This August, 4th Line Theatre is excited to continue its 2024 Summer Season with the world premiere of Beverley Cooper’s Jim Watts: Girl Reporter, directed and dramaturgy by Managing Artistic Director Kim Blackwell. The play takes audiences from Toronto to Madrid to Peterborough and features a local connection in Jim Higgins who raised his family in Peterborough and was truly heroic as a member of the Mackenzie-Papineau brigade in Spain.

Eugenia “Jim” Watts, was most famously known for being a Canadian correspondent for the Spanish Civil War and the only woman to join the MacKenzie-Papineaus, Canada’s Republican regiment in Spain. Her political beliefs and actions were heavily inspired by Emma Goldman, a prominent feminist at the time. Jim Watts began her political work as a theatre artist in Toronto, later founding Theatre of Action. She was a prominent figure in the theatre movement during the 1930s. Watts did more than write about the Spanish Civil War, as she was also an active participant in nursing and driving ambulances for the wounded civilians and soldiers.

“Featuring battle scenes, politics, Europe in the 1930s—Jim Watts: Girl Reporter is a play in the epic style 4th Line does best,” says 4th Line Theatre’s Managing Artistic Director Kim Blackwell. “I think people will be fascinated by this story. There will be many famous people from history onstage including Ernest Hemingway, Errol Flynn, MacKenzie King, Dr. Norman Bethune, Lillian Helman, Dorothy Parker, Emma Goldman and Martha Gelman to name a few.”

Jim Watts: Girl Reporter is a fascinating exploration of the experience of trailblazing youth who illegally flocked to Spain to fight fascism, attempting to stop its march across Europe, in the mid-1930s.

Managing Artistic Director Kim Blackwell will direct the production, which has been in development for five years. Jim Watts: Girl Reporter will feature several actors making their 4th Line debuts including: in the title role of Jean "Jim" Watts, Katie Ryerson, who recently appeared as Moaning Myrtle in the original Canadian company of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, José Andrés Bordas and Anita La Selva, - who will also work as a dialect coach, intern director and choreographer on the play.

Returning to the 4th Line stage, in Jim Watts: Girl Reporter, are 4th Line's founder Robert Winslow as Ed Cecil-Smith, Thomas Fournier as Jim Higgins, Mikayla Stoodley as Dorothy Livesay, Matt Gilbert as Dr. Norman Bethune, Mark Hiscox as Leslie Morris, Kelsey Powell as Ted Allan, Zack Radford as Errol Flynn, Nathan Simpson as Ernest Hemingway, Hilary Wear as Emma Goldman and Lindsay Wilson as Martha Gellhorn. The cast will feature 31 professional and volunteer actors.

Community volunteer actors include: Brady Carveth, Indigo Chesser, Jasper Chesser, Michelle Chesser, Logan Coombes, Rita Granda, Cody Inglis, Mahi Li Sahadeo, Darius Maliha-Evans, Ian McGarrett, Zach Newnham, Darragh O’Connell and Phil Stott.

The creative team includes Costume Designer Korin Cormier, Set Designer Michelle Chesser, Musical Director and Composer Justin Hiscox, Dialect Coach and Choreographer Anita La Selva, Fight Director Edward Belanger and Sound Designer Steáfán Hannigan. The stage management team includes Emily Brown, Gailey Monner and Molly Gabriel.

Jim Watts: Girl Reporter

World Premiere

By Beverley Cooper

Directed and Dramaturged by Kim Blackwell

July 30 – August 24, 2024

Previews: July 30, 31

Opening Night: Thursday, August 1

Tuesday to Saturday at 6 pm

Tickets, gift certificates and snack boxes 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.