Published Winter 2025

The theatre director's role cannot be defined by an inventory of their duties; no matter how many you list—choosing the cast, selecting production and design teams, leading rehearsals managing schedules—the role is all encompassing. The word "director" itself does get us closer to the many facets of the position, for the director is tirelessly giving "direction" on everything happening within a play or musical, to everyone in it.

But a director is more than a manager of tasks and people. The director is the chief interpreter of the play, the lead translator of the playwright's written words into sight, sound and action. That translation begins with a deep immersion in the play itself. For this reason, Stratford's Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino believes that the journey to the stage always begins on the page. "I try to learn everything I can about the script, the playwright and the issues of the play as they matter to our world today. Then I follow my heart and the talents of those I work alongside."

Robert Lepage, who brings his bold reimagining of Shakespeare's Macbeth to the Avon Theatre, compares the director's role to the playwright's. "Directing is also a way of writing, even when a play exists and has been produced in all its different versions. The play only has something new to say if the director rewrites it with his or her directing and staging. The director tries to make the play shine and bring out its ideas."

The same can be said about every cast and crew member: they are all co-creators of a unique version of the play. The director is there to guide and unify their efforts. "My job is to create a clear vision and context for the actors and designers to create within," says Daryl Cloran, director of Sense and Sensibility. "The more I can impart to my collaborators about the world and style we're playing in, the more it empowers them to make informed and exciting choices and contributions, which makes all of our work better."

For Kat Sandler, the writer and director of this season's Anne of Green Gables retelling, rehearsals are especially magical. "I take great joy in being able to give artists some agency over the characters and world we're creating... and to make space for discoveries, magic and comedy that arise out of rehearsal."

With their keen eye for detail, directors don't overlook the audience's contribution in a live performance. To them, the sheer presence of figures in the audience and the beautiful exchange between this collective body and the bodies on stage extend an honorary ensemble member title to each audience member. As veteran director Jackie Maxwell of Ransacking Troy knows, the character of an audience colours the entire production. "The Stratford audience is a very smart audience, a very sophisticated audience. They are not flummoxed by complex language, which is delightful because our company can really play with the language and the physicality."

A cohesive unit of artists working with and off each other, the Festival's directors have been gathered here to paint a picture of the 2025 season, its unique storytelling and its connection to its audience.

CHRIS ABRAHAM

An Edenic forest under threat from encroaching civilization. Men and women of honour forced to flee the injustice of autocratic rulers. In As You Like It, Shakespeare conjured a world both out of time and perennially of the moment. That sense of contemporary relevance and timelessness are at the heart of director Chris Abraham's approach to the production. "In our Arden, the forest is alive with tension, populated by people on the move, each with their own reasons for seeking refuge there," he explains. "This production holds onto the humour and warmth that people love about the play, but there's an urgency here that gives the familiar scenes a fresh intensity." Abraham couldn't help but feel the resonance between Shakespeare's turbulent times and our own. "As You Like It presents a world that feels just a little more precarious, a little more reflective of the challenges we face today, and that brings a new richness to every relationship, every interaction," says the director. "I think audiences will be surprised by how the play speaks to this moment."

DONNA FEORE

Annie is one of those musicals that has claimed such a hold on the hearts of fans that it feels like it's always been on stage. Familiar though audiences are with the story, Donna Feore—who has directed, choregraphed and performed in dozens of musicals at the Festival before taking on this one—knows that iconic shows like Annie always have something new to say. Feore asserts, "Every production is unique by virtue of its cast and creative team and the space in which it's mounted." Case in point, take Stratford's iconic Festival Theatre; its physical design alone opens the musical up to new ways of presenting the orphan girl's unforgettable odyssey to its audience. "The Festival's thrust stage imposes very particular challenges and demands, so that any show mounted here is re-imagined from the ground up," says the director, before moving on to narrative theme. "Harmony is our journey and our end. A journey of hope seen through the eyes of innocents."

