For me, the Stratford Festival has always been home. I've worked here for sixteen years. But my familial attachment goes back to the very first season, when my father became a member of the acting company. A young Ottawa performer, he came to Stratford in 1953 at the invitation of Tyrone Guthrie—the British theatrical director who would go on to shape the 20th-century revival of traditional theatre. There was to be a six-week Shakespeare Festival, and perhaps—who knew?—another one the following year. My father was well employed at the time, but was heartily encouraged by family and friends to accept the offer despite it being for only a few months' work. Even his boss at the Remington Rand typewriter company thought he should leap at the chance—because maybe, just maybe, this Festival would be a success. If it wasn't, his boss said Dad could always come back to the world of typewriter sales. So Dad jumped.
He loved Stratford! And Stratford loved him back. As one season turned into another and another, Stratford became home. He got married and had a family. His fellow actors also made Stratford home and they had families. At the Festival's 50th anniversary celebrations, my father quipped in a speech, "Who would have thought the Stratford Festival would outlast the typewriter?"
For those of us who grew up inside the Festival, life was wonderful! As adults, with lives and careers that took us away from home, we Festival kids still managed to get together. Inevitably, conversation during these reunions would find their way to recounting memories of growing up here. Memories like my dad sneaking kids into shows to sit on the steps at the back of the theatre. As he'd close the aisle doors, he'd whisper: "Soak it up, soak it up." We'd go backstage. We'd tour the building, traipsing through the catwalks, gazing at the stage below. We'd stay up late while theatre parties raged in our homes. We'd play old-fashioned games like kick the can late into the night and long after the cannon's blast had resounded through town. For us, that boom meant our parents had started work. For other kids it meant it was time to go home.
Our reminiscences brought back some very strong emotions. Eventually, by our most recent pre-pandemic reunion, almost every single one of us had moved back "home" to Stratford.
This idea of coming home has stuck with me since I began working at the Festival. Not because of my own experience, more because of the stories audiences have shared with me during their visits to the Festival. Even without parents who worked here, they experience that same feeling of "coming home" whenever they visit Stratford.
William Shatner (who started his career here with my dad) likened a visit here to a pilgrimage, and indeed I have learned over the years that thousands upon thousands of people make the annual trek to Stratford because of that inimitable something that is uniquely special to them. Perhaps for those people, this tucked-away theatre oasis is as Amy Alipio described Stratford in National Geographic Traveler: "It's the type of walkable wholesome town Rodgers and Hammerstein might write a musical about." Or maybe it's just that there's something about this place, something I thought was unique to me and a few others with a "special" connection to the Festival, but instead it turns out that "special" connection is multifold and infectious, not just hereditary. "Once bitten you're bound to be smitten," wrote UK theatre writer Mark Shenton after visiting. And our long-time patrons agree.
PENNY MACKENZIE
The Stratford Festival and I were both created in the same year. My lifelong love of Shakespeare was ignited in the family living room, where my dad, an amateur actor, would deliver soliloquies and precis plays to entertain me on the nights my mother went to bridge club. Each summer, as soon as I was able to sit still through five acts, we would come to Stratford to picnic by the river and then climb the hill to see a play. The anticipatory excitement and glamour associated with the theatre in Stratford has never diminished for me through 70 years.
How incredibly lucky are we to have the opportunity to experience world-class performances in small-town, southern Ontario? I have been to Verona, Illyria and the Forest of Arden, all in the company of the greatest actors of my generation
It was the highlight of every school year when we would bring busloads of students to the Festival. Many of the kids were seeing a live performance for the first time. And I loved to watch them watch the plays. Here, Shakespeare leaps off the page, past their defences or preconceptions and into an understanding of timeless themes and relatable human experience.
The Stratford Festival has and, as the kids say, is everything.
KEVIN RAMESSAR
I'll always remember my first time in the theatre: it was the summer of '92 and a group of us students were visiting Southwestern Ontario from Calgary as part of the youth Voyageurs program to celebrate Canada's 125th birthday. The culmination of our exchange week was Stratford's Romeo and Juliet, a first-time experience for many of us
Years later, my university guitar teacher and mentor, Terry McKenna, invited me to sub for him in that very theatre, and during a subsequent season I found myself collaborating onstage, directed by the same Romeo from that memorable night, Antoni Cimolino! I'm so grateful to be part of the Festival's artistic community, to grow alongside wonderfully talented and dedicated artisans from different trades, departments and backgrounds and to share in the work of creating transformative art for our generation and beyond.
JOHNNY OLEKSINSKI
I first went to Stratford as a 17-year-old high school student on a wild road trip. Not all of that story is printable, but a group of rowdy Chicago pals and I packed into a van, drove across the border, camped a few miles away and saw Ben Carlson's sensational Hamlet in 2008. I was so smitten with the show, the theatre-savvy residents and visitors and the idyllic town itself that I lugged my skeptical dad, Jeff, back with me later that summer for more (Jonathan Goad in The Music Man, Brian Dennehy in All's Well That Ends Well and a Hamlet double-dip). Although mostly a musical guy, Dad fell in love with the Shakespeare hotspot, too, and now he asks me when we're going. We've been back most of the past 16 years and have made lifelong friends who live in Stratford. My Uncle Jack and others have joined us on seven-show long weekends. And on the rare occasion I can't make it, Dad has brought along my stepmom, Modesta. Now I attend annually as a cranky 33-year-old critic. But that first electric moment we roll onto Ontario Street every year, I'm still a teenager with his dad, all revved up to see Hamlet.
TWELVE-YEAR-OLD SADIE AND EIGHT-YEAR-OLD RORY TRANT
Since my brother and I were little, our Nana has taken us to performances at the Stratford Festival. My brother went for the first time last summer, when he was seven. He saw Chicago and said it "made me feel really excited and happy." When I was little, I always enjoyed seeing the performances, and I still do now. It is exciting seeing the actors and the special effects, and it is obvious how much effort and time has been put into the performances. The first play I saw was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I loved it. Especially the lion made from book pages. My brother and I have both had a great time watching the plays. It shows how much my brother cares about going to the Festival with my Nana because he wore a suit and tie to the performance. He said he did that because "the Stratford Festival is a fancy place, and it gives me the feeling that I should be matching."
ADAM NATENSHON
I first came to the Stratford Festival in the 1990s, as a teenager with my parents, and was mesmerized by Scott Wentworth's Iago in Othello. That powerful, searing theatre experience has stayed with me for the past 30 years. It was wonderful to share the joy with my girlfriend, now wife of over 20 years, [onto] passing it forward to our children. Three generations now make the annual pilgrimage to Stratford, including my parents, wife and our three teenage boys. Our oldest son came with us prior to the pandemic, but the 2022 season was the maiden voyage for our 14- and 11-year-old sons. They were captivated by Colm Feore as Richard III, dazzled by Chicago (and a bit shocked by the subject matter) and intrigued by All's Well That Ends Well. The new Tom Patterson Theatre is impressive, and yet still warmly familiar.
Bumping into Colm Feore outside of Festival Theatre was an honour, and I think he was genuinely touched to see younger faces appreciating his craft and surprised when I mentioned that his versions of King Lear, Coriolanus, Henry Higgins and Cyrano were profound, powerful theatre experiences. He asked which Cyrano staging … I answered both!