Fresh off the plane from St. John’s in Newfoundland and Labrador where she was born and raised, multidisciplinary artist Kate Story is being welcomed back to her other home at downtown Peterborough’s The Theatre on King as the black-box theatre’s executive director.

Solidifying the title, Story is taking to the theatre’s stage this Sunday (October 29) to present her one-person show Anxiety, which first premiered at the theatre at the end of last year. This time it will be broadcast live to air for Trent Radio’s Radio from the Stage initiative. The production is framed by Peterborough/Nogojiwanong poet laureate Ziysah von Bieberstein, with a closing music set by Benj Rowland.

In Anxiety, Story weaves the epic poem Beowulf into an exploration of the English language, the roots of white supremacy, and Story’s own experience being raised by a lexicographer father. She performed the show at the Festival of New Dance in St. John’s earlier this month.

With so much focus on her own upbringing and past in the show, Story says she’s still processing just how “super moving and super significant” it was to be able to perform the critically acclaimed show in the very same theatre she had performed in as a teenager. Only back in Peterborough for a few weeks, Story is already longing to return to the east coast — a longing that has never faded.

“The second I left Newfoundland, I became really homesick and had a physical pain in my chest, and that’s never stopped,” Story says. “That was an unexpected thing that stays with me, and I think informs a lot of my artistic output.”

An author, dancer, choreographer, performance artist, actor, and director, there’s no limit to Story’s creativity and, as with Anxiety, her work often involves a collaboration of art forms and artists. In her previous role as artistic administrator of The Theatre on King and now as executive director, Story has become an advocate and organizer for artists in the community, having also founded Peterborough DanceWorks and served on the board for the Electric City Culture Council.

Though Story now expresses she is torn between her two homes — the Southside Road home in St. John’s built by her great-great-grandfather and her Peterborough home — she didn’t always harbour this attachment to her hometown.

“I look back and I understand a lot of this now through the lens of being genderqueer,” Story explains. “In my generation, being gay or lesbian was hidden, so I didn’t have a lot of models — I just knew I didn’t belong. And when you grow up on an island, I think it’s pretty easy to imagine that if you got off that island, everything would change.”

Ironically though, when Story finally left the east coast at 16 years old, she went straight through the mainland and ended up on another island: Vancouver Island. There, Story attended the pre-university school Pearson College — Canada’s only United World College, a movement encompassing 18 global schools dedicated to uniting cultures and countries around the world through education — that held a pathway that led her to study at Trent University.

Upon completing a degree in cultural studies, Story spent an additional year in Peterborough, where she threw her heart into performance at Union Theatre before moving to Toronto for graduate studies. Though she knew right away her heart wasn’t in it, it wasn’t until Story was in a bad car accident that she figured out what was most important. At 24 years old, she and some friends were driving back from Newfoundland when their car hit black ice and flipped off the road and into a ditch.

“It’s a miracle we weren’t killed,” Story points out.

That near-death experience had a significant impact on her mindset, and Story de-registered from the graduate program while she was still in the hospital.

“It sounds dramatic, but I felt very calm, like I just had this really great perspective,” Story recalls. “Nothing bothered me because we were alive and that’s all that mattered — we had survived, and I had this Zen-like calm.”

With a new perspective, Story returned to Toronto and did every bit of theatre she could, from production assistant roles to performance. In the meantime, she was still assisting at Millbrook’s 4th Line Theatre and, in always feeling a disconnect from Toronto, found herself eventually returning to the comfort of Peterborough.

“I drifted back in the mid-90s and it did remind me of the St. Johns I’d grown up in and the arts scene I’d been aware of as a young person,” she says. “It was very multidisciplinary.”

Story credits “really amazing artists” in Newfoundland like Gerald Squires, Lori Clark, Lois Brown, and Andy Jones as being large inspirations for her because they were each very experimental in nature, not limiting themselves to one style of art.

