For the third mainstage production of its 2024 season, Globus Theatre in Bobcaygeon is presenting another play by Canadian playwright Kristen Da Silva, with her poignant comedy Where You Are coming to the Lakeview Arts Barn for 11 performances from July 3 to 13.
Last year, Globus presented Da Silva’s curling comedy Hurry Hard and, in 2018, her romantic comedy Sugar Road. It’s no accident that Canada’s most-produced playwright Norm Foster has called Da Silva “one of the brightest new comedic playwrights in all of Canada” — he began mentoring her after she wrote her first play Book Club and asked him to provide feedback.
Although the Oakville-based playwright and actor has always been a writer, including writing short stories while she was growing up and writing sketches for a comedy improv group while she was in university, Da Silva had a corporate career in human resources and labour relations when she decided to take the plunge into full-time playwriting just eight years ago.
Along with the aforementioned plays, Da Silva has written Five Alarm, The Rules of Playing Risk, Beyond the Sea, and Gibson & Sons. She was the recipient of the Stage West Pechet Family Comedy Award and is a two-time recipient of the Playwrights Guild New Comedy award.
Da Silva says her 2016 decision to leave her corporate job for playwriting was greatly influenced by something that happened to her aunt Ruth — an experience that also inspired her to write Where You Are.
The play follows two retired sisters, widowed Glenda and her younger sister Suzanne, who are former city residents now living in Little Current on Manitoulin Island. The two sisters have remained devoted to each other ever since, 33 years earlier, the single, penniless, and pregnant Suzanne moved in with Glenda and her husband Mark.
With Suzanne’s now grownup daughter Beth a doctor in Toronto, the two sisters spend their days selling homemade jam, swapping stories about the locals, and roping their attractive veterinarian neighbour Patrick into doing various chores for them.
All that changes when Beth arrives for a summer visit. While a romance begins budding between Beth and Patrick, the two sisters reveal a weighty secret they have been keeping from Beth, who it turns out has been keeping secrets of her own.
“It’s a play about family, with a romance woven in,” Da Silva said in a 2023 interview with Gary Smith. “I think the reason it resonates with audiences is how universal its themes are — love, family, forgiveness, loss, and facing our own mortality. I try to reflect real life, where all the trials, challenges, and sorrows are balanced by moments of joy and humour.”
While Where You Are is a comedy, it also dramatizes a serious topic.
“I think that comedy is a doorway to some tough conversations,” Da Silva told James Hitchison in a 2022 interview. “I set out to entertain people, but I don’t shy away from tackling things that might be more difficult or might evoke sadness, because I think there’s something really cathartic about feeling all of those emotions in one night.”
Where You Are premiered at Theatre Orangeville in 2019 and has since played at Upper Canada Playhouse and Victoria Playhouse in Prince Edward Island.
The Globus Theatre production features returning actors Anna Silvija Broks (Mending Fences, Lunenberg, and Sunshine Express) as Glenda, Joanne Latimer (Halfway There) as Suzanne, and Tara Koehler (Sugar Road, The Great Kooshog Lake Hollis McCauley Fishing Derby) as Beth, with Globus newcomer Josh Johnston (Million Dollar Quartet and The Comedy of Errors at Grove Theatre and Timon of Athens at Stratford Festival) as Patrick.
Globus Theatre artistic producer James Barrett, who is directing the play, says that Globus first produced a staged reading of Where Your Are during the pandemic.
“There are so many touching moments shared between these three women throughout the play,” he says. “I am thrilled to finally be mounting this as a full production on our stage.”
Where You Are opens at 8 p.m. on Wednesday (July 3) with additional evening performances from July 4 to 6 and July 9 to 13, as well as two 2 p.m. matinee performances on July 6 and 11. An optional dinner is available before the evening performances. Tickets are $50 for the show only or $100 for dinner and the show, and are available by calling the box office at 705-738-2037 (toll free at 1-800-304-7897) or online at globustheatre.com.
