Robert Winslow: The Man Who Put Local History on Stage

Robert Winslow didn’t just build a theatre company. He taught this region how to look at itself.

The founder of 4th Line Theatre in Millbrook died unexpectedly on Saturday, September 12, after taking part in a hockey game earlier that morning. He was in his mid-70s. His passing leaves an enormous hole in the cultural life of Peterborough and the Kawarthas.

Winslow founded 4th Line Theatre in 1992, transforming his family’s century-old farm on Zion Line into one of Canada’s most distinctive theatrical spaces. Barns, fields and country roads became the scenery, while the history of Cavan Township and the surrounding region supplied the stories.

It began with The Cavan Blazers, Winslow’s first full-length play, and grew into more than three decades of theatre rooted firmly in this place. He would go on to write or co-write 18 original plays for 4th Line, while also acting, directing, researching and mentoring generations of performers and theatre artists.

What made Winslow’s work special was that he understood local history wasn’t something locked away in an archive. It lived in kitchen-table stories, family memories, old arguments, community legends and the people who remembered how things really happened. He listened to those voices and gave them a stage.

And what a stage it became.

Thousands of people travelled to Millbrook each summer to sit beneath the open sky and watch stories that could only have been created here. Winslow proved that small-town history could be funny, political, painful, messy and completely compelling.

Even after stepping down as artistic director in 2014, he never really stepped away. He continued writing, researching and performing, including appearing this summer in 4th Line Theatre’s production of Schoolhouse. According to managing artistic director Kim Blackwell, he was still researching and writing new plays right up until the day before his death.

That may be the most fitting image of Robert Winslow: still curious, still collecting stories, still working.

There will be deserved attention paid to the awards, productions and accomplishments of a remarkable 45-year career. But perhaps his greatest achievement is simpler. He convinced us that our stories mattered. And because he did, those stories will keep being told long after the final curtain.