“Peterborough was really like that,” Story notes. “You can collaborate and — maybe because of my dance background and because my mother was a musician — I just like interdisciplinary collaboration. Peterborough was a place I recognized that I could do the work I wanted to do and there was a space for me.”

It comes as no surprise then, that when she was seeing Ryan Kerr as he was opening the Theatre on King, Story became immersed in it too.

“There is still a yearning for experimental regionally produced performance and Ryan’s always had literary events, visual art exhibits for youth, radio drama, DJ events — there’s been pretty much everything,” Story says. “It’s not just a theatre space. It’s a space I have a lot of passion for, and I’ve seen some pretty magical things happen.”

Adding another art form to the mix, Story has published six novels, including Urchin which was a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for young people’s literature. She also has a short speculative fiction collection, Ferry Back the Gifts, which was a short fiction finalist for the 2023 ReLit Awards, which have celebrated the best titles released by independent presses in Canada for 23 years.

“That’s a big honour,” Story says. “The ReLit Awards are wonderful, and I’m really sad to hear they’ve been struggling.”

Story is referring to the recent announcement by ReLit Awards organizers that the awards have gone on hiatus, after three years of submitting unsuccessful applications to funding agencies — a familiar situation for Story.

Earlier this year, The Theatre on King was denied funding from the City of Peterborough’s community grants program, despite having received the maximum $15,000 allocation the previous year. Following an unsuccessful appeal at a city council meeting in March — despite seven community delegates speaking eloquently in support of the theatre — the theatre launched a fundraising campaign and, in June, Kerr renewed the organization’s lease for the theatre’s space.

“I am so moved whenever I think about it,” says Story of the fundraising campaign’s success. “It just was way beyond anything I would have ever expected, and we got all that support so we’re good for this year. But that doesn’t solve the long-term problem of where our funding is going to come from next year.”

Earlier this month, the City of Peterborough approved realigning the community grants program in 2025 into three funding streams, including a new arts investment fund. Administered by the Art Gallery of Peterborough in collaboration with Electric City Culture Council, the fund would include existing funding for individual artist grants, Artsweek, and the city’s poet laureate program and, beginning as a two-year pilot project, a new $60,000 professional arts organization grant program.

While Story is “happy to hear” the arts stream will fund professional arts organizations, she says not enough is being done.

“It has to stop being thought of as a handout when you give money to the arts and artists,” Story explains. “It’s an investment in a sector and, in the same way you invest in roads and sewers and waste collection, you invest in (the arts sector) as well. We need more investment from the city than the small amount of money that has been proposed.”

Though Story notes that a “shadow has been cast” over The Theatre on King since the appeal was denied, she and Kerr have received huge support from the community. Despite these reminders of the lack of funding to the arts, Story encourages artists to continue doing the work they love and finding their audience.

“If you’ve got stories inside you that have to come out, you have to do it and find a way to bring those stories into the world,” she says. “There are places where you can do readings, cafes that have exhibits, (and) the internet can be used for good. You can find people, but you must get those stories out of you.”

Story says while the smallest reason is to make art is for your own sake, the biggest reason is that the world needs “unity.”

“Find what your thing is and where you could connect, and what’s easiest for you to connect,” Story explains. “Find other people who are doing stuff, and just keep doing it, because people were making art before there were literary magazines and theatres. Just try to keep the faith, just do the work — doing the work now includes looking around and asking, ‘How can I get this out there?’.”

Practising what she preaches, Story is continuing to work on her next projects, including penning another novel — which she describes as a “comedy-horror for adults” — and an ensemble production called Project Baroness coming to The Theatre on King this fall.

For now, you can see Story perform Anxiety on Sunday, October 29th beginning at 8 p.m. with a live-to-air studio audience at the Theatre on King at 171 King Street in downtown Peterborough. Admission is free or pay what you can, but seating is limited. If you can’t attend in person, you can listen live at 92.7 CFFF FM (channel 287 on Cogeco).