DARYL CLORAN

Like many devotees of Jane Austen's fiction, director Daryl Cloran came to the author through the stage and film adaptations of her work. "I have seen quite a number of Austen re-imaginings on stage and screen and read many script adaptations," he shares. "Those adaptations are what got me excited about Austen's original texts and drove me to read the novels to gain a deeper connection with her incredible characters." Directing Kate Hamill's stage version of Sense and Sensibility offers Cloran an opportunity to share the magic of witnessing a beloved work of literature come to life live on stage. "What I love most about Kate's adaptation is how thoroughly she embraces theatricality in her storytelling," gushes the director. "We are creating a really energetic, physical production that celebrates the magic of theatre and the power of an acting ensemble."

ESTHER JUN

Choderlos de Laclos's novel Les Liaisons dangereuses scandalized the reading public when it was published in 1782 with its unsentimental depiction of the sexually and morally decadent upper classes. Though the story's risqué content may not be shocking to our modern sensibilities, director Esther Jun insists that the world it depicts is even more relevant now than in pre-Revolutionary France, if we use what's popular on TV as a barometer. Eager to unfurl the parallels for audiences, Jun is confident Christopher Hampton's celebrated stage adaptation of Les Liaisons dangereuses will captivate. "There are several aspects in the play that I think will speak to audiences at this time. Looking at the popularity of 'eat the rich media,' movies and shows like Saltburn and White Lotus," starts the director. "Dangerous Liaisons seems to be quite timely." The storyline is equally well fitted for the season's theme and the three gods at its centre: Venus, Apollo and Mars. "The play seems made for this theme," declares Jun. "All these characters are aspects of these gods and they are all searching for love and harmony and willing to create war for it."

ROBERT LEPAGE

Robert Lepage's stunning multimedia productions have garnered acclaim around the world. His vision of Macbeth promises to be unlike any other. "Of all of Shakespeare's plays," Lepage notes, "Macbeth has the most action. It's a very cinematic play, way before its time. The setting with its witches and magical elements creates many moments of surrealism." The director goes on to highlight the "hyper realistic" layers of his staging and the way theatre magic will be used to create the "different apparitions" and Macbeth's various "states of mind." Lepage's inspired choice to set Macbeth amidst biker gang wars should not surprise audiences. "It was very natural and organic to imagine Macbeth as the head of a biker gang because Macbeth is, of course, a Scottish play," he points out. "The Scottish setting relies on the rivalry between clans and the clan system of the time. The biker gangs follow the same rules and moral codes as those clans, and the wars between the gangs are like the clan wars you find in Macbeth."

BOBBY GARCIA

With over 50 international directing credits to his name, Bobby Garcia knows the challenges of bringing a Broadway musical like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels to the stage: "Musical theatre is a theatrical medium built on precision," he explains. "It's a challenging medium because it requires the collaboration of so many departments." Garcia thinks of theatre as a "true definition of a collaborative effort," but is careful to note that the artists are working together with a director guiding them. In Garcia's opinion such guidance requires knowing the show's words and music by heart. "We all have to travel down the same path together, so a full understanding of the music, lyrics and book is crucial or we'll be lost," the director affirms. "Only when I have conquered the text and music am I able to enter the rehearsal room with a cast and company and say, 'OK, now let's play!' And then we rediscover the show together."

Tracey Flye will direct the 2025 Production. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is dedicated to the memory of Bobby Garcia.

KAT SANDLER

When Kat Sandler began work on a new stage adaptation of Anne of Green Gables for the Stratford Festival, she dove deep into the heart of a story all but memorized by millions of fans. That familiarity was the starting point for her vision of Anne, the headstrong orphan who wins over the hearts of Avonlea. "My approach to writing and directing a play adapted from a famous work of fiction has to focus on hitting as many of the 'greatest hits' story beats as I can, the scenes and themes that made audiences fall in love with it in the first place." Those greatest hits, Sandler says, are the product of a heroine gifted with the power of imagination and fearless love. "Anne is a startlingly intelligent and bold child who sees the world through rose-coloured glasses. She is unafraid to stand up for herself and her values and loves with her whole heart," affirms the director. "Anne's powerful imagination is a wonderful playground for theatricality, and the medium of theatre allows us to really drill down to the emotional heart of these incredibly well-known scenes and revel in the comedy of the situations she finds herself in."

