What has become a tradition of sorts is alive and well at The Guild Hall on Rogers Street, with Jerry Allen and Pat Hooper again coming together to bring a comedy to Peterborough Theatre Guild audiences and lighten up the winter months.
Just less than a year after the pair brought the romantic comedy Outside Mullingar to life, January 16 will see the touching family comedy Where You Are open for a 10-show run.
Written by Oakville native Kristen Da Silva, whose award-winning comedy Gibson & Sons was also directed and produced by Allen and Hooper in early 2023, Where You Are is the fourth play of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2025-26 six-show season.
Allen and Hooper — the closest pairing to a “dream team” that the Guild can lay claim to — have now collaborated on five productions in total, with the musicals Annie (2022) and Fiddler On The Roof (2024) also on their resumés.
“People need something to take their minds off the February blahs,” says Allen of both his and Pat’s penchant for bringing lighter fare to the stage. “That’s why I want to do comedies. I haven’t done a lot of dramas. Not that I’m afraid of them, but in the winter months people want to laugh.”
In Where You Are, which is billed as “a hilarious and honest exploration of family, forgiveness, and falling in love,” Allen has the perfect vehicle to make that happen.
Set on and around a front porch in Little Current on Manitoulin Island, the story introduces retired sisters, widowed Glenda and her younger sister Suzanne, who have lived together since Suzanne arrived single, penniless, and pregnant 33 years earlier to move in with Glenda and her husband Mark.
While one sister is warm and industrious and the other is brash and prone to late mornings, they are devoted to one another, and spend laughter-filled days selling homemade jam and swapping stories about the locals while convincing their attractive veterinarian neighbour Patrick to do chores for them.
Enter Beth, Suzanne’s doctor daughter visiting from Toronto. What follows is a busy reunion week that includes a wild wedding, medicinal experimentation, and a budding romance between Beth and Patrick. Behind it all is not only a weighty secret the two sisters have been keeping from Beth, but a secret Beth has been keeping from her mother and aunt.
“It made me laugh when I read it,” says Allen of his attraction to Da Silva’s story, adding “If it makes me laugh on the page, I think ‘OK, that can work really well with an audience.'”
“I like doing comedies. I think I have maybe a knack for finding the humour in things. When I read this, I was like ‘Man, that’s funny. That’s good stuff. People will relate to this.’ I’m seeing it, I’m hearing it, on the stage at that point.”
While the play can be called a romantic comedy, Allen describes it as “a slice of life.”
“Yes, there’s romance in it, and there’s lots of comedy, but there’s also the dealing with significant life and death issues, so that’s part of the story too. It’s got a really broad range of interests for audiences. They will find a lot of questions addressed; a lot of issues to take on. But, in the end, there’s romance, and there’s lots of comedy.”
Spend even a few minutes with Allen and Hooper and it becomes clear very quickly that their director-producer relationship is built on a deep mutual respect for each other’s talents. During their entire sit-down with kawarthaNOW, that they unabashedly enjoy each other’s company was evident in the smiles that rarely left their faces.
“Jerry and I got to know each other just before Annie,” recalls Hooper, adding “He needed a producer. I was looking for another play to work on. It was just a really coincidental thing.”
“We talk about stay in your own lane — do your job, don’t be doing my job. We’ve established, in many ways, the ability to know you’re the director, you have the vision, and you know how this is going roll out.”
“I don’t have the vision, but I can keep all the balls in the air around the production piece. I get the crew together. Jerry looks after the cast. We work really well together that way. We have a different set of talents and approaches to doing things but it has worked very well.”
“I’ve only had to tell him ‘Get out of my lane’ a few times,” laughs Hooper, with Allen quickly retorting “My face healed up very quickly.”
All joking aside, Hooper admits to being “awestruck” when watching Allen work.
“I watch him as a visionary — looking at those actors and decision what they should be and how they should move. How do you do that? When do the lights come on? When does the music start? It’s amazing to watch.”
For his part, Allen describes Hooper as “the best mother around.”
“She gives them (cast and crew members) kudos all the time. She’s really supportive. She makes them feel wanted; she makes them feel secure.”
Hooper adds the absence of a strong director-producer relationship inevitably results in “total confusion and conflict. It creates a huge problem.”
Reflecting on when Hooper agreed to produce Annie, Allen says he was thrilled.
“Because of Pat’s background community-wise, I knew this woman knows what she’s doing and she’s good at it. She knows how to talk to people. That was a big relief for me. I intuitively knew that it was going to be a good match.”
“We were both interested in no drama backstage. The only drama is onstage. The mantra for the cast is the notion of kindness. The play is really about kindness. Pat and I agreed that the people we wanted to be involved were kind to one another. We didn’t want people who are snarky and snippy and mean. We’re not doing that. We don’t need it and we don’t want it.”
The cast of Where You Are — Lyndele Gucci as Glenda, Colleen White-Goodchild as Suzanne, Lindsay Wilson as Beth, and Kevin O’Neill as Patrick — is small in number but big on talent, says Hooper.
“They’ve very supportive of one another … they want the other to succeed,” she adds.
Allen says working with a small cast allows him “to get into the minutiae of things, getting into finding what the script might hide.”
“There’s often a lot of story going on which is not on the page, what they call subtext. You have to suss it out. You can do that a lot more with four people.”
Of note, Allen and Hooper also share a distinction that has been bestowed relatively few since the late 1990s. Last year, Allen was inducted into Peterborough’s Pathway of Fame for his theatre work, six years after Hooper was also inducted for her extensive volunteer work.
Allen, predictably, downplays his induction, instead garnering the most satisfaction from the stage success met by those in his charge.
“I don’t need the applause, but I certainly need the satisfaction,” he says. “I just love seeing it come together. I love people on stage who really step out there.”
“The biggest fear most people have is speaking in public. When you get onstage, you set it right out there. If you screw up, you screw up. It’s there for everybody to see. I’ve always admired the courage of people (actors), and that they trust me not to let them make fools of themselves.”
“I reassure them ‘I’m not going to ask you to do anything onstage that’s going to embarrass you. We’re going to make people laugh with you, not at you.'”
Besides Allen and Hooper, the creative team for Where You Are includes stage manager Becky Hooper, set designer Keith Dalton aided by Allen, and sound/lighting designer Roy Craft. Coincidentally, the latter was also inducted into the Pathway of Fame last year and, at that event, was recruited by Hooper to gift his talents to this production.
Where You Are runs for 10 performances, with evening shows at 7:30 p.m. on January 16 and 17, 22 to 24, and 29 to 31 and matinee shows at 1:30 p.m. on January 18 and 25.
Assigned seating tickets cost $30 ($27 for seniors and $20 for students) and are available by phone at 705-745-4211 or online at www.peterboroughtheatreguild.com. A special two-for-one ticket promotion is available for opening weekend.
kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2025-26 season.