This story has been updated to clarify the nature of Pearson College, to correct a misspelling of Lori Clark’s name, and to correct a typo in a quote.

Every Thursday, we publish live music events at pubs and restaurants in Peterborough and the greater Kawarthas region based on information that venues provide to us directly or post on their website or social media channels. Here are the listings for the week of Thursday, October 26 to Wednesday, November 1.

If you’re a pub or restaurant owner and want to be included in our weekly listings, please email our nightlifeNOW editor at nightlife@kawarthanow.com. For concerts and live music events at other venues, check out our Concerts & Live Music page.

With the exception of karaoke, we only list events with performing musicians. Venues may also host other events during the week (e.g., dancing, DJs, comedy shows).

For the second production of its 2023-24 season, the Peterborough Theatre Guild is focusing on local talent by premiering an all-new, all-Canadian comedy written by Peterborough’s own Hugh MacMillan. Paradiso Inn runs for 10 performances from November 3 to 18.

An ensemble production, Paradiso Inn tells the story of an urban couple who go on a cycling getaway in northern Ontario to enhance their relationship. When they stop at Paradiso Inn — which has certainly seen better days — the couple become acquainted with the friendly though quirky characters who run the place.

Toss in a dour tourist official and the lovable housekeeper who makes a mess for the whole crew, the couple learn that there’s a lot more than meets the eye at the Paradiso Inn.

“It’s ‘big city meets northern Ontario’,” explains MacMillan, who is also co-directing the play. “It’s about looking at the generosity of spirit. It’s a happy situational comedy, but I like to think that it has some meaning for people that we can look at our lives a little differently.”

Promising to make viewers both laugh and think, MacMillan describes Paradiso Inn as an “inspirational comedy” with a lot of surprises throughout the story. He also adds that the show is “painfully Canadian” with frequent use of Canadian songs, references to Canada, Canadian dialect, and T-shirts from Canadian bands.

MacMillan is no newcomer to penning comedy, having written sketches for fringe festivals and having both written and directed children’s plays for his own children’s schools. He has spent three decades in various roles in theatre from stage work and writing to acting and directing for local groups including the Guild, Union Theatre, and St. James Players.

Written during the pandemic, Paradiso Inn was inspired by an actual “not as advertised” inn that MacMillan and his partner had once stayed at. The hopeful and inspiring themes of the play, however, were the result of MacMillan’s former career as a social worker and the “incredible efforts and resilience” he had witnessed in people who were making changes in their life.

“Conversations about life experience comes pretty easy to me because I’ve held lots of those really rich conversations with people who want to improve their lives,” MacMillan explains. “It’s always amazed me how well some people can turn their lives around after disastrous beginnings.”

With Mark Gray as co-director and Margaret Monis as production manager, Paradiso Inn stars James Burrell and Laine Williams as visiting urban couple Franklin and Jillian, David Geene as inn owner Andre, Jack van Roosmalen and Jeff MacNeil as Jimmy and Leo (Andre’s old friends who seem to be constantly looking for ways to “fix up” the inn to get better ratings), Terry Lucy MacNeil as unimpressed tourism official Alana spot checking the inn, and Bryanna Ostrander as a young ne’er-do-well housekeeper who “upsets everyone’s apple cart.”

“What’s really amazing about this cast is that, with the exception of a few, most are newcomers to the theatre,” says MacMillan, adding that same goes for the production crew. “Some have just come to Peterborough in the last five years — others just in the last year and a half — so that’s amazing because we need new blood at the Theatre Guild.”

The playwright and co-director explains that, like most theatre and arts venues, the Peterborough Theatre Guild took a “real hit” over the last three and a half years since first closing to pandemic restrictions.

“Of course they lost a lot of their volunteer base, including actors, and it was tough to get people back to the stage, so the rhythm was really interrupted,” recalls MacMillan, adding the Guild is now back to the swing of things with a full slate of volunteers, actors, and crew members. “Everyone comes from a theatre background in other communities or in school, so it’s a really keen and very mature bunch.”

