Welcome to my first season with you here at the Festival.

Planning a Stratford season offers possibilities that scarcely exist anywhere else. There are very few theatres with the artistic ambition and resources to stage Shakespeare, major musicals, new work and large-scale drama side by side. It is that range of possibility that excites me most, and it is at the heart of my first season as Artistic Director.

It is a particular pleasure to introduce my first season in the Stratford Festival’s 75th year. Milestone seasons can naturally encourage us to look back, but what has always impressed me about Stratford is its willingness to look forward. Since Tyrone Guthrie arrived here in 1953 right through to Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino’s final season in 2026, the Festival has continually renewed itself while remaining true to its founding ideals. The productions in this season reflect that spirit – they include works we know and love alongside new stories and plays that invite us to look again at what we think we know.

This appointment also carries a personal significance for me. Although I have spent most of my career in the United Kingdom, I grew up in a theatre family and was aware from an early age of Stratford’s place in the theatrical world. Over the years, I have had the privilege of leading theatres shaped by ideas that can be traced directly to this Festival, particularly the relationship between actors and audiences made possible by Tanya Moiseiwitsch’s revolutionary thrust stage.

Long before I arrived here, Stratford had already influenced the way I think about theatre. To work now on the original thrust stage at the Festival Theatre, and on what I regard as its finest evolution at the Tom Patterson Theatre, is both a privilege and an inspiration.

Shakespeare is at the heart of this season, as it should be. Stratford is the only theatre in North America with the artistic resources, talent and tradition to produce all of Shakespeare’s plays, and I believe that responsibility extends to the entire canon. So this season includes one of his greatest plays, Hamlet, alongside two of his now less performed and perhaps more challenging plays, The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew – all three compelling works of theatre, raising questions that continue to challenge artists, scholars and audiences. Great theatre doesn’t always provide easy answers. Sometimes its role is to invite us into a conversation, and Stratford should be a place where audiences can engage with these works thoughtfully, openly and imaginatively.

Alongside Shakespeare, there will be an abundance of musical theatre, Mary Poppins and Chicago at the Festival Theatre and, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, a brand-new Canadian musical, Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang, from David S. Craig and Stratford’s own Anika Johnson and Britta Johnson, who have brought Mordecai Richler’s beloved children’s story to vivid life.

My first undertaking as a director here in Stratford will be the Canadian premiere of Hilary Mantel’s epic Tudor dramas explored in two parts, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, at the Avon Theatre, offering audiences the opportunity to immerse themselves in one of the world’s most gripping political stories as it unfolds across two extraordinary plays.

For sheer fun, the remarkable actor Eric McCormack, who began his career here at Stratford, brings you Noël Coward’s comedy Present Laughter, about a theatre star at the height of his fame. And I’m thrilled to announce a Canadian theatrical hat trick: Saul Rubinek (returning to Stratford for the first time since 1969) playing Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, presenting the one-man show Playing Shylock, and performing in his own play, All in the Telling, which will have its premiere here this season.

I’m also proud to present one of the most powerful and inventive works of theatre that I have come across in recent years, Daniel David Moses’s Almighty Voice and His Wife, a landmark work of Indigenous theatre. It, together with All in the Telling and Playing Shylock, will bring the Studio Theatre back into full repertory production for the first time since the pandemic. This jewel-box of a theatre is vital to the work of the Stratford Festival and I know it is beloved by audiences and artists alike.

Finally, we are delighted to welcome back Kat Sandler’s acclaimed adaptation of Anne of Green Gables, a play that swept to glory in 2025. It will touch down in the Avon Theatre in September before heading off to more distant Canadian climes, along with three other Stratford productions which will be seen in theatres across the country.

What excites me most about this season is its variety. There is no single theme uniting these productions. Rather, they reflect the broadest range of experiences theatre can offer: warmth and wit, spectacle and debate, surprise and delight.

As I begin my own Stratford adventure, I’m reflecting on Tyrone Guthrie’s bold journey to Stratford in 1953, and on Tom Patterson’s spirit of adventure that brought this remarkable theatre into being. The greatest tribute we can pay that legacy is not simply to look back, but to continue moving forward with curiosity, courage and imagination.

Jonathan Church 
Artistic Director