Stratford Festival Announces 2022 Season

In 2022, the Stratford Festival is coming back big to mark a monumental moment in its history with a full repertory season running from early April to the end of October, 10 major productions and almost two hundred Meighen Forum events.

It will be a milestone season in many respects. "Next year we celebrate our 70th season, the 20th anniversary of the Studio Theatre, the 10th Meighen Forum season and the grand opening of our glorious new Tom Patterson Theatre. But most of all we celebrate a new beginning," says Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino, pointing to the theme of the season.

"For thousands of people, coming to the Stratford Festival is an annual pilgrimage," he says. "By the time they arrive to see the shows of our 2022 season, it will have been three years since most of them have set foot in one of our theatres. We want their return to be everything they hope for. We want them to feel safe, of course, but we also want to fill the void left by the absence of live theatre and communal activities.

"The plays in the 2022 season contain not only new beginnings but the difficult moral and ethical decisions a new journey entails. What is the best way to start again? How can we avoid the traps of the past? In an imperfect world, what is good?"

The season will include the grand opening of the $72-million Tom Patterson Theatre, which was to have opened in the spring of 2020. Designed by renowned architect Siamak Hariri of Toronto-based Hariri Pontarini Architects, the new building was recently honoured with the international Architecture MasterPrize, recognizing it as the "Best of the Best" in cultural architecture, and is a regional finalist for the Civic Trust Award in the U.K., the only Canadian project to be shortlisted.

Opening the Tom Patterson Theatre is Shakespeare's Richard III, directed by Cimolino. "I can't think of another Shakespeare play that is more about our world at this moment: " he says: "Richard III reveals the triumph of naked political expediency, the easy sacrifice of the commonweal to individual vested interests, and the consequences of a leader who wins power through an actual rigged election."

Richard III is coupled with All's Well That Ends Well, directed by Scott Wentworth, a nod to the Festival's first season in 1953: the two plays that started it all will also open the newest theatre.

"I originally selected this play for the 2020 season but it has spoken to me even more over the past 18 months, as we have faced intense social division, pandemic and accelerating climate change: 'They say miracles are past; and we have our philosophical persons, to make modern and familiar, things supernatural and causeless. Hence is it that we make trifles of terrors, ensconcing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.'"

Rounding out the TPT season is an international classic, Nobel Prize-winner Wole Soyinka's Death and the King's Horseman, directed by Tawiah M'Carthy, a powerful play drawing upon both Yoruba mythology and Western theatrical traditions. This epic production was workshopped at the Festival between 2019 and 2021.

"As I read this amazing play filled with beautiful folk poetry, absurdist humour and such conflicting understandings of 'responsibilities,' I was reminded of Mahatma Gandhi's response to a reporter asking, 'What do you think of Western civilization?' With a smile he answered, 'I think it would be a good idea.'" Cimolino says.

"In modern Western society individualism, self-interest, immediate gratification and short-term results are seen as being key to success and happiness. Soyinka's play explores a different perspective that values the community, self-sacrifice and a much longer arc of time. This makes for extraordinary drama as well as delicious comedy."

First onstage at the Festival Theatre is the Kander and Ebb musical Chicago, which will also kick off the entire season, starting previews in early April. Thousands were looking forward to this show in 2020 and finally the Festival can present the first major new production of this iconic musical to be seen outside of New York in 30 years. It's unlike any production ever seen before, entirely reimagined with thrilling new choreography from director-choreographer Donna Feore.

"Chicago, one of the greatest musicals ever written, was based upon the real life experience of the reality stars of the courtrooms of the roaring '20s," said Cimolino. "Now in the whimpering '20s of this new century, our news feeds seem more than ever focused on the courtroom dramas of justice denied due to the partiality of judges and jurors."

To celebrate the gala opening night of the Festival's 2022 season, it's Hamlet at the Festival Theatre, directed by Peter Pasyk. And a late-season comedy rounds out the year at the Festival Theatre, Moliere's The Miser, directed by Cimolino. "Each of these plays tries to explore a path forward to find justice and happiness in the face of humanity's vices and frailties. They are also among the finest work of these two extraordinary playwrights. However, they draw on vastly different theatrical traditions. It will be a joy to experience them side by side on the Festival Stage," he says.

The Avon Theatre will be home to the Schulich Children's Play, Little Women, a new adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's classic novels Little Women and Good Wives, written by Jordi Mand and directed by Esther Jun. Ideal for theatregoers of all ages, this play offers a message of hope and encouragement important to young people as they deal with the confinement the pandemic forced upon them. "This retelling exhibits a free, diverse and modern sensibility which truly is at the heart of Alcott's young heroine," says Cimolino.

To celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Studio Theatre, three new plays: Every Little Nookie, by Sunny Drake, directed by Ted Witzel; Hamlet-911 by Ann-Marie Macdonald, directed by Alisa Palmer; and 1939, by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan, directed by Jani Lauzon.

"There are central connections between 1939 and All's Well That Ends Well and between Hamlet-911 and Hamlet that make for a beautiful symmetry and fractals within that symmetry: mirrors upon mirrors upon mirrors provoking thought and bringing the season together," says Cimolino.

"Every Little Nookie has won an award for comedy from the Playwrights Guild of Canada before even being produced. This big-hearted yet mordant comedy explores generational differences on such varied topics as monogamy, home ownership and the definition of family. On these and other issues it asks the practical yet delightfully naughty question: 'Can we just share?'"

Overall, the season offers a balance between theatrical traditions, a blend of classic and modern, with Shakespeare, non-Shakespeare classics, new plays and an iconic musical. There are stories from the English and French traditions, a new Indigenous play, a magnificent Nigerian tale, and a comedy about polyamory and economics in the modern world.

"The Festival is growing both in how we work and the stories that we tell," says Cimolino. "This growth happens upon the foundation of excellence and artistic development that has brought us to our 70th season."

Financially, the 2022 season will be a stretch. "It is crucial for us to come back in a way that will have a great impact on arts employment and the tourism industry in our area," says Executive Director Anita Gaffney. "With a deficit from last year, government support from all channels, including the federal government's major festivals and events program will be essential to help us build on the work of the past year, broadening the opportunities for artists and audiences, as well as for the industry and the community."

The Festival's largely outdoor season in 2021 provided a lifeline for some arts workers and local businesses, as well as for a segment of the audience, with 274 performances attracting almost 34,000 visitors and employing 968 people. But 2022 is significant: it shows the Festival emerging from the pandemic closures, providing long-term contracts to a substantial number of artists and staff, and mounting a season that will once again welcome audiences in large numbers, allowing the theatre to further its mandate to enrich the community of Stratford.

"Sometimes I let myself picture what it might look and feel like on that first opening night with a theatre full of people," says Cimolino, "and I find myself getting choked up because I realize I've almost forgotten that moment when the lights go down and a hush falls over the crowd as we give ourselves over to the stage. The thought of feeling like that again helps to push us through this final phase in getting there.

"It's not easy - let's not dance around that: this has been enormously challenging and hugely stressful for each and every one of us in this industry. We are all forever changed. But what unites us all is our deep love of the theatre and our urgency to get back to it: to get back to work, to get back to our craft, and to reunite with our people, our audiences. That indescribable connection between performer and audience is the glue that keeps us all here and all pushing to get back together."

Tickets for the 2022 season go on sale to Members of the Stratford Festival beginning on March 6 and to the public on March 18. For more information, contact the box office at 1.800.567.1600 or visit stratfordfestival.ca.

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