Composer John Beckwith (Photo courtesy the Canadian Music Centre)
James Reaney was fortunate to have composer John Beckwith set many of his poems to music: The Great Lakes Suite, A Message to Winnipeg, and Twelve Letters to a Small Town. Beckwith and Reaney also collaborated on longer operas Night-blooming Cereus, The Shivaree, and Crazy to Kill.
To listen to original recordings of Beckwith-Reaney works, visit the Canadian Music Centre‘s Composer Showcase.
James Reaney and John Beckwith, Summer 2003, in London, Ontario. Photo by Colleen Reaney
Fondly remembered by the Reaney, Cooke, and Chamberlin Franken families, here are photos of the farm as it was. If you remember the farm and have a photo to share, please get in touch.
Summer 1937 — The Reaney farmhouse and the old barnyard. The original barn was built in 1869, and the house was built in 1875.James Reaney (far right) with his cousins, Elsie, Kathleen, and Mary, Summer 1930 near Stratford, Ontario.
James Reaney feeding the chickens (age 5) with his cousins Mary and Elsie (1931)James Reaney in the garden at the farm, July 1985. (Photo by Wilma McCaig)
Alice Through the Looking-Glass director Jillian Keiley with actors playing Alice across Canada: Gwendolyn Collins (Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre), Ellie Heath (Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre), Trish Lindström (the Stratford Festival) and, seated, Natasha Greenblatt (NAC and Charlottetown’s Confederation Centre of the Arts). Photographed in the Palm Room of Spadina House, Toronto, June 2015.
This summer the Charlottetown Festival will present James Reaney’s adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass at the Homburg Theatre at the Confederation Centre for the Arts in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
Alice Through the Looking-Glass at the Charlottetown Festival, June 24-August 29
This production of Alice is the Atlantic Canada premiere of last summer’s Stratford Festival hit. How fitting that Alice would journey to PEI — the home of Anne of Green Gables! Long ago Mark Twain called Anne Shirley “the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice.”
To purchase tickets, call 1-800-565-0278 (902-566-1267) or order onlinehere.
Trish Lindstrom as Alice in Alice Through the Looking-Glass, May 2014 at the Stratford Festival. Photo by Cylia Von Tiedemann.
♦ Jane Urqhart: Fifth Business by Robertson Davies ♦ Monika Lee: The Donnellys by James Reaney ♦ Michael Hurley: Perpetual Motion by Graeme Gibson ♦ Shani Mootoo: All the Broken Things by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
“James Reaney is one of our best Gothic writers from Southern Ontario, and he is one of the most influential. He’s had a huge impact on a lot of writers who are more famous than he is, like Alice Munro and Margret Atwood,” says Monika Lee, Professor of English Literature at Brescia College.
“James Reaney’s plays — Colours in the Dark (1969), Baldoon (1976), and The Donnellys (1974-7) — as well as his short stories “The Bully” and “The Box Social” (reprinted in The Box Social and Other Stories in 1996), also assume Gothic elements of the macabre rooted in nightmarish families and uncanny action. […]
What makes this locale so prone to Gothic tales is the failure of communication between family members or social groups. In the absence of communication, strange projections and psychological grotesqueries spring up and rapidly grow to unmanageable proportions. Malevolent fantasies are the source and sustenance of the Gothic tradition.” —Michael Hurley and Allan Hepburn in The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature, pages 593-594. William Toye, Ed., Oxford University Press, 2011.
Director Jillian Keiley’s production of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, adapted for the stage by James Reaney, opens December 9 to January 3 at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa.
Jillian Keiley is the National Arts Centre’s English Theatre Artistic Director, and she led a successful production of Alice Through the Looking Glass at the Stratford Festivalearlier this summer.
Lois Anderson as the White Queen and Natasha Greenblatt as Alice in Alice Through the Looking Glass, National Arts Centre, Ottawa, December 9, 2014 to January 3, 2015. Photo by David Krovblit.
Tim Inkster in Stratford, Ontario, October 19, 2014. Photo by Laura Cudworth, courtesy Stratford Beacon Herald.
Thank you all for coming to the Fifth Annual James Reaney Memorial Lecture in Stratford to hear publisher Tim Inkster’s talk on “The Iconography of James Reaney: A Collector’s Manual.”
Inkster praised the excellence of the typography and graphic design in many of James Reaney’s published works, particularly Paul Arthur’s design for The Red Heart (1949) and Allan Fleming’s design for A Suit of Nettles (1958). Tim is also impressed by James Reaney’s work hand typesetting the early issues of his magazine Alphabet (1960-1971).
Alphabet Number One, September 1960. Cover design by Allan Fleming (1929-1977)
A full version of Tim Inkster’s lecture will appear in an upcoming issue of The Devil’s Artisan, a journal of the printing arts.
Cover for James Reaney’s Twelve Letters To A Small Town, first published in 1962 by Ryerson Press.
Pages 6 and 7 from Twelve Letters To A Small Town (1962). Drawings by James Reaney.
Our thanks also to Charles Mountford of Poetry Stratford and Robyn Godfrey of the Stratford Public Library for their help in organizing this event. Future speakers for the James Reaney Annual Memorial Lecture include Thomas Gerry and John Beckwith.
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.
Join us on Sunday, October 19 at 2:30 pm at The Atrium (behind Café Ten) in Stratford, Ontario, for a talk about graphic design in James Reaney’s work by publisher Tim Inkster.
Tim Inkster is particularly intrigued by the excellence of the design in James Reaney’s first book, The Red Heart(1949), one of the nine titles in McClelland & Stewart’s Indian File series (1948-1958) and designed by Paul Arthur (1924-2001).
Cover and title page from James Reaney’s The Red Heart (1949). The Red Heart was the third title in McClelland & Stewart’s Indian File poetry series.
Café Ten is located at
10 Downie Street,
Stratford, Ontario
N5A 7K4
Tel: (519) 508-2233
The annual lecture is a project developed by The Stratford Public Library and Poetry Stratford, and features a talk by a person who is knowledgeable about the life and work of Stratford poet and playwright James Reaney and of writing in the Southwestern Ontario region, which is such a strong element in Reaney’s writing.
James Reaney’s thoughts on putting on your own version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking-Glass:
Is There Life After Alice? That is, after you’ve seen the show, what do you do when you get home? … Once when I was eight, I had a parallel experience to the one you may have just had, of watching a professional production, authentically acted with exuberance and supported by sophisticated design and fabulous illusions and compelling direction. My theatrical experience wasn’t a play though. In those days, Stratford was not as lucky as it is nowadays, but what it was was my very first circus — Ringling Brothers — an absolutely enthralling show, unforgettably enchanting. The only reaction you could have was to go home and put on your own circus, in this case with my cousins and whatever the farm could muster. Cows as elephants? Of course, you couldn’t rival the production you had just seen, but what you could do was with your own simplicity rival its feeling, and the attempt turned me into an artist. I don’t see this as an improbable effect of the show you have just seen and I hope that the various first steps I have described in paralleling its effects and impacts may lead some of you to a lasting love of theatre and art…
James Reaney leading an Alice workshop at Stratford Central Secondary School (Stratford Collegiate) in 1994. Photo by Scott Wishart, Stratford Beacon Herald.
Jillian Keiley’s new production ofAlice Through the Looking-Glasscontinues this summer at theStratford Festival, May 31 to October 12. To buy tickets, contact the box office at1.800.567.1600 or visit stratfordfestival.ca
Trish Lindström as Alice in “Alice Through the Looking-Glass”, May 31 to October 12 at the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ontario.
“Alice’s Dinner Party” scene from Alice Through the Looking-Glass, Avon Thetare, Stratford, Ontario 2014. Photo courtesy The Stratford Festival.
James Reaney 