ANTONI CIMOLINO

Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino is not shy about sharing his inspiration for the Festival's 2025 theme, Apollo, Venus, Mars: Reflections on Harmony, Love and War. "The Winter's Tale is the play from which this theme arose in my mind," he says of the play he's set to direct this season. "Apollo is central to the story. His oracle, usually enigmatic, is definitive in this story. But it takes time for his word to be heeded and to unfold to harmony." Cimolino is entering his 38th season at Stratford, 13th as artistic director, and throughout all that time he's wanted to direct The Winter's Tale. For him, there's no other place he'd rather finally live out that dream. "The Stratford Festival is very close to heaven for theatre folk. You get to work on great plays alongside the most gifted artists and craftspeople of the age," he says. "You are given time and resources. And your work is met by an audience that loves theatre. Heaven."

STAFFORD ARIMA

Director Stafford Arima brings a very personal connection to Forgiveness, Hiro Kanagawa's dramatization of the Canada Reads-winning memoir by Mark Sakamoto. "I was drawn to directing Forgiveness because my family, like many other Canadian families, was profoundly impacted by the Second World War. My uncle, Bruce McDonald, served in the Royal Canadian Air Force and, like Ralph MacLean in Forgiveness, lied about his age so that he could enlist with his three older brothers," shares Arima. "And similar to Mitsue Sakamoto's story in the memoir, on September 24, 1942, my father, grandmother, two aunts and an uncle were taken from their home in Vancouver and brought to the city's Hastings Park to begin their journey as internees." Directing the play in Stratford only deepens the director's bond to Forgiveness. "Beginning in the 1980s, my mother and her best friend drove to Stratford from Toronto to see some shows," offers Arima. "My mom is no longer with us, so directing at Stratford is very special to me. I know my mom would be so proud of her son."

JACKIE MAXWELL

Even after decades of experience as a director, dramaturg and artistic director, Jackie Maxwell is still hesitant to pin down her particular directing style. "I don't really have a single style of directing," she declares. "I love to immerse myself in the play and then with my design team decide: what is the style of the play and how does this play work." Everything falls into place from there. For Erin Shields' Ransacking Troy, much of which takes place on a crowded boat sailing toward Troy, Maxwell knew she wanted to stage the play at Stratford's Tom Patterson Theatre. "It's perfect: the women in the play are on a ship and the Tom Patterson, with its thrust stage, is very much like a ship," she says. "The actors feel like they're walking onto the deck of a ship and the audience feels like they're watching a ship." What happens on the long voyage is the stuff of theatre magic. Out to create an "adventure story," the director assures the play will be a fun experience for audiences—a goal reliant on the play's brilliant comedic core. "Absurdity is turned around so that you come to admire the women for setting out to do what they do," Maxwell explains. "What kind of world do the women want to build? What should their role be? Erin gives a very different way into the story than Homer."

KEITH BARKER

Keith Barker's experiences as a director, dramaturg, actor and artistic director have brought home for him a central question posed by The Art of War: What is the role of an artist in times of conflict and upheaval? The answer, like art itself, is complicated, but it necessitates more than passive spectatorship. "For me personally, it is far more difficult to understand something from a distance," says the director. "In The Art of War, the artist has to place himself in the environment to better understand and capture the chaotic and unfamiliar human experience of war." Barker wants the audience to do the same. "I am hoping our audiences will feel embedded in this story, which has such a tender heart to it. If people talk about and debate the play on the car ride home or bring it up over coffee the next morning, I will have done my job as a director."