The Shaw Festival's 64th season places Black artistry at its centre, with Pulitzer and Tony winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins premiering new work, Philip Akin directing Sophia Walker in Ohio State Murders, and Camille Eanga-Selenge, Peter Fernandes, Taurian Teelucksingh and Allison Edwards-Crewe leading major stage productions this season. The Perfect Pairings concert series also adds vocalists Alana Bridgewater and Jeremiah Sparks at the new Shaw Artists' Village.
The Shaw Festival opened its 64th season this spring, carrying an unmistakable throughline, an unusually deep and well-earned representation of Black talent across its stages, rehearsal rooms and concert programming. In Niagara-on-the-Lake, several artists are carrying significant creative weight this year.
Camille Eanga-Selenge, a Broadway veteran making her farce debut, holds her own inside the frantic mechanics of One for the Pot. Peter Fernandes, a five-season Shaw favourite best known for his comic timing, has stepped behind the scenes for the first time to direct Sleuth, even as he continues performing eight shows a week in a separate production. Taurian Teelucksingh, a Dora Award and Toronto Theatre Award nominee, anchors the world premiere of The Wind in the Willows while also appearing in Funny Girl. Allison Edwards-Crewe, whose credits span The Handmaid's Tale and the Stratford Festival, leads Heartbreak House as the season's central ingenue.
Sophia Walker carries a demanding solo turn in Ohio State Murders under the direction of Philip Akin, the first Black actor to perform at Shaw and a founder of Obsidian Theatre Company, while Pulitzer and Tony winner Branden Jacobs-Jenkins returns to the festival to write and direct a new work still in progress. Their combined work sits alongside a new addition to the Shaw's Beyond the Stage programming, the Perfect Pairings concert series, which puts vocalists Alana Bridgewater and Jeremiah Sparks in front of audiences at the newly built Shaw Artists' Village.
Taken together, the season offers a rare, sustained look at how much creative ground Black artists are covering at one of Canada's largest theatre companies.
A farcical high-wire act at the Festival Theatre
One for the Pot, Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton's 1959 farce, runs at the Festival Theatre through October 11 under Chris Abraham's direction. The plot turns on mistaken identity, as wealthy patriarch Jonathan Hardcastle (Patrick Galligan) tries to locate his late business partner's long-lost son to deliver a £10,000 inheritance, only for several identical claimants to appear at once.
Camille Eanga-Selenge plays Cynthia Hardcastle, the household's romantic ingenue, in her first Shaw season. She arrives with an unusually well-travelled résumé for a newcomer to Niagara-on-the-Lake. Her Broadway credits include The Book of Mormon, and she performed in the Chicago production of Paradise Square. Toronto audiences may also recognize her from Disney's The Lion King and Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, both staged by Mirvish and Crow's Theatre, as well as her turn as Dorothy in Ross Petty's holiday production of The Wizard of Oz. A Sheridan College graduate, she trained in the school's Bachelor of Music Theatre Performance program with honours.
Peter Fernandes shares the stage with her as Billy Hickory Wood, the farce's bumbling beneficiary, a role that anchors the show's frenzy of doors, disguises and doubled-up appearances.
Peter Fernandes steps behind the curtain as a director
Fernandes's more significant milestone this season sits elsewhere on the festival grounds. At the newly reopened Court House Theatre, he makes his Shaw directorial debut with Sleuth, Anthony Shaffer's Tony and Edgar Award-winning psychological thriller. The production, running through October 9, follows travel agent Milo Tindle (Sepehr Reybod) into the country home of mystery novelist Andrew Wyke (Patrick Galligan), where an ostensibly civil arrangement curdles into a dangerous game of deception and revenge.
