Stageworthy

About This Episode: Playwright and writer Natalie Kaye joins Phil Rickaby to talk about her wildly ambitious new musical, 1920s Walking Around in a Dream, playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival. The show is a screwball comedy set in an imagined 1920s Jazz Age Chicago, and it's a retelling of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, translated not into modern English, but into the heightened, slang...

About This Episode: As the Toronto Fringe Festival prepares to launch, Phil Rickaby gathers four of Toronto's most dedicated theatre content creators (Janine Marley from A View from the Box, Ryan Borochovitz from The Cup Podcast, Alexandra Lean from Being Dramatic, and Ryan McCollom from Plates & Playbills) for a lively live stream preview of the 2026 festival. Together they dig into what make...

About This Episode: In this episode, Phil sits down with Marla Torgerson, a Calgary-based singer-songwriter and classically trained vocalist who has written and performs her debut theatrical work, Sinner, a one-woman musical tragic comedy about growing up in the evangelical Bible Belt of central Alberta and the long, often painful process of leaving fundamentalist religion behind. What starts as a...

About this episode: Chris Cracknell is a Hamilton-based composer, musician, performer, and web series creator who has channelled a pandemic-era creative crisis into something genuinely extraordinary: a non-canonical musical adventure called Pookumhura Mistress of B-Roll, playing at Theatre Passe-Muraille as part of the Toronto Fringe's Musical Theatre Hub. The show draws on Chris's nearly two deca...

Read transcript About This Episode: What would happen if a newly elected Premier of Ontario was forced to live on minimum wage? That's the provocative (and deeply funny) question at the heart of Minimum, the political satire written and performed by Victoria Sullivan. After winning Best in Venue at the 2025 Hamilton Fringe Festival, Victoria is bringing the show to Toronto Fringe, and the timing c...

Read transcript About This Episode: Kathleen Welch is a playwright, composer, director, and actor, and one of the founding members of The Spindle Collective; the Toronto-based company making some of the most compelling horror theatre in Canada right now. She joined Phil to talk about Siofra, Spindle Collective's latest show, which opens at the Red Sandcastle Theatre on June 17th. Rooted in the Iri...

About This Episode: What do we really know about our dads — and what have we never been able to say out loud? Taylor Trowbridge joins Phil to talk about her new solo show Dads, playing at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Part stand-up, part storytelling, part audience game, the show invites people to sit with the full range of their experiences with their fathers: the funny, the complicated, and the q...

Read transcript About this episode: Stephen Drover has directed Macbeth before; twenty years ago, the day after it closed, he wanted to do it again. Now, as both adapter and director for Bard on the Beach in Vancouver, he's finally getting that chance. In this rich conversation, Stephen talks about approaching Shakespeare not as a sacred text to be served but as a living collaboration, asking not...

About This Episode: What happens when an engineer decides to write a play? If you're Rymn Wadhwa, you end up with one of the most inventive premises at this year's Toronto Fringe Festival. Assembly Sϋggested follows two women building an IKEA chair (and maybe, just maybe, a relationship ) guided by an instruction manual that gets increasingly, wonderfully absurd. It's a debut play with a deceptive...

About This Episode: Chantel Winters is a Toronto-based actor, playwright, and producer who has built a career by refusing to wait for permission. In this conversation with host Phil Rickaby, Chantel talks about how the realities of the audition grind pushed her toward making her own work. The conversation also digs into & Other Concerns, the film adaptation of the 2019 Fringe hit An Atlas in a...

Read transcript About This Episode Blythe Haynes returns to Stageworthy for a wide-ranging conversation with host Phil Rickaby about indie theatre, artistic process, community, and the evolution of a Fringe hit into a feature film. Blythe reflects on how Toronto’s theatre scene has changed since the pandemic, why she believes artists need spaces to experiment and fail, and what Canadian theatre ca...

About This Episode: Playwright, director, and theatre maker Susanna Fournier joins Phil Rickaby fresh from rehearsal to talk about take rimbaud , her ambitious new production at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in association with the Howland Company. Inspired by Arthur Rimbaud's iconic prose poem A Season in Hell, the play is a decade-plus labour of love that explores what it means to be a young arti...

