Fonds F552 - Peter Blais fonds

Actor, artist, set and costume designer, Peter Blais was born in Ottawa in 1949. While at Carleton University in the 1960s, he joined the university's drama society and met Dan Ackroyd with whom he performed on several occasions.

Blais’s acting career spans radio, theatre, television and film. He has appeared in television series such as Street Legal and Made in Canada and films such as Bed and Breakfast (2000) and Guilty as Sin (1993). He has been nominated for multiple Dora Awards and a 1999 Gemini for Best Supporting Actor in a Continuing TV Role for his work on PSI Factor: Chronicles of the Paranormal.

Although he began (and remained) an actor throughout his career, in the 1970s he also delved more into his interest in fibre art. By the mid-1970s, he had already become regarded as a rising fibre artist with solo shows at both the Tradewinds Gallery in Yorkville and the St Lawrence Centre for the Performing Arts. He combined his interest in theatre with his investigations of “new approaches to fibre and its applications to theatre design” (“About the Artist: Peter Blais”). His award of a Canada Council Explorations grant in 1976 provided a strong foundation for his work on Shakespeare’s King Lear. With photographer Stephen Fine, he collaborated on a show “Lear: An Approach to Theatre Design” that toured three galleries in the Greater Toronto Area and subsequently to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake. In 1977 he designed costumes made from jute fibre for John Wood’s ambitious production of King Lear at Neptune Theatre, Halifax.

Blais began his collaboration with George F. Walker as a designer in 1981. For the next 14 years he went on to both design and act in at least 9 Walker play premiers—for both Factory Theatre and Livent productions—to the point he became identified as "the quintessential Walker actor" (Wagner). His and Walker’s collaborations had been so productive that Walker actually wrote Love and Anger (1989) for Blais to be the lead actor.

In the 1990s, Blais retired from the theatre and moved to Nova Scotia in 1997. There in partnership with Tom Alway, he established the Maritime Painted Saltbox Gallery in Mahone Bay. The gallery has since moved to Petite Riviere, Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. Blais returned to the stage in November 2005 in God of Hell at Halifax's Neptune Theatre, but he spends his time primarily on his art.

Sources
Contents of the fonds.

“About the Artist: Peter Blais.” The Maritime Painted Saltbox Gallery. Accessed September 11, 2024. Available at https://www.paintedsaltbox.com/about-peter-blais/.

"Peter Blais." Wikipedia. Accessed September 10, 2024. Available at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Blais.

Wagner, Vit. “Walker’s Friend Blais at centre of his stage.” The Toronto Star. October 6, 1989. P. 62. Accessed September 11, 2024. Available at https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-toronto-star-walkers-friend-blais-a/145785505/.