​

BYGONE THEATRE’S 10th SEASON, 2022/2023

Bygone gears up for its biggest season yet with 3 mainstage productions

 

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: TORONTO, ON (Tuesday August 30, 2022), Bygone Theatre is excited be back to live performance for our 10th season – our biggest yet! We bookend our season at the beautiful and historic Hart House Theatre; present an exciting new digitally enhanced, ambulatory production at Campbell House Museum; launch our newly revamped Youth Production Assistant Program; and embark on our most ambitious fundraising campaign (our first as a charity) yet.

 

For the last couple seasons, we have pressed pause on live performance due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, we’ve certainly been busy. In March of 2020 we presented a video about our robust Sustainability Mandate at the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals Action Awards ceremony. In June of that year, we expanded our Diversity and Accessibility Mandates and made concrete, quantifiable goals to ensure fairness and equity in the audition, rehearsal, and production process, as well as better accessibility for audience and community members: this was further expanded upon in 2021, for the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We developed several new workshops including Careers In The Arts and Producing Indie/Fringe Festival Theatre and provided those for free via Zoom, as well as allowing other artists free access to our paid Zoom account for their own workshops and rehearsals for the first few months of the pandemic. We made a series of “how-to” videos for our YouTube channel, and with the support of Aster Roe Productions, we expanded our Youth Production Assistant Program which provides hands-on training for high school students, and now also includes assessments, a certificate of completion, and a $400 honourarium. We were voted Toronto’s Best Live Theatre (Toronto Star Readers’ Choice, 2021) and were runner-up for NOW Magazine’s Readers’ Choice award for Best Small Theatre. We became a registered charity, and launched our first ever Charitable Donation Campaign with 100% of funds raised going directly to artists. Finally, we started work on three original productions which we are happy to bring to you live this season.

 

MAINTAGE PRODUCTIONS

November 25 – December 10, 2022, join us at Hart House Theatre for an imaginative new play inspired by the Daphne DuMaurier short story and classic Hitchcock film, THE BIRDS. Written and directed by Emily Dix (Broadway World TO Award Winner, Best Direction of an Equity Play), the play’s examination of isolation, paranoia and distrust of the media put a current spin on this timely classic.

 

In March of 2023, Bygone is mounting an exciting new project at Campbell House Museum. A reinvention of the classic short story, THE YELLOW WALLPAPER, actor Kate McArthur (Broadway World TO Award Winner, Best Actress in a Featured Role) stars in a one-woman show about mental health, isolation, and woman’s often restrictive role in society. Funded by the Canada Council Digital Now grant, the show will combine live, ambulatory theatre with digital streaming and projections.

 

We wrap up our season on a lighter note back at Hart House Theatre in May, 2023, for the much-anticipated WAYNE AND SHUSTER, LIVE! as we bring Canada’s favourite comedy duo back to the stage, performed for the first time by a new generation with a collection of their classic skits. Bygone Theatre is honoured to have the chance to work with the duo’s descendants – Brian and Michael Wayne and Rosie Shuster – to bring these much-loved sketches back for a new generation of comedy lovers.

​