Music legend Pamela Morgan and the Stephenville Theatre Festival

By Keith and Heather Nicol

     Newfoundland music star Pamela Morgan is heavily involved in this year’s Stephenville Theatre Festival and we recently had a chance to speak to her about some of the shows she is involved in.  First some background-from 1976-1995 Pamela Morgan was lead singer, guitarist, and arranger for Canada’s pioneering “Celtic” band, Newfoundland’s Figgy Duff, who brought the traditional Newfoundland music to a global audience.  Since 1995 she has created several albums and toured extensively in Canada, the US and in Europe. More recently she has overseen productions of two of her original scores for live theater; her own folk opera, “The Nobleman's Wedding”, and Figgy Duff's score for Shakespeare's "Tempest". For the Stephenville Theatre Festival she told us that she has reworked “The Nobleman's Wedding” creating a full length folk opera in the process. “This has been an incredible amount of work writing the story, creating and arranging the music, learning to play the pieces and now as musical director teaching it to the rest of the cast. The story is based on a song that I initially learned in Stephenville in the 1970’s and so it is fitting that this full length musical production is being performed here for the Stephenville Theatre Festival.” We saw the “The Nobleman's Wedding” and we really liked Morgan’s folk opera and how it was performed by the band and singers. 

Pamela Morgan spoke to us about her involvement with the Stephenville Theatre Festival

      Pamela Morgan is also the musical director for two other performances at the Stephenville Theatre Festival- “Music from Home” and “The Country Show”. “Although I have been around music professionally for all of my adult life, being a musical director is not a role I usually have so this has been a new experience for me. My philosophy is to have the performers select a few songs that they think might fit the programme and then I work with each performer to make sure the songs they end up singing for the show are well suited to their voice and style.”

Pamela Morgan will have her own show at the Festival on August 6, 2014

     We have been lucky enough to see both of these shows and thoroughly enjoyed both of them. Pamela Morgan will also have her own show on August 6, 2014 at the Stephenville Theatre Festival .  She told us that it will feature music from her recent CD “Play On” as well as some of her earlier music and that some special guests will join her for that performance.  For tickets to any of these shows contact:http://www.stephenvilletheatrefestival.com/