In celebration of Remembrance Day 2025, Bruce County Playhouse is presenting two productions.
November 7th – 7:30
Portraying her Aunt Viv as an RCAF clerk, Stevie Vallance will be singing love songs from WW1 and WW2 while photos of veterans, that include scenes of Saugeen Shores provided by war historian Bill Streeter, will be projected in the background. “The story is told from the perspective of my aunt as a young woman who has just married her soldier-love on a weekend leave,” says Vallance. “We follow Viv through the war: through the loving and the leaving, the letters and the worrying, the waiting and the wondering.” When the war ended in 1945, the military awarded Vivien (who spelled her name in the masculine sense) with a scholarship to study Art in Montreal, where one of her teachers was Arthur Lismer, who compared her style to Emily Carr’s. (Music Director/piano: John McLelland)
Vallance, also wrote, directed and starred as “Eliza Knowles” in ‘The Night Guy Came to Town’, a musical about Guy Lombardo’s performance at the Southampton Dance Pavilion, during the Great Depression. The musical-play was staged at the Southampton Town Hall in 2023, in front of a full house. Many in the audience came dressed in period garb and a group of Southampton residents offered their talents to play their ancestors who attended Guy’s actual Dance in 1935.
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November 8th – 7:30 p.m.
Billy Bishop Goes to War. This production of the Canadian musical, comedy, and drama has had audiences jumping to their feet. Diana Bishop, granddaughter of Billy Bishop and a former producer for CBC, CTV, NBC, and Global Television, said of this production, “Matt is my favourite Billy Bishop ever. He is a tour de force as my grandfather. Nobody plays this role better…..And I have seen them all!”
This beloved show, and winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, pays tribute to Canada’s iconic WW1 hero and flying ace, Billy Bishop from Owen Sound.
The two-man musical features actor Matt Evans portraying the legendary Bishop, as well as an astonishing 15 other characters. Matt has recently appeared in CBC’s Murdock Mysteries and TV series Fellow Travellers on Paramount+. He has also starred in Canadian feature films including Beowulf & Grendel, Black Swan, Things To, and The Birder.
Musician Michael Mulrooney co-pilots Billy Bishop Goes to War with Evans, using the on-stage piano to score and punctuate battle scenes, taking us from bar rooms to ballrooms, capturing both humour and heartstrings with skillful musicianship. Mulrooney is a sought-after music director, conductor, pianist and arranger, having worked on the Canadian theatrical productions of The Lion King, Phantom of the Opera, Ragtime, and Showboat. Michael has taught at York University and is currently a professor at the prestigious Sheridan College Musical Theatre Program.
