Interview: Kayla Kurin & Krista Rowe of CATCHING A CHEESE PERVERT: A PRISCILLA PATTON MYSTERY at Toronto Fringe

The show's premise: Canada’s favourite dairy heiress (and most prominent anti-vegan influencer over 40) Priscilla Patton uses her questionable detective skills to find out who is “flashing” women in Northern Ontario with cheese ahead of dairy’s most important event of the year: The Butter Ball. 

BroadwayWorld spoke with writer Kayla Kurin and director Krista Rowe about the inpsiration, creation and evolution of their "regrettably, inspired by true events" mystery-comedy Catching A Cheese Pervert: A Priscilla Patton Mystery, which you may have seen under a slightly different title at Hamilton and Edinburgh Fringe last year. 

BWW: Could you tell readers a little bit about yourselves and how you became interested in creating theatre? 

Krista Rowe: I grew up in Texas and then went to New York City and have been in Canada now for about 10 years. I was a theatre kid my whole life, my undergrad degree is in theatre and acting, and I've been pursuing that [theatre]. I was a dancer when I was younger and then went into theatre. As I'm getting older, I've morphed more into the production, directing, writing side. 

Kayla Kurin: I grew up just north of Toronto. I always loved theatre and reading, but I was definitely a sports kid growing up. As I got older and was doing freelance writing for work, I kind of morphed more and more into becoming, I guess, a later in life theatre kid. I was doing a lot of comedy writing and completed the conservatory program at Second City and just fell in love with live theatre. I kind of got addicted to the feeling of the live audience and how exciting that is. 

To clarify, there was another Catching a Cheese Pervert show at fringe festivals in 2025 but instead of a Priscilla Patton Mystery, it was a Frances Francis Mystery. Is this the same show revamped/retitled or is this a series? 

KR: The first iteration of Catching a Cheese Pervert that we created together last year -- and went to the Hamilton Fringe Festival and then on to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival -- was Catching a Cheese Pervert: A Frances Francis Mystery, which was a character we created for a screenplay we wrote. We were trying to marry those two worlds, which was fun, and we did it as a one person show. This year, we've come back and it's still Catching a Cheese Pervert, but we have a new heroine and completely new characters. We've completely divorced from the idea of the screenplay world and we've made it much more Canadian. We really wanted to lean into the CanCon aspect of it. So, we have the same crime, which is based on a true story -- the 2014 Philadelphia Swiss cheese pervert crime -- but set in a completely different world with completely different characters. 

KK: We really took things that were working well, that we were excited about, and brought them to this new show: like the lead character being an influencer. What always tickled me is there are so many true crime podcasts, so I thought it was very funny to have a true crime live streamer. Things like that carried over, things that audiences really resonated with. But yes, as Krista said, we changed the world so that it's much more Canadian and it's now set in the Greater Sudbury Area. It deals a lot with the Canadian dairy commission and the dairy industry. 

How long have you two been working on this show?

KK: We met in 2021 and kind of fell in creative love. We met working on a short film and started coming up with so many other ideas. We just loved working together and work really well together. I think we have such different backgrounds, but a really similar sense of humor, which works really well because we bring really different perspectives but still laugh at the same thing. We were both very tickled by this crime and we started working on this show about two and a half years ago, last winter, and we really knew we wanted to bring it to fringe festivals and see how it went.

What makes Toronto Fringe the right fit for Catching A Cheese Pervert?

KR: I think our show definitely leans into fringe and particularly Toronto. First of all, because it's very Canadian content, Canadian satire. A lot of jokes are really going to resonate with the Toronto audience because they're [the jokes] quite local. You know, it's quirky, it's a little weird and it's born to be at a fringe festival to start with. I don't think a show called Catching A Cheese Pervert could go anywhere else other than the Fringe. 

KK: I think Canadian comedy has a very long history of being a little bit self-deprecating, of being satirizing. So we're really leaning into that and were really inspired by a lot of the comedians that came before us through Second City and live performance, and also on TV and film.

What do you love about fringe festivals, whether as a creator or audience member?

KR: There's no energy that I've experienced, in 30+ years in the theatre world, that is the same kind of energy you get at a fringe festival. I think just by putting the word "fringe" into it, I think it gives people energy, a feeling of permission to try new things, to be vulnerable and to really just have a good time. I's also fun, too, because where every show is just about an hour long, you can see a lot of things, you can really sort of bop around and, I mean, where else can you make like a whole day of it and see three plays? I think that electricity is what makes Fringe such a great time.

If you had to compare the style of comedy in your show, what would you say?

KR & KK: Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. 

Were you inspired by other mystery TV shows, films, podcasts, etc.?

KR: The first time I ever actually heard about the cheese pervert was on a podcast called My Favorite Murder, hosted by two female comedians in Los Angeles. It's a true crime comedy podcast. They were telling the story of this man in Philadelphia who was flashing women with Swiss cheese, and so the little seed was planted. 

KK: I think for me, it's really an amalgamation of so much I've seen and listened to over the years. But you know, something like Only Murders in the Building. I'm a big fan of Agatha Christie, I've read a lot of her books. Knives Out.  

What was your biggest challenge in creating Catching A Cheese Pervert?

KR: One of the challenges for us is that we're not always working in the same place or same country. Kayla travels a lot and so we have to deal with that as we're in the creative process but we've gotten really good at working over Zoom and leaving long drawn out voice notes.

KK: I think a challenge for me was that there were so many things we were interested in with this story. We really had to narrow it down because we only have an hour, or 55 minutes, and that's really not a lot of time. We had literally like 350 post-it notes up on the wall and then eliminated things we weren't going to use, or maybe use for a different show. 

Without spoilers, can you share your favourite line or moment from the show?

KR: Here's a good one. Our heroine, Priscilla Patton, is the "most prominent influencer in the Greater Sudbury Area over the age of 40." I love that line.

KK: I will say my favorite line, and actually, I've been waiting for years to use this in something. It was something a friend said to me at university: "The judges used to choose somebody based on whose skin looks like they ate a lot of chicken and drank a lot of milk."

Do you have any other projects you’d like to discuss?

KR: We're taking this show to Edinburgh after Toronto. So, we're super excited about that. We're running at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival from August 6th through the 27th. 

Is there anything else you want to add, or want people to know about Catching A Cheese Pervert?

KR: It's so funny! You'll have a great time!

KK: Oh, and we're not accusing the Canadian Dairy Commission of anything! It's very fictionalized.