Reviewers have singled out the direction for its confidence. The Globe and Mail called it an auspicious start to a directing career, noting how Fernandes leans on the same command of physical comedy and misdirection that has defined his years as a Shaw performer. Now an artistic associate at Crow's Theatre in Toronto, Fernandes has built his reputation at Shaw largely as a comic actor, with credits including One Man, Two Guvnors, Damn Yankees and The Importance of Being Earnest. Sleuth asks him to apply that same instinct for stage mechanics toward something considerably darker, and by most accounts, he has pulled it off.
A Pulitzer and Tony winner premieres new work at the Shaw
Also at the Court House Theatre, playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins has returned to the festival that has staged his work twice before, this time as both writer and director. A New Work in Progress, a limited workshop presentation of a play still in development, runs August 1 to September 5. Jacobs-Jenkins won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the 2025 Tony Award for Best Play for Purpose, making him the first Black playwright to win Best Play since August Wilson's Fences in 1987. He also won a 2024 Tony Award for the Broadway revival of Appropriate.
The Shaw previously staged his plays An Octoroon in 2017 and Everybody in 2022, and this season's workshop reunites him with several members of the Shaw ensemble, including Andrew Broderick and Savion Roach, both established Black Canadian performers, alongside Janelle Cooper, Allan Louis, André Morin, David Andrew Reid and Sophia Walker. Tickets are limited, and the festival is promoting it as a rare chance to see a new script take shape ahead of its wider premiere elsewhere.
A world premiere puts Taurian Teelucksingh centre stage
The Wind in the Willows, adapted and directed by Fiona Sauder from A.A. Milne's Toad of Toad Hall, makes its world premiere at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre this season, running through September 27. The family-friendly production follows the reckless Mr. Toad (Lawrence Libor) as his obsession with fast motorcars lands him in prison and costs him his ancestral home, forcing his friends, the Mole, Rat and Badger, into a rescue mission.
Taurian Teelucksingh plays Alfred, part of an ensemble that also includes Sharry Flett, Gabriella Sundar Singh and Shawn Wright. It is his fifth Shaw season, and one of two productions on his 2026 slate. He also appears as a tenor in the ensemble of Funny Girl, running at the Festival Theatre. Teelucksingh's résumé outside Niagara-on-the-Lake includes a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for outstanding ensemble and a Toronto Theatre Award nomination for outstanding featured performance in a musical, along with credits at Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Aquarius and the Grand Theatre. He trained at Sheridan College.
Allison Edwards-Crewe leads a Shavian classic
Heartbreak House, Bernard Shaw's own meditation on love, class and a society drifting toward war, opened at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre on July 10 and runs through October 3 under the direction of Shaw Festival Artistic Director Tim Carroll. Allison Edwards-Crewe plays Ellie Dunn, a young woman engaged to a wealthy but unsentimental businessman even as her heart belongs elsewhere, a role that has anchored the play since its earliest productions.
Edwards-Crewe also appears this season in Amadeus. Her credits beyond Shaw include a recurring role as Theresa on The Handmaid's Tale, as well as several seasons at the Stratford Festival in productions including King Lear, Les Belles-Soeurs and Much Ado About Nothing. She trained in the University of Windsor's music theatre program and began her professional career in Dreamgirls at the Grand Theatre.
Sophia Walker anchors a solo turn under Philip Akin's direction
Ohio State Murders, Adrienne Kennedy's one-act examination of race, memory and grief, runs at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre from July 19 to October 3. Sophia Walker plays Suzanne Alexander, an acclaimed Black author who returns to her alma mater to confront the violence embedded in both her writing and her own history, opposite André Morin as Robert Hampshire.
Walker, born in Toronto, has built her career across the country's major festivals, including a previous Shaw season in August Wilson's Gem of the Ocean, along with Stratford Festival credits in An Ideal Husband, To Kill a Mockingbird and Private Lives and a run at Obsidian Theatre in Ruined. Her television credits include The Handmaid's Tale, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds and The Mayor of Kingstown. She also appears this season in A New Work in Progress.
