewashed trunks Roods & perches fought clayhole & swamp & the lawns won, the gravel pit’s gone Now the farm’s one.
James Reaney, 1969
(Note: “Roods & perches” are land survey measurements.)
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.
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.
Peggy Roffey presents “Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision” at the James Reaney Memorial Lecture on November 29, 2025 in London, Ontario. London poets Patricia Black and Ola Nowosad (seated) read many of Colleen Thibaudeau’s poems.
Thank you for coming to the 16th annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrating poet Colleen Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea’ Vision this past Saturday November 29th. This year’s lecture is part of Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of Colleen Thibaudeau’s centenary.
Thank you, Peggy Roffey, for leading us through a thoughtful exploration of Thibaudeau’s poetry. After getting us to reflect on someone dear to us and on what we associated with that person, Peggy said that we “… had all donea bit of Colleening. You’ve used memory and imagination to reach beyond time and space. You found an association, made a connection and had that associated detail there. You’ve also connected to somebody else in the room.”
“You’ve touched on the way Colleen wrote her poems; they are peopled, very peopled. Full of significant objects, places, experiences, but all attached to people. I actually counted the number of people that she named by name or role: five hundred. Five hundred people in just over two hundred poems….”
Thanks also to Alannah Vanderburgh-Oakley and Dan Hamilton of the London Public Library for their coordination and assistance, and to Josh Lambier of Words Festival for his technical expertise.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Wordsfest for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
James Reaney and Colleen Thibaudeau near Stratford, Ontario in 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
This year, in the spirit of metaphor, the 2025 James Reaney Memorial Lecture steps to the side and shows the “she” beside the “he”: James Reaney’s wife, poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012).
Join us on Saturday November 29that the London Public LibraryCentral Branch for poet Peggy Roffey’s presentation “Colleen Thibaudeau’s Big Sea Vision”.
In a combination of photo images, presentation, and readings, Peggy Roffey and readers from London’s poetry community will explore Colleen Thibaudeau’s unique voice, sensibility, and metaphor-making artistry.
Thibaudeau’s ‘Big Sea Vision’ helps us enter the very nature of metaphor, illuminating the connectedness of things, people, times and places, showing the as-yet unseen inside something else. Her big sea vision is all over her poems like fingerprints, a vision worth holding in a fragmenting world.
It was Colleen Thibaudeau who delivered the first Reaney Memorial Lecture in 2010 at a grassroots event in Stratford. Since the Lecture was welcomed to London under the Words Festival banner and with support from the London Public Library in 2016, performances of her poems and short stories have inspired several of its iterations.
The 2025 Lecture is the first one devoted to her words and life. It marks another peak for Colleening 2025, a year-long celebration of her centenary. The last scheduled event is Antler River Poetry’s evening of Colleen Thibaudeau poems, December 3, 7 pm, at the Landon Branch Library.
About the presenter:Peggy Roffey is a Londoner who did her Master’s Thesis at UWO on Colleen’s poetry to 1975 and was a frequent reader alongside Colleen. Peggy has also had an interesting career in organizational culture and leadership development at St. Joseph’s Health Care London and at UWO (Western). She taught English Renaissance Literature and Canadian Literature at Western for the last 15 years of her career.
For more about Colleen Thibaudeau and her poetry, see the biography on her website.
This year’s James Reaney Memorial Lecture celebrates the legacy of poet Colleen Thibaudeau (1925-2012), the late wife of poet and playwright James Crerar (Jamie) Reaney (1926-2008). Our grateful thanks to the London Public Library and Words Festival for giving the lecture a new home and partnership.
Colleen Thibaudeau and James Reaney near Stratford, Ontario, 1982. (Photo by Marty Gervais)
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 