Photo Flash: First Look at Canadian Music Theatre's Immersive BRANTWOOD: 1920-2020

Sheridan College's Canadian Music Theatre Project presents the world premiere of Brantwood: 1920-2020, a groundbreaking, immersive musical theatre experience created and directed by Outside the March's Mitchell Cushman and Convergence Theatre's Julie Tepperman and produced by Michael Rubinoff, Sheridan's Associate Dean of Visual and Performing Arts. A landmark project "created by some of the most innovative people on our theatre scene" (Toronto Star), Brantwood runs from Tuesday, April 14 to Sunday, May 3 (Media Night on April 16) at 7pm nightly.Audience members gather at the main entrance to Sheridan College, 1430 Trafalgar Rd, Oakville to get on the school bus that will transport them to and from Brantwood School.

As the Toronto District School Board ponders closing several schools over the next decade, Brantwood - the largest production of immersive, site-specific musical theatre in Canadian history - is staged in a real-life GTA school slated for redevelopment.

At Sheridan College, audience members are greeted as the final graduating class of a fictional Brantwood High and transported by yellow school bus to their "alma mater" for a reunion before the school's closing for good. An unexpected event hurls the audience back in time to explore a century of adolescent life: first loves, growing pains, peer pressure and youthful experimentation through the ages.

The evening unfolds with 11 era-specific hot topic storylines, one for each decade of the school's history, plus a look into the future: a 1920s teacher-student affair; 1930s anti-Semitism; 1940s gender and racial segregation; a 1950s teen pregnancy; a 1960s LSD trip; a 1970s foray into amateur porn; a 1980s film-noir narcotics thriller; a 1990s talent show and the dreams of a transgendered student; a 2000s musical exploring a story from the school's sordid past; a 2015 student's attempt to save the school from developers; and a 2020 condo story centered on a young gay couple haunted by the ghosts of Brantwood's past.

Photos by John Jones