Photo Flash: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Goes Behind the Scenes at Stratford Festival

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau visited Stratford Festival today, and BroadwayWorld is excited to share some behind-the-scenes photos of him with the artists below!

Stratford Festival's 2017 season, an exploration of identity as Canada, marks the 150th anniversary of its birth as a nation. The season will span the history of Western drama from the ancient Greek classic Bakkhai to two new Canadian plays specially commissioned by the Festival.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night and Timon of Athens and the Jacobean tragedy The Changeling, by his contemporaries Thomas Middleton and William Rowley, will be complemented by Molière's 17th-century satire Tartuffe, Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 18th-century comedy of manners The School for Scandal and Jean Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot, a comedy from the 20th century about the conflict between commerce and culture.

Guys and Dolls, considered by many to be the perfect musical comedy, will unfold at the Festival Theatre, under the direction of Donna Feore. Sailing into the Avon, with director Lezlie Wade at the helm, is HMS Pinafore - one of Gilbert and Sullivan's most popular works and the writing duo's first major success.

High-seas adventures continue at the Avon with Treasure Island, the Schulich Children's Play, based on the classic novel by Robert Louis Stevenson. Mitchell Cushman will direct.

The Studio Theatre will present an all-Canadian season. The Festival has commissioned Colleen Murphy to write The Breathing Hole, an epic allegory to mark Canada's Sesquicentennial, to be directed by Reneltta Arluk. This 500-year saga follows a polar bear from its birth in an Inuit community at the time of First Contact, through a startling encounter with the Franklin Expedition, to a profoundly moving conclusion: a meeting with a 21st-century cruise ship navigating the Northwest Passage in a world now ravaged by climate change. A second commission is Kate Hennig's The Virgin Trial. In her continued re-imagining of the Tudor queens, Ms Hennig has crafted an edge-of-your-seat thriller that sees the young Elizabeth navigate the court intrigues that would deny her the throne. The Last Wife was extended several times during the 2015 season and was sold out for its entire run at the Studio Theatre.

Rounding out the Studio season is Sharon Pollock's The Komagata Maru Incident. Written in 1976, Ms Pollock's work was the first play to explore the racist immigration policies that led to the denial of entry to hundreds of emigrants, most of whom were Sikhs, from the British Raj when the Komagata Maru arrived at the Vancouver port in 1914. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau issued an apology for the incident last month.

Justin Trudeau visits Stratford Festival

Justin Trudeau visits Stratford Festival

Justin Trudeau visits Stratford Festival

Justin Trudeau visits Stratford Festival