Carolyn Taylor to Join Ann-Marie MacDonald in GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA

Canadian Stage has announced new casting for their hotly anticipated November production of Ann-Marie Macdonald's iconic comedy GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA, GOOD MORNING JULIET on stage November 6th to 22nd at the Bluma Appel Theatre.

Joining MacDonald – who will play her famed character Constance Ledbelly for the first time in 25 years – is celebrated comedic actor and writer Carolyn Taylor, best known as one of the creators, executive producers and stars of the internationally-acclaimed CBC sketch comedy series Baroness Von Sketch. Taylor joins MacDonald, along with Praneet Akilla, Jessica B. Hill, and Caroline Toal, stepping onto the stage for the first time in over a decade. The production is directed by MacDonald's longtime creative and life partner Alisa Palmer.

A long-time collaborator and improviser, early in her career Taylor honed her satirical skills at The Second City in Toronto, where she wrote and performed in five original mainstage revues and won four Canadian Comedy Awards. Prior to the premiere of Baroness, Taylor wrote for This Hour Has 22 Minutes (CBC) and appeared in several series such as Workin' Moms, Detention Adventure, and Ghosts. Most recently Taylor created and starred in I Have Nothing (Crave, 2023, Peacock, 2025), a hit quixotic figure-skating docu-comedy that earned her a 2024 Canadian Screen Award nomination for Best Comedy Performance, she appeared on Black Mirror (Netflix, 2025) and the Netflix global hit Wayward, and she released an experimental queer pop album, The Untitled Carolyn Taylor Project (2025).

Premiering in 2016 and airing for five seasons, the Baroness von Sketch Show (CBC, IFC) –created by Taylor, Aurora Browne, Meredith MacNeill and Jennifer Whalen– received widespread praise from high profile publications including The New York Times, IndieWire, and Vogue, and sold to over 130 countries around the world. The show earned over 20 awards, including Canadian Screen Awards for Best Sketch Show/Series and Best Writing, as well as international honours such as two Rockies Awards, a Rose d'Or, and the Rogers Prize for Excellence in Canadian Content.

Similarly, since Macdonald first wrote GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA (GOOD MORNING JULIET), the play has become one of the most successful Canadian plays ever written in English, having enjoyed well over 100 productions across Canada, the US, Europe, and Japan, and winning the 1989 Chalmer's Award for Best New Play and the 1990 Governor General's Award for Drama. The comedy centers on Ledbelly, an overlooked academic working on her thesis, who tumbles headlong into Shakespeare's worlds in the wake of a distressing revelation about her supervising professor. As Constance falls through the looking glass right into Othello and Romeo and Juliet, she discovers that the heroines (and even Constance herself) may be capable of far more than anyone imagined. At once wildly funny and moving, this Canadian classic unleashes Desdemona and Juliet as fierce forces of their own destiny and reminds us that sometimes the bravest act is claiming your own story.

“GOODNIGHT DESDEMONA (GOOD MORNING JULIET) is a celebration of what happens when women refuse to stay inside the stories that have been written for them,” says Artistic Director Brendan Healy. “It's especially exciting to have Ann-Marie returning to the role of Constance and Carolyn Taylor making her long-awaited return to theatre. Carolyn's particular brand of intelligence, irreverence and comic precision feels made for this play, and I can't wait to see these two extraordinary comedic voices together onstage. I think audiences are going to have a very good time watching these hilarious women shake up Shakespeare.”

MacDonald adds, “I am thrilled that Carolyn Taylor has joined the “Desdemona” company. This is dream-casting. It also couldn't get more Shakespearean! I am a huge fan of Carolyn. She is a comic genius and I feel incredibly lucky to share the stage with her. Revels!”

A graduate of The National Theatre School of Canada, since beginning her career over 40 years ago, Ann-Marie Macdonald has emerged as one of Canada's essential voices – as a novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host. Her work has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Chalmers, the Governor General's, Gemini, Dora Mavor Moore, John Drainie, the Gascon-Thomas, the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Booksellers Association, the Commonwealth Prize, and, together with Alisa Palmer, the Canadian Stage Artistic Achievement Prize. In addition to Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), her writing for the stage includes the plays Belle Moral: A Natural History, and Hamlet-911; the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for Anything That Moves; her novels are Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, Adult Onset, and Fayne. In additions to her other many accolades, in 2019 MacDonald was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada and earlier this year she joined the Giller Prize Writers' Circle; a newly formed advisory panel composed of an exceptional group of award-winning Canadian writers, playwrights, journalists, documentarians and historians.