Stratford Plays Come to the Stage In Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver

The Stratford Festival is seeing number of recent productions moving on to theatres across the country, where they are being received with great enthusiasm.

"It's a pleasure to share the work of the Stratford Festival with sister theatres across Canada," says Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino. "The Festival has become an important generator of new plays, including a significant number of powerful works by female Canadian playwrights, which have greatly enriched our programming. We hope these brilliant productions will delight audiences in Montreal, Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, and entice them to visit Stratford where more fun awaits."

The Festival's 2018 production of Erin Shields's wildly successful play Paradise Lost, an inventive take on John Milton's epic poem, recently opened to great praise at Montreal's Centaur Theatre, where it runs until February 2. Like the Stratford production, this remount is directed by Jackie Maxwell and features Lucy Peacock as Satan, Qasim Khan as Adam and Amelia Sargisson as Eve.

New productions of Paradise Lost will be featured at Ottawa's National Arts Centre (April 22 to May 3) and at Vancouver's Bard on the Beach in the summer.

After a virtually sold-out run in Stratford last summer, Kate Hennig's Mother's Daughter is being remounted at Toronto's Soulpepper and will play there until February 9. As in Stratford, Alan Dilworth directs, with most of the Stratford cast appearing, including Shannon Taylor as Mary and Jessica B. Hill as Bess and Anne.

Both Paradise Lost and Mother's Daughter were commissioned by the Festival and developed through its Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program, under the leadership of Bob White. At any given time it has about 20 works in progress.

A third play, the 2019 production of The Neverending Story, directed by Jillian Keiley, Artistic Director of English Theatre at the National Arts Centre, will be remounted at the NAC, where it will run from January 29 to February 15, with most of the original Stratford cast. The show was originally mounted in Stratford in association with the NAC.

The Stratford Festival's 2020 season will feature four works developed through the Foerster Bernstein New Play Development Program: Steven Page and Daniel MacIvor's new musical Here's What It Takes; Morris Panych's Frankenstein Revived; Ann-Marie Macdonald's Hamlet-911; and An Undiscovered Shakespeare created by Rebecca Northan with Bruce Horak and Kevin Kruchkywich - all part of a thrilling new season that launches on April 11 and includes the opening of the Festival's glittering new Tom Patterson Theatre.

Tickets for the Stratford Festival's 2020 season are on sale now at www.stratfordfestival.ca or by calling the box office at 1.800.567.1600.

To post a comment, you must register and login.