![]() ![]() "I had one goal: I wanted to meet Newfoundlanders," she said. She arrived in Gander for the first time in October 2017. and I felt like I had to go and see if people could really be this good." "I had lost hope in this country, I had lost hope in the world, I had lost hope in people," she said in an interview this week. She lives in Florida, and she said she was "despondent" after Donald Trump's victory in the 2016 election. He congratulated Friday night's crowd for snagging "the hottest theatre tickets on the planet."īarbara Amiel Pearson first saw the musical in 2017, during a particularly dark time in her life. ![]() The Gander production is the first fully staged presentation of the musical in its hometown, according to Michael Rubinoff, the play's originating producer. The musical was a smash on Broadway, running for a record-setting five years at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre in New York City. Its characters are based on real people in Gander, and the real things they did to dampen the passengers' horror as they learned what had happened. The town has a population of about 11,800 people and "Come From Away" is about those who opened their homes, community halls and businesses to shelter the "plane people" for the five days they were stranded. Thirty-eight planes carrying more than 6,500 people were ordered to land at the Gander airport on Sept. She is among many, from all over the world, who have come to Gander in search of that kindness. "I really wanted to meet the people behind the kindness." "It's the kindness of the whole thing," Hayward said in an interview. So she applied for, and won, a special grant for teachers in Indiana to embark on the journey. The story gripped her, and she couldn't let it go. ![]() The musical tells the story of the town's efforts to care for thousands of people stranded there on planes grounded after the Sept. She began dreaming of the trip after she saw "Come From Away" over a year ago on Apple TV Plus. The 54-year-old high school teacher from Indiana has spent the past three weeks driving all over Newfoundland to capture the essence of its people, culture and landscape, and relay it for her students. Janet Hayward didn't show too much outward excitement Friday night as she walked toward a Gander, N.L., theatre to see the musical that inspired what she calls her "Newfoundland Quest" - but she did arrive a full hour early. ![]()
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