Huron-Perth Boomers Summer 2024

SPOTLIGHT
Born into
stratford
Hospitality
BY ELIZABETH BUNDY-COOPER
If you could have the founder of the Stratford
Festival, its first artistic director, and its first musical
director sitting around your dining room table, what
would you ask them?
For Laura Pogson, this isn’t a rhetorical question – it
was a reality. It actually happened. Perhaps not at the
exact same time, admittedly, but pretty darn close.
When the Smith family began welcoming
theatre guests into their home in 1953, as a small
Shakespearean Festival raised its tent and started an
arts boom in the railroad town of Stratford, Laura
was only 10 years old. Today, in the house she was
born in, she continues to host guests to the city.
As we sat in the grand dining room of her heritage
home on William Street on a rainy spring afternoon,
we were surrounded by photographs, awards,
newspaper clippings, costumes and artifacts, all
collected from her past and from the Stratford
Festival’s beginnings. I felt very much like I was sitting
in the very spot where authors would scribe poetry,
actors would practice their lines, and musicians
scratch out lyrics and melodies. It turns out, I was!
Laura remembers fondly of when she was a child
and peeking into the living room watching Louis
Applebaum dance around. She was entranced.
“He was composing music to A Midsummer Night’s
Dream. Can you imagine that?” Laura grinned.
Applebaum was composer and music director for
70 productions over 46 years. His iconic Fanfare has
been played prior to every performance at Stratford’s
main stage since it started, to remind people it is time
to take their seats. Here is a little-known fact – the
music, played by trumpets, was written to sound like
a train whistle that came through Stratford daily,
announcing its arrival. Listen closely next time and
the first notes mimic the tone of a VIA whistle!
Let me hit rewind a bit further to the early-1950s
and share with you how her parents’ house became
the first tourist home when the Festival celebrated its
inaugural season. When Tom Patterson, the founder
of the festival, was in Grade 11, his English teacher,
Rose McQueen, gave her class an assignment to
come up with a project that would economically
benefit the city. Without even seeing a Shakespeare
play, Patterson drew up a plan to have an open-air
Shakespeare theatre. Patterson lived around the
corner from Laura’s parents, Edward and Haidee,
and he told them his idea. Since most of Stratford’s
schools and many of its streets are named after
Shakespeare characters, he thought a summer
festival of the Bard’s plays would bring in tourists
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