July Lineup Set For the Meighen Forum

July will bring the Meighen Forum to the Stratford Festival, offering diverse experiences such as the Season Deep Dive week which features leaders and artists of the Festival, CBC Ideas Week: Brave New Worlds which will welcome back host Nahlah Ayed for a week of exploration. The month will also bring events hosted by The New York Times and Chicago Tribune.

Season Deep Dive Week (July 8 – 14) brings together leaders and artists of the Stratford Festival to converse about the development of the 2024 season, from planning the playbill and writing the plays all the way to executing onstage design and action. The week will feature discussions on accessibility in theatre, fight and intimacy work and writing new plays.

The Forum Academy Series returns with “The Process of a Theatre Designer.” Set, costume and lighting serve as storytelling devices to understand who the characters are and how they fit into the narrative. Lighting designer Kaileigh Krysztofiak, set designer Joanna Yu and costume designer Francesca Callowdiscuss the artistry of how design helps tell the story of a play.

As the Meighen Forum’s 2024 season progresses, the Stratford Festival will welcome the return of host Nahlah Ayed for CBC Ideas Week: Brave New Worlds (July 15 – 21), which will explore efforts throughout history to imagine new possibilities and make them real – by focusing on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The Meighen Forum will also see the return of many special visitors. Among these, Jesse Green, chief theatre critic for The New York Times, returns for a couple of events including “Same-Sex Parenting IRL vs. La Cage aux Folles,” in which he and his husband, Andy Mirer, are joined by award-winning author Ann-Marie Macdonald and her wife, theatre director Alisa Palmer, as they draw parallels between their own experiences and what is depicted in the iconic musical La Cage aux Folles.

Chicago Tribune critic Chris Jones appears later in the month for events including “Who is Sylvia? Two Theatre Critics on their Favourite Play,” in which he is joined by theatre critic Peter Marks for a lively exploration of Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia?, the play that they consider to be Albee’s greatest work.

The Meighen Forum also includes crowd favourites such as Peer into the Playbill, Monday Night Music, Funny Forum Friday’s and exclusive backstage tours and workshops. Visit https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/WhatsOn/TheForum for details.

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