Artistic Director’s Message - Shaw Festival Theatre

Cast of The Game of Love and Chance (2023)
Artistic Director's Message
Explore our incredible 2024 Season
Remembering the joy of shared experience

If you saw the season we have just closed, you will know why so many people are saying that summer 2023 is The Shaw’s most remarkable yet. Certainly, the scale of ambition was unlike anything we have ever attempted: an astonishing range of great theatre experiences in all our theatres, plus a dizzying array of concerts and events throughout our gardens and in our dazzling Spiegeltent. Add to that a record number of outreach and engagement events, and you have something pretty special.

But we are not resting on our laurels: quite the contrary. I believe that this year has shown what the Shaw Festival could be: a truly festive place, buzzing with life, fun and passion every day. We have big plans to make it so, and this coming season will represent another big step in that direction: even more events in the Spiegeltent (if you haven’t been inside yet, what were you thinking?), great popular hits like My Fair Lady, Sherlock Holmes and One Man, Two Guvnors, and a mouthwatering Royal George season with Agatha Christie’s best murder mystery, Witness for the Prosecution, a Shaw favourite in Candida, and the evergreen classic The Secret Garden. These are all shows we expect to sell like hot cakes: Early Ordering has never been more important!

In the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre we will continue our quest to find stunning plays you won’t see anywhere else: Philip Akin, on a triumphant roll after Trouble In Mind (2021) and August Wilson’s Gem of the Ocean (2022), will direct Marcus Gardley’s steamy melodrama The House That Will Not Stand, while National Arts Centre Artistic Director for English Theatre Nina Lee Aquino will direct Snow in Midsummer, a magical telling of an ancient Chinese legend. The Orphan of Chao, our Royal George lunchtime show, will make a perfect companion piece. Where better than a sacred ancient meeting place like Niagara for people from every culture and background to encounter each other’s artistic heritage?

Our mission is to create real human connections. It is about getting out of our isolated bubbles and remembering the joy of shared experience. Come to Shaw and rediscover your imagination, your curiosity and your capacity to be delighted.

Artistic Director
Tim Carroll

Tim Carroll

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