While MacMillan himself hasn’t been on the stage since the pandemic, he has been in the audience for several shows over the past few years, including some professional plays in Toronto, where, he explains, he’s “picked up trends of the big city” for the production of Paradiso Inn.

“We’ve got quite a bit of tech in our play, which is where theatre is going,” he notes. “Even though it’s set in the woods of northern Ontario, we’ve integrated technology really well with lights and sounds — even offstage sounds.”

He jokes that while another up-and-coming fad in theatre is a minimalist set design, Paradiso Inn is not following that trend. The production’s design is a bit “unusual” with some taxidermy, but what else would one expect for a story set in the northern Ontario wilderness?

The play’s unusual set, original story, and Canadian focus is unique for the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2023-24 season, contrasting with some of the internationally recognizable hits lined up for the rest of the season, including Todd Wallinger’s The Enchanted Bookshop and Joseph Stein’s Fiddler on the Roof.

“It’s a bit of a switch up for the Theatre Guild — it’s not a standard, well-known play,” MacMillan explains. “We really are going all out on being a new production and bringing a fresh tilt to the playbill.”

Paradiso Inn follows the premiere show of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2023-24 season, God of Carnage, which MacMillan says is not an easy act to follow, though the cast and crew is up for the challenge.

“The first play was a real knock out, so the pace has been set for us,” MacMillan points out. “We’re proud to be part of the playbill this year.”

Paradiso Inn runs from November 3 to 18 at the Guild Hall at 364 Rogers Street with evening performances at 7:30 p.m. on November 3 and 4, 9 to 11, and 16 to 18, with matinee performances at 2 p.m. on November 5 and 12.

Tickets are $30 for adults, $27 for seniors, and $22 for students, and are available now online at peterboroughtheatreguild.com or by calling 705-745-4211.

kawarthaNOW is proud to be a media sponsor of the Peterborough Theatre Guild’s 2023-24 season.

The original version of this story has been updated with new photos from a dress rehearsal, along with additional information about the characters in the play.

Showplace Performance Centre has hired Scott Lale as its new executive director, the not-for-profit organization announced on Wednesday (October 25).

Born in Brampton, the 55-year-old Lale has over two decades of experience in theatre operations and management, primarily in the City of Brampton where his roles included artistic director and executive producer, arts and culture manager, and supervisor of cultural and community engagement.

In his arts and culture manager role, Lale was responsible for Rose Theatre, Lester B. Pearson Theatre, Heritage Theatre, and Shakespeare in the Square, which he founded. He also has experience as a member of the board of directors for the Guelph Arts Council and the City of Guelph’s Cultural Advisory Committee.

Lale became a professional actor at the age of 15 and has performed in and directed many shows. In 2002, he was accepted as a member of the Shakespeare’s Globe International Fellowship in London, England, where he received the Christopher Plummer International Fellowship from Shakespeare’s Globe Centre of Canada. In 2014, he was inducted into Brampton’s Arts Walk of Fame, alongside four others including actor Michael Cera, a Brampton native who credits Lale for helping him with his acting.

“Scott is just what Showplace needs right now to take it to the next level as a performing arts centre as we launch our audience development and strategic planning process,” says Showplace board chair Ken Doherty in a media release. “His experience as a classically trained performer, director, producer, and instructor is a bonus.”

As Lale transitions into the new role, which he began on Monday, he is working closely with Showplace’s interim general manager Wayne Bonner.

“I am honoured and incredibly excited to be working in this beautiful space with such an energized team and focused board,” Lale says. “I am feeling very lucky. Peterborough has such a vibrant and active arts community. Engaging with these folks is going to be so exciting.”

Lale replaces former general manager Emily Martin, who left Showplace in April after nine years to assume the position of artistic and administrative coordinator of Port Hope’s Capitol Theatre.