Laura Mullin talks to actor Tom Barnett about Michael Healey’s celebrated Canadian play The Drawer Boy. Barnett was part of the original 1999 Theatre Passe Muraille production, where he played the young actor Miles in a play inspired by the creation of the groundbreaking documentary theatre project The Farm Show.

In this conversation, Barnett reflects on discovering the play as a young actor before anyone knew it would become a classic, touring it across Canada, and returning decades later to play Angus, the farmer at the emotional centre of the story. He shares what it was like to experience the play from two very different characters and why The Drawer Boy continues to move audiences around the world.

Morgan begins to share the story of the wartime accident that changed everything for him and Angus. But as the past comes into focus, the careful world the two farmers have built together starts to crack, forcing all three men to confront the consequences of turning memory into story.

Cast: Tom Barnett, Patrick McManus, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff

The Drawer Boy by Michael Healey

One of the most produced Canadian plays of the past three decades, The Drawer Boy is inspired by the creation of The Farm Show, the legendary production that sent a group of actors to rural Ontario to learn directly from farming communities.

On a quiet farm, lifelong friends Morgan and Angus live inside a carefully structured routine shaped by a wartime injury that altered Angus’s memory. When Miles, a young actor from Toronto, arrives to research rural life for a theatre project, his presence disrupts the balance the two men have built over the years. What follows is a funny and revealing collision between urban theatre-making and farm life, as Miles observes the farmers and begins collecting stories for the stage.

Cast: Tom Barnett, Patrick McManus, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff

The Drawer Boy by Michael Healy