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About

Keith Roulston

After growing up on a farm near Lucknow, Ontario, Keith Roulston decided he wanted to write. He studied journalism at Ryerson Polytechnical Insitute (today Ryerson University) where he also fell in love with theatre. When he returned to his home region and purchased a newspaper in Blyth with his wife Jill, he discovered the village had a beautiful theatre in Blyth Memorial Hall. After meeting Paul Thompson of Theatre Passe Muraille in 1972 and attending the first production of The Farm Show in Ray Birdâ??s barn near Clinton, he began working with Thompson to establish a professional theatre in the building. The relationship led to James Roy and Anne Chislett arriving to found the Blyth Festival in 1975. Since then, Roulston has split his life between journalism and the theatre. Powers and Gloria was his sixth play to be produced by the Blyth Festival and he co-authored Another Seasonâ??s Promise and Another Seasonâ??s Harvest with Chislett. In his other life he is editor and publisher of The Rural Voice, and publisher of The Citizen, a community-owned newspaper in Blyth and Brussels.