4th Line Theatre is excited to open its 2024 Summer Season with the world premiere of Alison Lawrence’s Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes*. Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes is a funny and enlightening exploration of the largely unknown story of the teenage girls who stepped up and worked on farms across Canada to feed the troops, and indeed all Canadians, during WWII. These ‘Farmerettes,’ all in their 90s now, tell us that the summers they worked those farms were the best of their lives, even 70 or more years later.

During WWII, Southern Ontario was in need of farm labourers because the men who typically worked on the farms were drafted into the war. The Ontario Provincial Government responded by creating The Ontario Farm Service Force in 1941 “to recruit workers from all levels of society.” The majority of the responses to this program were young women who were often students, called the Farmerettes. The program was so popular that it continued for seven years after the war until 1952.

“I am excited we finally get to share Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes with our audiences,” says 4th Line Theatre’s Managing Artistic Director Kim Blackwell. “This play, five years in the making, is pure 4th Line - taking audiences inside a little known piece of regional history.”

Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes is inspired by the book Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: Memories of the Ontario Farmerettes by Bonnie Sitter and Shirleyan English. Written in 2019, Bonnie Sitter was determined to publish the book in less than a year after discovering a photo of the Farmerettes in her late-husband’s belongings to ensure Farmerettes could read their collective stories. Lawrence’s play depicts these stories from the best summer of these young women’s lives.

Autumn Smith is making her 4th Line Theatre directing debut and will direct the production, which has been in development for five years. Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes will feature several actors making their 4th Line debuts including: Megan Murphy, Reena Goze, Aimée Gordon, Carina Sălăjan, and Alicia Salvador.

Returning to the 4th Line stage in Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes is Rebecca Birrell (The Tilco Strike).

The creative team includes Costume Designer Korin Cormier, Musical Director and Composer Justin Hiscox and Sound Designer Steáfán Hannigan. The stage management team includes Kelsey Powell and Mikayla Stoodley.

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Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes

World Premiere

By Alison Lawrence

Dramaturged by Kim Blackwell and Severn Thompson

Directed by Autumn Smith

July 1 – July 20, 2024

Previews: July 1- 2, 2024

Opening Night: July 3, 2024

Tuesday to Sunday at 6 pm

The production of Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes is sponsored by Miskin Law

Tickets, gift certificates, copies of the book Onion Skins & Peach Fuzz: Memories of the Ontario Farmerettes, and picnics for 4th Line Theatre productions can be purchased by phone at 705-932-4445 or toll-free at 800-814-0055, online at 4thlinetheatre.on.ca, or at 4th Line Theatre’s Box Office at 9 Tupper Street, Millbrook. Box office hours are 9 AM – 5 PM, Mondays through Fridays.

Alison Lawrence, Playwright - Onions Skins & Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes

Alison is a writer, actor, independent theatre creator. She co-wrote the play bittergirl, the book Bittergirl: Getting Over Getting Dumped (Penguin Canada, Plume US) and bittergirl – the musical (currently playing at Drayton Entertainment) with Annabel Fitzsimmons and Mary Francis Moore. bittergirl has been produced across the country and in the US and UK. She also wrote The Thing Between Us (shortlisted for the Playwright Guild of Canada’s Carol Bolt Award) and Piece by Piece (produced in Toronto and as part of the New American Voices series in London, England). Alison’s other work includes The Catering Queen, (Pick of the Fringe and NOW Magazine’s Outstanding New Play, then remounted at the Tarragon Theatre’s Extra Space). The Catering Queen and bittergirl are published by Scirocco Drama. Her play And All For Love was developed and premiered by the English Theatre at the National Arts Centre. Recently, she developed The Right with Toronto’s Studio 180 Theatre, and her yet-to-premiere play Packing Up was part of the NAC’s #CanadaPerforms pandemic relief livestream series from St. John’s NFLD. In March 2020, her play Too Close to Home premiered just as the pandemic did at Theatre Orangeville. As an actor Alison has worked at theatres across the country and has most recently appeared in two seasons of Amazon Prime’s “The Lake;” on “Ghosts” (CBS); and “Murdoch Mysteries” (CBC). She is an alumna of the Banff Playwrights Lab and a MacDowell Fellow.