Directing her is Philip Akin, a founding member of Obsidian Theatre Company, Canada's leading Black theatre company, who led it as artistic director from 2006 to 2020. Akin was the first Black actor to perform at the Shaw Festival, cast in Caesar and Cleopatra in 1975 and has since returned repeatedly as a director, staging Topdog/Underdog, The Mountaintop, "Master Harold"…and the Boys, Gem of the Ocean and Trouble in Mind, several in partnership with Obsidian. He now sits on the Shaw Festival's Board of Governors and was named to the Order of Canada in 2026.
Music and mentorship beyond the mainstage
The season's featured performers work at a festival where Black creative leadership extends behind the scenes as well. Kimberley Rampersad, the Shaw Festival's Associate Artistic Director, directs the festival's new Perfect Pairings concert series, a Beyond the Stage addition that pairs the vocal talents of the Shaw ensemble with the work of celebrated musical theatre songwriting duos, John Kander and Fred Ebb, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty, and Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. Ryan deSouza serves as music director and pianist.
Perfect Pairings performs in the new Village Hall, the first venue to open inside the forthcoming Burton Centre for Lifelong Creativity at the Shaw Artists' Village on Wellington Street, running from July 7 through September 19. The vocal ensemble includes Alana Bridgewater and Jeremiah Sparks, both established names in Black Canadian music theatre. Bridgewater, a University of Windsor-trained singer and Reelworld Screen Institute member, has played Ma Rainey in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom at Soulpepper and Mrs. Meeker in this season's Funny Girl. Sparks, now in his sixth Shaw season, originated the role of Pa in the Canadian premiere of The Color Purple and played Mufasa in the Toronto production of Disney's The Lion King. They are joined in the Perfect Pairings ensemble by Amariah Faulkner, Élodie Gillett, Daniel Greenberg, Patty Jamieson, Cheryl Mullings, Éamon Stocks and Mikayla Stradiotto.
Rampersad's own body of work extends well beyond the concert series. She has directed The Color Purple, hang and How Black Mothers Say I Love You, and her production of Man and Superman earned coverage in The New York Times. She also serves as associate director on Ohio State Murders alongside Akin.
For readers planning a visit to Niagara-on-the-Lake this season, the productions featuring this year's standout Black artists run on staggered schedules across three venues, giving audiences several ways to catch more than one show in a single trip. Here is where and when to find them:
- One for the Pot, Festival Theatre, May 27 to October 11
- Sleuth, Court House Theatre, April 2 to October 9
- A New Work in Progress, Court House Theatre, August 1 to September 5
- The Wind in the Willows, Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, May 22 to September 27
- Heartbreak House, Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, July 10 to October 3
- Ohio State Murders, Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, July 19 to October 3
- Perfect Pairings, Village Hall at the Shaw Artists' Village, July 7 to September 19
A season that rewards a closer look
What stands out about the Shaw's 64th season is the range. Eanga-Selenge and Fernandes hold down a frantic British farce; Fernandes doubles that role with a directorial debut in a considerably darker genre; Teelucksingh carries a family show built from scratch this year; and Edwards-Crewe leads one of Shaw's own most enduring dramas. Walker carries an unaccompanied, emotionally demanding lead role under the direction of Akin, and Jacobs-Jenkins, one of the most decorated playwrights working today, is using the festival as a workshop for something entirely new.
Add Rampersad's hand in shaping the festival's music programming and Bridgewater and Sparks's presence in the new concert series, and the picture that emerges is one of Black artists working across nearly every register the Shaw produces, from slapstick to psychological thriller to Shavian drawing-room drama to a still-developing new script.
Toronto audiences have easier access to all of it than in past seasons. The Shaw Express bus service has expanded its schedule from downtown Toronto and Burlington, with select dates now offering two-show itineraries that pair a matinee and an evening performance in a single day trip.
The 2026 season runs through December 23 at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, with tickets and full scheduling available through the Shaw's box office and website.
