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Five theatre directors offer advice to the next generation — and the programs training it

The artists on this call were candid and vulnerable. They spoke openly about their professional frustrations and challenges — and they weren’t shy about pinpointing the ways that mainstream anglophone Canadian theatre practices fail directors and artists more broadly. That said, I didn’t leave our chat feeling hopeless or cynical.

Ahead of Canadian Stage’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Ann-Marie MacDonald reflects on Shakespeare — and power skating

“Sexism kept me out of hockey as a kid,” says Ann-Marie MacDonald. “But sexism also shut me out of Shakespeare."

How can theatre directors forge a sustainable career in Canada?

It’s increasingly unlikely that directors will hone their craft through formal training. Relatively few post-secondary programs devoted to directing exist, and it seems to me that directing-specific mentorship programs are less common than similar initiatives for actors or playwrights. To convene a roundtable about director training, I reached out to five very different artists on a continuum of early- to mid-career.

Eric Woolfe’s inventive horror theatre is a monster mash of artistic influences

For the past 26 years, Eldritch Theatre’s director of the uncanny has given ghoulies, ghosties, and long-legged beasties of all kinds a spot in the limelight, in productions that serve up puppets, magic, and a crumbling castle’s-worth of uncanny influences, including schlock-horror B-movies, Shakespeare at his bloodiest, and the fiction of H.P. Lovecraft. 

This year’s SummerWorks Performance Festival strives to make accessibility intrinsic

The curated festival’s 36th edition features a range of works by Disabled and neurodivergent artists where the medium is very much the message.

GFT’s Brontë: The World Without is a window into the ordinary lives of literary icons

Directed by Helen Juvonen in Guild Park and Gardens’ Greek Amphitheatre, The World Without follows sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë — the authors of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, respectively.