About This Episode: Lisa Marie DiLiberto, Artistic Director of Theatre Direct, joins Phil Rickaby for a wide-ranging conversation about one of Canada's most enduring theatre companies for young audiences. With the company approaching its 50th anniversary in 2026, Lisa Marie shares how she's been preparing to honour that legacy — from digging through decades of archives to planning a celebration at...

About This Episode: What happens when a sports medicine physician rediscovers her inner theatre kid during a global pandemic? In this episode, Phil sits down with Dr. Janet McMordie, a physician, actor, podcast host, and Team Canada Paralympics doctor, for a genuinely surprising conversation about what it means to pursue two very different callings at once. Janet shares how Second City's free onli...

About This Episode: What does it mean to move with intention? For Alexis Milligan, movement is everything — every breath, every blink, every shift of weight tells a story. As the Resident Movement Director at the Shaw Festival, Alexis works at the intersection of physical storytelling, design, and performance, helping actors inhabit their roles from the inside out. In this episode, Phil and Alexis...

About This Episode: Logan Robbins is one of those rare theatre artists whose work sits at the intersection of science, storytelling, and a deep love for the natural world. As the artistic director of the Unnatural Disaster Theatre Company in Halifax, Nova Scotia, Logan has built a practice rooted in environmental themes, puppetry, site-specific work, and creating space for emerging artists to find...

About This Episode: Bryn Kennedy returns to Stageworthy to talk about directing Riot King's production of The Moors by Jen Silverman — a darkly comic Victorian Gothic play about isolation, power, and the cost of giving up community. Bryn shares why this unsettling tale of spinster sisters, a mysterious governess, a mastiff dog, and a moorhen feels urgently relevant in our age of individualism and...

About This Episode: In this episode, Phil sits down with Miriam Cummings, a playwright, performer, and educator who creates deeply personal solo theatre. Miriam shares how a tongue-in-cheek suggestion at Canada's National Voice Institute led her to write and perform her first solo show, The One, and how that experience opened up new ways of being vulnerable on stage. She reflects on the protective...

About This Episode: Creative producer Alexis Eastman joins Stageworthy host Phil Rickaby to explore what it really means to be a creative producer in Canadian theatre. From her early days making work at the Toronto Fringe to her current role supporting artists through long-term development processes, Alexis shares insights into how she bridges the administrative and creative aspects of theatre-mak...

About This Episode: What happens when three goblins discover the complete works of Shakespeare and decide to stage Macbeth? Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak, the creative minds behind Spontaneous Theatre and the Goblin Empire, join Phil to share the wild origin story of Goblin:Macbeth; from a rushed eight-day creation to becoming a phenomenon at major Canadian theatre festivals. They discuss the ch...

About This Episode: This week on Stageworthy , Phil Rickaby is joined by the vibrant and multifaceted Tika McLean . In a conversation that is as funny as it is profound, Tika reflects on her journey from a self-described "shy kid" who once froze during a church solo to becoming a bold, multidisciplinary artist who uses her voice to challenge the status quo. In this episode: The "Gen...

About This Episode: This week on Stageworthy , host Phil Rickaby sits down with Emily Jeffers for a thoughtful and wide-ranging conversation about artistic identity, collaboration, and carving out a sustainable life in theatre. Emily shares insights into her creative journey, reflecting on the evolution of her practice and the realities of working as an artist today. From navigating uncertainty to...

About This Episode In this episode of Stageworthy , host Phil Rickaby speaks with Virginia Woodall , producer at the Toronto Sketch Comedy Festival . With the festival entering its 21st year, Virginia shares the story of how she moved from volunteer to producer, how 164 submissions become a 12-day lineup of 78 troupes, and why sketch comedy deserves recognition as its own artistic discipline. In t...

About This Episode In this episode of Stageworthy , host Phil Rickaby speaks with acclaimed playwright, actor, and screenwriter Anusree Roy about her newest play, Through the Eyes of God , now onstage at Theatre Passe-Muraille. The conversation explores Roy’s evolving artistic process, the deeply personal roots of her storytelling, and her journey between theatre and television writing. In this ep...

About This Episode: In this episode of Stageworthy , host Phil Rickaby sits down with Dienye Waboso Amajor — a Dora-nominated Nigerian actor, writer, and interdisciplinary artist living and working in Ontario. With an academic background in theatre and performance studies and ongoing doctoral research, Dienye’s practice bridges performance, scholarship, and cultural storytelling . This Episode Exp...