Shaw Festival Program Portrait by David Cooper
ABOUT
Kenton Blythe is a Canadian actor, singer, musician and writer based in Toronto, ON.
Kenton’s career as a performer began as a child competing in a Speech Arts competition at the Leduc Rotary Music Festival in Alberta when he was 8. His mother promised him a Shark Scout Aquazone Lego set from the SAAN store if he won, thinking she had hedged her bets. Alas, Kenton won first place and thus sealed the dopamine rush of performance forever in his mind, body and soul for all eternity.
After graduating from Randolph College for the Performing Arts sometime later, he joined the international revival tour of Evil Dead: The Musical, produced by Starvox Entertainment & Jeffrey Latimier Entertainment. This mix of music and comedy with the aforementioned dopamine rush would have a profound effect on Kenton… more on that later.
Following the gory musical mirth of Evil Dead was the sensual, politically charged, decadence of Cabaret and the somber yet, strangely funny-at-times Juno and the Paycock at the Shaw Festival. Here in the ensemble Kenton met a company of artists that would show him not only how to be a good actor, but how to be a good person.
When Kenton returned to Toronto after the Shaw Festival, he started looking for the dopamine rush of performance again in the most bizarre place: Original Canadian Theatre. He originated several roles in the Toronto debut of a number of Canadian musicals and plays, even becoming an award-winning actor (My Entertainment World Award for Outstanding Ensemble) in the process, but his life was never changing the way he wished it would until one cold night in February when he met his future wife Lise Cormier at a voice acting workshop.
As a team Kenton & Lise were able to blend the dopamine rush of music, comedy and choreography to create an ULTRA dopamine rush! This new concoction got them on stage at Canada’s Got Talent singing about the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event and bringing Kenton & Lise to a much larger audience! Nothing has been the same since.
Shortly after CGT Kenton was diagnosed with ADHD which really made the constant pursuit of dopamine make sense.
Kenton is thrilled you were curious enough about him to make it this far into his bio!