Stratford, Ontario — A small town that screams “Shakespeare!”
Majestic white swans float on the Avon River not far from Falstaff Street, named after the playwright’s wife, and Anne Hathaway Park. Some residents live in Romeo Ward, while younger students attend Hamlet Primary School. The school’s eponymous play is often staged annually from April to October as part of the famous theater festival that attracts thousands of Shakespeare fans from all over the world.
Steeped in references and homage to the bard, Stratford, Ontario has relied on its decades-long association with Shakespeare to draw millions of dollars of tourists to a city that has little attraction for tourists. definitely brought it.
“My dad always said we had a world-class theater in a rural area,” said Frank Herr, a second-generation owner of a boat tour and rental business along the Avon River.
Then, about 12 years ago, a new, usually much younger, type of culture-lover began to appear on the streets of Stratford. Believer, or pop his star Justin He’s a Bieber fan and a homegrown talent.
Residents don’t have much trouble distinguishing between the two types of visitors. One clue: look what they have.
“They have Shakespeare books,” Mr. Herr said of the people who are here to love the theatre. “They are serious people.”
Believers, on the other hand, always have their smartphones at hand. document with excitement Little landmarks associated with the pop star, including the location of his first date, the local radio station that first played his music, and the diner he was rumored to be dining at.
Unlike Shakespeare — who has never set foot in the city named after his birthplace of Stratford-upon-Avon, England — Mr. Bieber has a genuine and deep connection. He grew up here and is loved by many.
“I know Justin,” said Herr. “He was always skateboarding on top of the cenotaph, and I was always kicking him off the cenotaph,” he added, referring to the First World War in the gardens next to Lake Victoria. I mentioned the war memorial.
Mr. Bieber’s maternal grandmother, Diane Dale, and her husband, Bruce, lived a 10-minute drive from downtown Stratford. Busking on the steps of the Avon Theater Under their supervision, she said in a recent interview, she is raising as much as $200 a day.
These steps have become a pilgrimage site of sorts for Mr. Bieber’s fans, especially those vying for “One Less Lonely Girl” during the Teen Pop Dreamboat era.
Another popular stop on the Pilgrims’ tour was Dale’s doorstep. After fans rang the doorbell, she assured them her grandchildren weren’t home, but that didn’t stop her from taking selfies outside her red-brick bungalow.
“Justin said if you don’t move, we won’t visit you anymore. She has since moved.
Stratford businesses that benefited from this second visit started talking about the ‘Bieber effect’. This is a play on the “Bilbao effect” associated with the Spanish city recreated by the museum.
But one of the problems with pop fame is that it’s fickle. Fans who had been obsessed with the musician since their teens grew older, the “Bieber fever” died down, and the number of pilgrims dwindled.
Problems that have long plagued other Canadian cities, such as rising house prices and drug addiction, are the quaint city of Stratford, a city of about 33,000, bordering vast cornfields in the farmland region of southwestern Ontario. You can catch a glimpse of the atmosphere.
But more than 400 years after his death, Shakespeare’s magnetism is still completely intact.
Attracting more than 500,000 guests annually and employing nearly 1,000 people, the theater festival presents a repertoire of Shakespearean classics, Broadway-style musicals and contemporary plays.
Early in the coronavirus pandemic, the festival returned to its roots, staging limited shows outdoors under a canopy, similar to its first four seasons from 1953. In 1957, the Festival Theater building was “Hamlet,” starring Canadian actor Christopher Plummer.
This year’s production stars Amaka Ume, a woman who was the first black actor to play Hamlet at the festival.
It’s unclear how popular Mr. Bieber will be four centuries from now, but the appeal of a man who has sold over 100 million digital singles in the United States alone isn’t going away overnight.
And Stratford has taken steps to permanently commemorate his youth here.
Mr. Bieber’s grandparents kept a box containing Mr. Bieber’s belongings, including talent show score sheets and a drum set paid for by the community in a crowdfunding effort. Until the local museum gave the item a chance to display.
Stratford Perth Museum General Manager John Kastner said:
Kastner said he was inundated with calls from international media after he informed local newspapers that the museum would be opening an exhibition in February 2018 called Justin Bieber: A Walk To Stardom.
“We were going to make one room, like a 10 by 10 room,” Kastner said. He called the curator. “I said ‘I have a problem'”
They canceled an agricultural exhibition planned for the adjacent space. This helped him accommodate 18,000 visitors in the Bieber Show’s first year. This is a significant increase from his 850 who visited the museum in 2013.
Kastner said Bieber’s show will run until at least next year, with thousands of dollars in merchandise purchases, giving the modest museum some welcome financial cushion.
Mr. Bieber has also made several visits, chalking his name on guest blackboards and presenting recent memorabilia such as wedding invitations and reception menus featuring a dish called “Grandma Diane’s Bolognese.” I donate.
But even before the Believer family came to town, 50,000 to 100,000 students from around the United States and Canada came to Stratford each year, thanks to organized school visits, and young people rode buses to Stratford. was
Aside from the pandemic-induced border closures, James Pacala and his wife, Dennis, both retired seminary librarians in St. Louis, have been coming to Stratford for about a week each year since the early 1990s. Thirty years before that, Mr. Pakara traveled from Ithaca, New York to Stratford for his high school English literature class.
“I love Shakespeare and Moliere,” said Pacala, 78. He had been studying his program outside the Festival Theater before the recent production of Moliere’s comedy The Miser.
Other guests enjoy the simplicity of getting around Stratford. Traffic is fairly light, there is ample parking, and most major attractions are within easy walking distance of each other, offering stunning views of the rippling river and picturesque gardens.
“It’s easy to get to the theater here,” said Michael Walker, a former banker in Newport Beach, Calif., who visits every year with friends. “It’s not like New York, which is overburdened. I think the quality of theater here is better than Los Angeles or Chicago.”
The Here for Now Theater, an independent nonprofit that opened amid the pandemic and is presenting to audiences of 50 or less, enjoys a “symbiotic relationship” with the festival, says artistic director Fiona Monzillo. said Mr. Fiat on a festival freight train.
“It’s an interesting moment for Stratford because I think Stratford is growing and changing in a really nice way.” ”
Longtime residents of Stratford, like former prison officer Madeleine McCormick, said they sometimes feel like their concerns are being sidelined by tourists.
Still, Ms. McCormick acknowledged the benefits of the vibrant community of artists and creatives that kept her musician husband on track.
“It’s a strange place,” she said. “Thanks to the theater, there is no other place like it.”
and Bieber.