If You Build it, They Will Come

We spent the final hour of The Sunday Edition in the summer in rural Ontario - in a farmyard behind a big white farmhouse, down a hill off a gravel road near Millbrook Ontario. That's about an hour and a half east of Toronto .

The farm belongs to Robert Winslow - this is where he grew up. Robert Winslow loves this unpretentious part of Ontario and the stories it offers up. So when he inherited the farm 20 years ago he turned it into a place to tell those stories. He created 4th Line Theatre.

The audience sits in what was the hay barn; the animal barn became dressing rooms, the stage is the grass between the buildings - the stage is really the entire farm - the pond, the fields - one of this summers plays opened with two men driving a horse and cart across those fields. There are no lights - performances start at 6:00 and everyone arrives around 4:00 for a picnic before the show.

Every play has been written for 4th Line and every play springs from what the locals might think of as just things that happened around here - what others might call history.

It never should have worked but 4th Line Theatre just finished its 19th season. This year they averaged 90% attendance. Playwrights bid to write for 4th Line - to created something universal from what happened just down the road.

Listen here: