By Nathaniel Hanula-James | Intermission Magazine

Wednesday, July 23, 2025

Actor-writer Jamie Williams doesn’t appear in his latest comedy — but he’s still performed every part.

The play in question is Pinkerton Comes to Prospect, a tongue-in-cheek homage to the western genre, produced by Lighthouse Festival. The production begins previews on July 30 in Port Dover and transfers to Port Colborne on August 20. Pinkerton features actors Ryan Bommarito, Matt Oliver, Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski, Jessica Sherman, and Evelyn Wiebe, and is directed by Steven Gallagher.

“I’ve done a lot of farces [as an actor],” said Williams in a Zoom interview. And indeed, over his 30-year stage career, he’s made frequent appearances in fast-paced comedies at theatres across the country, including Lighthouse, Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre, and Halifax’s Neptune Theatre. It’s only natural that when writing the farcical Pinkerton, Williams’ “acting brain was really engaged,” he said. “I was playing each of the characters in my mind as I was writing them.”

Audiences will recognize those characters as classic archetypes from films and stories set in the Old West (a shorthand for the western United States during the period of settler expansion in the 19th century). There’s an ambitious young woman named Lacey, who “wants to get out of Prospect,” said Williams, “and go to the big city to get an education.” 

Unfortunately for Lacey, she’s entangled in the schemes of her uncle Doc, a con man whose life is under threat from a notorious killer. When a naive surveyor named Herschel Pinkerton arrives in town, he too gets swept up in the town’s drama. “His belief in himself grows by a magnitude that he doesn’t expect,” said Williams.

For those wondering why the play’s title involves the name Pinkerton, not Penkerton, that’s a twist Williams said he didn’t want to spoil. Suffice it to say, a case of mistaken identity early on in the show leads to a spiral of comic consequences. 

Although Williams enjoys gritty westerns — he named the classic spaghetti western The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly, starring Clint Eastwood, as one of his favourites — he said the inspiration for Pinkerton came from his “childhood enjoyment of… family westerns,” such as Disney’s 1975 The Apple Dumpling Gang, which featured skilled comic actors like the late Don Knotts. 

Williams also noted a practical reason for Pinkerton’s period setting: “It allows for greater opportunity for miscommunication… It’s a little harder to make those things believable in a modern setting, particularly now that we carry cellphones and have [so much] access to information all the time. The less information characters have, the more opportunity for comic situations.”

Williams named Gallagher as the ideal director for Pinkerton Comes to Prospect. Gallagher was the creator and director of Murder at Ackerton Manor, another zippy farce that, like Pinkerton, spoofed a specific genre: Agatha Christie mysteries.

Gallagher is “a great guy, and he’s been a great help in this last stage of [Pinkerton’s] development,” said Willams. He praised the director’s “keen eye and keen ear, towards making sure all the [farcical] sequences are in place.”

Williams honed the script for Pinkerton in Lighthouse’s play development program, which nurtures new Canadian comedies. The program gave him a chance to test the script in front of an audience and receive valuable feedback. “You get some first-hand earnest reactions,” he reflected. “You write in a vacuum for so long that you lose the perspective of a first-time reader or listener.”

He described how the process of working on his first play, It’s Your Funeral (which premiered at Upper Canada Playhouse in 2018), taught him the value of rewrites.

“The day I finished, I thought, ‘I’ve finished it! I’ve written a script!’” he remembered. “And it was a piece of crap. But that’s okay! I’ve learned since then that the first draft should be the crappy draft. You just get it down, and then you’ve got a body of material to work with — your clay, which you can then mold.”

Though Williams has apparently molded Pinkerton to be a tightly plotted, saloon-storming farce, he’s made sure that there’s a heart of gold at its centre. 

“All the characters in the show come to a place at the end of the day where they’re better versions of themselves,” he said. The fact that the town in the play is called Prospect “represents [on the one hand] this miniscule possibility that there’s gold in the ground,” and on the other hand the idea that “if you search for it and you believe in it enough, you will discover” gold — metaphorically — wherever you are.

“There’s gold [inside] the characters of the town,” said Williams. “Each of these people are [the real] nuggets [they] value.” 

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 Pinkerton Comes to Prospect runs July 30 to August 16 at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, and August 20 to 31 at the Roselawn Theatre in Port Colborne. Tickets are available here.

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Lighthouse Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

By Liam Donovan | Intermission Magazine

July 11, 2025

Norm Foster’s plays have long been a pillar of the Lighthouse Festival’s programming, with multiple often appearing in the same season. Usually, that means full-length works — frequently, world premieres. But this summer, the Port Dover/Port Colborne-based company is diving into Foster’s back catalogue and producing a pair of rarely staged one acts from the mid-2000s. 

In the spirit of rediscovery, Lighthouse is calling the double bill Hidden Treasures. A single cast performs both of the four-person comedies, and at intermission, Becky Mode’s set completely transforms.

Foster was initially surprised that artistic director Jane Spence wanted to produce the plays — previously paired together in the 2008 collection One-Actmanship — because in his experience Canadian theatres rarely consider shorter works worthy of a full production. “I don’t write many one-act plays,” he told me over Zoom. “They’re not much in demand… Theatres prefer to do the big [ones]. Doing two together is a good idea, because it stretches it to the same [run]time as a regular play.”

Beyond the trouble of getting them produced, Foster noted that one-acts pose unique challenges to him as a writer. “There’s not much time for character development, like there would be in a long play,” he reflected. “You have to… make it satisfying, and to have it come around to a plausible ending. It can’t just be a skit… So, it’s actually a little tougher to write.”

The first half of Hidden Treasures, called “My Narrator,” tells the story of an unlikely romance between Lacy, a down-to-earth painter, and Miles, a socially awkward drifter who meets Lacy while working at his uncle’s clothing store. The twist is that both characters’ inner voices appear onstage as narrators. “You know that voice in your head that tells you ‘don’t do that, don’t do this, you shouldn’t do that,’ and sometimes we listen to it, but sometimes we don’t? That’s what this play is about,” said Foster.

A subplot of “My Narrator” is that Lacy’s narrator, Barb, thinks the artist’s landscape paintings are too lighthearted. “The bright colours, the sunny skies… She thought it was time to try something different,” the narrator says. “Perhaps a darker approach would lend more weight to her work and put her into favour with the critics.” 

Foster said this thread about criticism is “absolutely” intended as a wink at the reception to his own early work. 

“I used to get a lot that my plays were ‘pedestrian,’” recalls Foster. “I got compared a lot to Neil Simon. I never used to like that. But I mean, Neil Simon is the most successful playwright ever, aside from Shakespeare. Why would I not like to be compared with [him]?… Critics have their own agenda, that doesn’t bother me anymore.”

In Hidden Treasures’ second half, “The Death of Me,” John, a run-of-the-mill young man, appears in heaven after dying from an unexpected aneurysm. His last remarks were uninspiring (“Ah! Ooh! Eee!”), and nobody is likely to find him until the next morning, when his mother makes her routine Saturday visit to his apartment. John discusses these circumstances with the Angel of Death, who does the paperwork for new entrants to heaven. He then tries furiously to “to bargain his way out [and] undo the death,” as Foster put it in our conversation.

Both one-acts depict ordinary people as somewhat beholden to the whims of powerful, unreal figures (though in both cases, the protagonists maintain a degree of agency to advocate for themselves). According to Foster, these sorts of fantastical figures appeal to him because they mean he doesn’t have to worry about logic as much. “You can go anywhere with [the play] when it’s not [only about] a real person,” he said. “It frees me from some of the boundaries you ordinarily have when you write… [Because] who knows what an Angel of Death is like? It makes it easier on me.

“I’m always looking for easy ways to do things,” he jokingly continued. “I’m not a hard worker… Any of my high school teachers will tell you that.”

Self-deprecation aside, Foster is constantly working (he’s long been called “Canada’s most produced playwright”) — and Spence’s idea of Hidden Treasures has inspired him to start thinking seriously about one-acts again.

“After she did that, I [wrote] two Christmas-themed plays… and I put these two together in a collection to try to sell them to theatres for Christmas time,” he said. “So I’m glad that Jane put these two plays together.

“It was a great idea.”

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Hidden Treasures runs in Port Dover until July 26, and in Port Colborne from July 30 to August 10. Tickets are available here.

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Lighthouse Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

By Nathaniel Hanula-James | Intermission Magazine

Wednesday, May 14, 2025

In the first production of Lighthouse Festival’s summer season, an eclectic group of underdogs find common ground — while trying not to slip on ice. 

That show is The New Canadian Curling Club, by playwright Mark Crawford. Directed by Lighthouse artistic director Jane Spence, the production stars Frank Chung, Mahsa Ershadifar, Chiamaka Glory, John Jarvis, and Andrew Prashad, with previews starting May 21. 

Curling Club premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2018 and has since been produced across the country, from Western Canada Theatre in Kamloops to Neptune Theatre in Halifax — breaking at least one box office record at Alberta Theatre Projects along the way.

Despite the ice rink setting, Crawford’s play is anything but chilly. It’s a warmhearted comedy set in a Learn to Curl class for newcomers to a small town in Ontario. When a mishap sidelines the original instructor, the group is left with a new coach who harbours some strong feelings about the sport — and immigrants. But as the team presses on, long-held assumptions begin to thaw. 

“I had this idea to write a play about a group of relative strangers who come together with one common goal,” said Crawford in an interview. “I love that kind of narrative: people from disparate parts of a community who come together to form their own little community.”

He recalled how, years ago, someone in a rehearsal room joked: “’You should write a play about curling.’

“People are always telling writers what to write, but for some reason I filed that one away,” Crawford added.

Curling Club is one of several plays from the last decade that explore the dynamics of a sports team, including Flex by Candice Jones, King James by Rajiv Joseph, and The Wolves by Sarah DeLappe. For Crawford, part of curling’s appeal was its relatively small scale. As opposed to the larger teams in basketball or soccer, “there are four people on a [curling] team, and one coach, a perfect [cast] for a play,” he said. Crawford also noted that the sport “is so iconically small-town Canadian. It feels like the perfect setting to explore some of these bigger ideas about established communities versus newcomers, immigration, and Canadian identity.”

The four newcomers in the Learn to Curl class are of Jamaican, Indian, Chinese, and Syrian descent. In writing this diverse group, Crawford —  who is white —  knew that he had homework to do.

“I don’t know if we were using the term cultural consultant [in 2018],” he said, “but I talked to friends, people I knew, and people I could contact. I did a bunch of reading, and cast the net [wide] in terms of trying to absorb what those experiences were.” His goal was “to create distinct characters with different experiences of… being an immigrant to a smaller community, so that it wasn’t this monolithic [story].” 

For scenes with dialogue in the characters’ original languages, Crawford said he “engaged translators, [which led to] bigger conversations about the characters, their situations, and their backstories.” 

He also credited the input of actors. “I was fortunate to be in the room the whole time through the premiere production at Blyth,” he said. “Those actors were great at sharing things, as actors are in a premiere, but there was an added layer of wanting to get these stories and these voices as authentic as possible, while still being in an underdog sports comedy [and] marrying those two worlds. I’m grateful to those artists who were involved in that first production — and subsequent productions too, because the play has changed a bit over the years.”

Crawford noted that the recent wave of increased Canadian nationalism, in response to threats from U.S. president Donald Trump, may change how Curling Club is received. “Our very sovereignty was not under attack when I wrote this play,” he said. “We’re experiencing this kind of ‘elbows up’ Canadian patriotism, which is rare for us, I think, as a nation. It’s not without its flaws and its complications, but I think that it will be really interesting to see this play in light of that [question] of who we are as a country and what we stand for.” 

At the end of the day, his hope for Curling Club audiences is that “ everyone, no matter where you’re from, or how long you or your people have been in Canada, [has] a great time.”  

Crawford “grew up in rural southern Ontario,” where curling was “part of the culture.” But though he has “great admiration” for serious practitioners, “I’m not what anyone would call a curler,” he laughed. “I did go curling a handful of times in order to write this play, and so I know a lot more about the game and that world than I did before.” 

That newfound knowledge might have slippery consequences. “I have friends here in Stratford who’ve taken up curling, and who are threatening to rope me into their team next fall,” he joked. “We’ll see!”

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The New Canadian Curling Club runs May 21 to June 7 at the Lighthouse Theatre in Port Dover, and June 11 to June 22 at the Roselawn Theatre in Port Colborne. Tickets are available here. 

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Lighthouse Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

By Nathaniel Hanula-James | Intermission Magazine

Wednesday, April 25, 2025

Lighthouse Festival’s new artistic director Jane Spence believes in the power of Canadian belly laughs.

“When you laugh with a character, you connect with their story,” she said in an interview. “You have more empathy and compassion for whatever their journey is. I believe that humour opens us up to each other’s life experiences. It’s what connects us.” 

Running May 21 to October 5 in Port Dover and Port Colborne, Lighthouse’s 2025 summer season is the first Spence has programmed. “We’ve tried to bring a lot of very different Canadian comedies to our stage,” she said.

The New Canadian Curling Club hurries hard at the top of the lineup. Written by Mark Crawford, it’s “an underdog story about new Canadians coming to a small town, and the obstacles they face,” said Spence. “It’s very funny and heartwarming… [and while the play] touches on issues [like] peoples’ biases and racism, Mark’s humour really invites people in and shares different perspectives. You don’t feel lectured to at all.”

Spence will direct Curling Club as well as Hidden Treasures, a double bill of two little-known works by Norm Foster, whose work is a staple of Lighthouse’s programming. 

My Narrator and The Death of Me, both one-acts, are “two of Norm’s most unusual pieces,” said Spence. She explained that, in contrast to Foster’s typical realism, My Narrator’s story poses the surreal question: What if your inner voice came to life and gave you relationship advice? Meanwhile, Death of Me follows a man who dies and persuades the Angel of Death for a second chance.

“It’s [rare] for Norm to play in the supernatural realm,” Spence observed.

At the same time as Lighthouse shows off jewels from Foster’s back catalogue, it will also stick to its norm — or Norm — of producing full-length Foster plays with Flight Path, a romantic farce set on adjoining apartment balconies. Lighthouse’s previous artistic director, Derek Ritschel, will direct.

Among Lighthouse’s homegrown offerings is Pinkerton Comes to Prospect, a world premiere Canadian comedy by theatre artist Jamie Williams. Directed by Steven Gallagher, Pinkerton is an homage to classic Westerns. 

Williams, who has been involved with Lighthouse as an actor, director, and now playwright, developed Pinkerton through the Sneak Peek Festival — a play development initiative the company relaunched this past year after a decade-long hiatus. The festival’s readings serve as the culmination of a workshop process. (The dramaturg for the most recent iteration was Caitie Graham.) This past March,  ”we had the current world premiere, [Pinkerton,] getting its final polish-up,” said Spence. “Then we had spots for two hopefuls, two plays that may be programmed on our stage in the future.” Those scripts were Baby Steps, written by Matt Gorman and Arlin Dixon; and Secret Service, by Ephraim Ellis.

“The first day of the workshops, we have professional actors read through [the scripts] and give their feedback,” Spence said. “Then the writers have two days to go away and make rewrites. The day after that, in the morning, we’ll go over all the new rewrites as a small group. Then, in the afternoon, we read in front of an audience.” During the most recent festival in March 2025, some attendees “came to all three plays, which was fabulous. It gives the writer a really good idea of what the audience’s honest reaction is.”

While the season’s focus is Canadian comedy, audiences can also expect two international titles. Ritschel will direct The Hound of the Baskervilles, a new twist on Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic tale by British duo Steven Canny and John Nicholson. Following in the footsteps of last season’s Murder at Ackerton Manor, by Steven Gallagher, Baskervilles promises to blend mystery with comedy. “Three actors wind up playing 17 different characters,” Spence said. “It’s really fast-paced and a lot of fun.” 

The summer will swing to a close with Memories of the Rat Pack, a show written by Christopher McHarge about the lives of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr.

Through the mainstage programming and events like Sneak Peek, Spence said that she hopes to honour Lighthouse’s role as a hub for playful, big-hearted theatre. 

“Lighthouse has such a supportive audience,” she reflected. “We’ve been lucky in our recovery since the pandemic because of their loyalty — their trust that they’re going to be able to come here for some good, solid entertainment.”

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Lighthouse’s summer season runs May 21 to October 5 in Port Dover and Port Colborne. You can learn more here.

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Lighthouse Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.dre Lorde, and James Baldwin. At any given moment, you can probably find her at a concert or on a long walk somewhere in Toronto.

By Krystal Abrigo | Intermission Magazine

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

The Lighthouse Festival has announced casting details for its 2025 summer season. A mix of returning favourites and new faces will appear in five productions across its two venues in Port Dover and Port Colborne.

“This year, we have an incredible lineup of plays, all guaranteed to bring joy, humour, and a sense of togetherness to our patrons,” wrote artistic director Jane Spence in a press release. “It’s a celebration of great stories and incredible talent, and we can’t wait for audiences to experience it all.”

Listed below is the full season lineup, including casting.

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The New Canadian Curling Club

Written by Mark Crawford
Directed by Jane Spence
May 22 – June 8 in Port Dover, June 12 – 22 in Port Colborne

A misfit group of newcomers signs up for a “learn to curl” class taught by a reluctant, injured curler with something to prove. This heartfelt comedy explores identity, immigration, and what it means to be Canadian, on and off the ice.

Starring Frank Chung as Mike Chang, Mahsa Ershadifar as Fatima, Chiamaka Glory as Charmaine Bailey, John Jarvis as Stuart McPhail, and Andrew Prashad as Anoopjeet Singh.

The Hound of the Baskervilles

Adapted by Steven Canny and John Nicholson
Directed by Andrew Scanlon
June 12 – 29 in Port Dover, July 3 – 13 in Port Colborne

A fast-paced spoof of the Sherlock classic, performed by three actors collectively playing 17 roles.

Starring Jonathan Ellul as Watson, Sweeney MacArthur as Jason (and others), and Andrew Scanlon as Javier/Sherlock.

“The type of person that is going to love this show,” quipped MacArthur, who juggles a dozen characters in this production, “is the type of person that uses a funny voice to talk to their pets at home, then uses a different funny voice to answer!”

Hidden Treasures

Two one-act plays by Norm Foster
Directed by Derek Ritschel
July 3 – 20 in Port Dover, July 24 – August 3 in Port Colborne

Presented as a single evening of theatre, this double bill features My Narrator and The Death of Me — two short comedies infused with Foster’s signature warmth and wit.

Starring Jennifer Dzialoszynski as Lacy/Cassie, Melanie Janzen as Barb/Angel, David Leyshon as Miles/John, and Stephen Sparks as Bob/Doctor.

Pinkerton Comes to Prospect (World premiere)

Written by Jamie Williams
Directed by Steven Gallagher
July 25 – August 10 in Port Dover, August 14 – 24 in Port Colborne

Developed during Lighthouse’s 2025 Play Development Festival, this Western-inspired comedy follows Herschel Pinkerton, a hapless newcomer who rides into the dusty town of Prospect and finds far more trouble than he bargained for.

Starring Ryan Bommarito as Herschel Penkerton, Matt Olver as Doc, Adrian Shepherd-Gawinski as Amos, Jessica Sherman as Tallahassee Trigger, and Evelyn Wiebe as Lacy.

Here on the Flight Path

Written by Norm Foster
Directed by Derek Ritschel
August 14 – 31 in Port Dover

John lives on a quiet balcony near the airport, where over the years he encounters three very different women next door. This Foster favourite is a tender, funny look at love, growth, and the connections we make along the way.

Starring Julia Dyan as Fay, Angel, and Gwen, as well as Reid Janisse as John.

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Subscriptions and single tickets are now on sale at the company’s website. You can also check out its summer season preview video for more information.

Lighthouse Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

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Krystal is Intermission’s Publishing and Editorial Assistant. A Scarborough-based writer of Philippine and Egyptian descent, she graduated cum laude with an Honours BA in Professional Writing from York University, specializing in Book Publishing and Corporate/Organizational Communication. She enjoys reading bell hooks, Audre Lorde, and James Baldwin. At any given moment, you can probably find her at a concert or on a long walk somewhere in Toronto.

Ross Petty helped grow the art of pantomime in Canada. Now, his influential show hits the stage once more

By Aisling Murphy | CBC Arts

Friday, December 20th. 2024

When theatre producer Ross Petty announced his retirement from his annual holiday pantomime in 2022, he left a gaping hole in Canadian theatre. The “Petty panto,” as it was lovingly known by Toronto theatre fans of all ages, was a tradition — a yearly excuse to celebrate all things silly with big dance numbers and naughty innuendos.

Thanks to Canadian Stage, the pantomime is back in Toronto this year, with Petty serving as executive producer emeritus. 

Over the last few decades, holiday pantos have cropped up across Canada, each one a little different in terms of how they pay homage to their respective communities. Most of them hold fast to the form’s usual features — audience participation, singalong dance numbers and melodramatic conflicts — and most theatre artists credit Petty for kick-starting the panto trend in Canada.

What is a pantomime?

A pantomime is a family-friendly musical typically produced in the lead-up to Christmas, although the show seldom touches on religious or holiday themes. What typically makes pantomime fun for all ages is the element of audience participation — spectators are encouraged to boo the villain, cheer for the hero and sing along to their favourite pop songs, which are often woven into the musical score of the show.

Simon Sladen, senior curator of modern and contemporary theatre and performance at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, has dedicated his career to researching the phenomenon of pantomime. In 2013, he launched the National Database of Pantomime Performance, enabling researchers to track every professional pantomime in the U.K. and beyond.

“Pantomimes are often considered popular art, something that isn’t in the same cultural hierarchy as, say, Shakespeare,” Sladen tells CBC Arts. “But there’s no reason for that apart from cultural snobbery. Pantomime is a very important part of British Christmas. It’s a form that’s survived centuries, and it’s enjoyed by millions of people in the U.K. each year.”

Sladen includes Petty in a group of theatre creators who helped to usher pantomime beyond the British Isles, and says Petty’s work has helped to keep panto alive in Canada.

“He’s a great performer,” says Sladen. “His villainy is just amazing. A Ross Petty panto is anarchic and eccentric, and those are things I love in a panto. They’re cartoony, and they have interesting morals in them. They’re not constrained by expectations of tradition, which can happen a bit here in the U.K. They don’t have the same cultural straitjacket. They can present panto as a bonkers British genre but with its own spin, which I think is fantastic.”

Reviving the Ross Petty panto in 2024

Brendan Healy, artistic director of Canadian Stage, says taking the panto under his company’s wing was an easy decision. Canadian Stage is famous for its Dream in High Park summer theatre series, and according to Healy, there was interest in finding a family-friendly winter counterpart to the annual Shakespeare tradition.

“When Ross was retiring in 2022, we thought there was an opportunity for us to pick up the panto and make that our family winter offering,” he says. “I have a very strong belief that Canadian Stage needs to do its part in fostering the next generation of theatregoers, and provide opportunities for younger people to experience live theatre. Dream in High Park does that, but Ross has introduced literally thousands upon thousands of children to theatre. That’s what plants the seed for a lifetime of interest in the art form.”

Petty vividly remembers the first call he got from Canadian Stage, during which it became clear both to him and the new producers: “The panto cannot die after 27 years.”

“I’m delighted that Canadian Stage came forward with this proposal,” he says. As executive producer emeritus, Petty contributed a few of his relationships in advertising and sponsorships, and he sat in on a few rehearsals, but for the most part, he has been hands-off with this production. That’s part of his “running off into the sunset” dream of retirement, he says.

“The whole creative team is stellar — Ted Dykstra has directed five of the pantos in the past, and music director Mark Camilleri has done them for several years. I trusted each member of this team implicitly.” 

On Dec. 11, at Toronto’s Winter Garden Theatre, the Ross Petty panto officially returned with a deliciously campy adaptation of The Wizard of Oz. Playwright Matt Murray, who previously wrote six of Petty’s pantos, handled the pen once more for this milestone outing. And while, yes, this year’s choice of story was partly inspired by the recent film adaptation of Wicked, there’s more nuance to it than just that.

“I’m really feeling the sense that people genuinely missed this tradition,” Murray says. “I think people are really craving it. It’s been very exciting to feel the energy of getting this opportunity to bring this tradition back.

“We knew people would be loving Oz right now and wanting more of it,” he continues. “The enthusiasm is there. The show is really hitting the zeitgeist, and that’s really fun.”

Panto beyond Toronto

The Canadian panto craze extends far beyond Toronto. Around the GTA, loads of regional theatres stage annual pantomimes — inspired, of course, by Petty — but further adrift, smaller communities have taken the art form and made it their own.

Vancouver’s East Van Panto is a beloved local tradition that infuses pantomime with a sense of social justice. This year’s story, Robin Hood, comments on gentrification, and according to co-writer Jiv Parasram, is “a lot more politically engaged” than some of the other theatre happening in Vancouver.

“It borrows the conventions of the traditional British panto, but has really morphed into its own thing,” says fellow co-writer Christine Quintana. “East Vancouver is a very artist-heavy, counterculture-heavy community.”

“I’m familiar with the Petty pantos from when I lived in Toronto,” says Parasram. “They’ll touch on politics, but it’s usually pretty light. The East Van Panto lives more in the political satire realm, and we really leaned into that this year.” According to Parasram and Quintana, their panto is loaded with esoteric local references, like an infamously weird sign warning hikers of deep mud at Trout Lake, which makes an appearance in the show.

“That kind of hyper-specific reference is really fun for us,” says Parasram. “It’s awesome to get to pay tribute and mythologize places that are real and that mean something.”

In southwestern Ontario, Lighthouse Festival Theatre is one of several companies with an annual pantomime. The company has theatres in two cities — Port Dover and Port Colborne — and the yearly panto is a highlight of their programming, which is otherwise concentrated in the summer months.

“Pantomime is such a participatory style of theatre,” says artistic director Jane Spence. This year, Lighthouse produced a panto-fied take on Cinderella. “We had a performance for 300 elementary school kids and it was magical. I’ve never seen an audience so engaged. They were all just ready to boo and cheer, and they sang along with some of the songs. It was such a beautiful moment — there was not one cellphone on in the whole audience. 

“Everyone was just engaged, and there was so much excitement,” she continues. “I thought, ‘This is how you inspire the next generation of theatre-goers.'”

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Aisling Murphy is a Toronto-based writer and editor. She is the Senior Editor of Intermission Magazine, and has previously written for the Toronto Star and CP24. She is the incoming Theatre Reporter for The Globe and Mail.