On a warm, humid night in June of 1962, four amateur actors sat on stools in the Court House of Niagara-on-the-Lake for their first performance of Don Juan in Hell from George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman. It was a "modest" first performance, without the pomp and circumstance of other theatre openings, and many were unsure of the lifespan of such a theatre experience. So began founder Brian Doherty's Shaw Festival, or as it was humbly called in the beginning, A Salute to Shaw.
Entering its silver anniversary, the Shaw Festival has seen the curtains open and close on numerous performances. L.W. Conolly, Shaw Festival scholar and Professor of English at Trent University, takes us on an anecdotal journey in The Shaw Festival: The First Fifty Years. In it, he celebrates one of the biggest theatre festivals in Canada, all the while honouring George Bernard Shaw and the men and women who helped make the Court House and Festival Theatres what they are today.
With stunning photographs and illustrations generously donated from the Shaw Festival Archives and the L.W. Conolly Theatre Archives, The Shaw Festival is a fitting tribute to the fifty-year development of Niagara-on-the-Lake and of Brian Doherty's Shaw Festival.