Director, playwright, artistic director Gil Garratt

Gil Garratt is the artistic director at the Blyth Festival, which focuses on new play development and work with rural themes. Plays developed at Blyth have been produced around the world, which is impressive especially considering Blyth is a rural town of 1,000 people. In our conversation Garratt shares his progressive thoughts on the Canadian dramaturgical and development process, adding that working on comedies can be the most divisive of all genres. I have witnessed, in the rehearsal of comedy, more relationships destroyed, friendships obliterated over the course of the comedy, than I have working in tragedy. Garratt graduated from the National Theatre School’s Playwriting Program and holds an Honours BA from the University of Waterloo, and an MA from the University of Guelph.