AYE CAESAR to Mark Carolyn Fe's Playwriting Debut in Toronto

An elderly woman goes online shopping and is assisted by the store's customer service rep. A fondness develops and trust builds but, is the bond enough to save a life? In the grip of an increasingly illusory world, playwright Carolyn Fe hurls us headlong into Aye Caesar. Produced by Stakes & Embers and Carolyn Fe Productions in association with Eldritch Theatre, Fe's debut production forages elder isolation and decline, science, grief, communication and the need for something, and someone, to hold on to.

Although Fe has penned multiple theatrical works, this is the first production of one of her plays. 'The title of 'playwright' is a new addition to my creative résumé,' Fe shares. 'Driven by an urgent concern over the state of eldercare, I wrote Aye Caesar in just five days in 2023. According to Statistics Canada, by 2050 there will be three times as many people aged 85 and older, highlighting a healthcare system ill-equipped to handle the psychological and emotional needs of the elderly.'

The play had a staged reading through a partnership between Cahoots Theatre and SummerWorks in 2024, directed by Tanisha Taitt. The response was thunderous. When Cahoots was unable to produce the piece as she had originally hoped, Taitt approached Fe about producing it independently. Fe came on board as co-producer, with Taitt remaining in the director's chair. Aye Caesar is the second production for Stakes and Embers, which Taitt launched with the critically acclaimed A Question of Character (co-produced by Minmar Gaslight Productions) in January 2026.

'I love the intimacy and immediacy of two-person plays; I always have. This is a different type of two-hander, the reverberations of which will change as the real world morphs, and that is what makes it so compelling to me,' muses Taitt. 'The biggest difference between the production and the reading is that what was a revelation to the audience in 2024 is now, for many, going to be an assumption in 2026. Never, in nearly twenty years of making theatre, has that been the case with a script I'm directing. It speaks to how insanely quickly new technology is proliferating and reframing our lives.'

Fe and Taitt feel fortunate to be collaborating on a deeper dive into the piece. 'In just three years since the completion of this play, rapid technological advancements have turned some aspects of this fictional 'what if' into reality,' Fe reflects. 'After the reading two years ago, I made slight modifications to the technological aspects using insights from former colleagues in my previous career as a Science and Technology Recruiter, but the most important part is that the human story remains the same.'

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