Southwestern Nova Scotia’s largest community theatre is opening after two and a half months of renovations.
The Yarmouth Arts Regional Council (TH’YARC) is welcoming audiences back to it’s brand new space on Oct. 8 with the opening of Is he Dead… Again?.
Is he Dead… Again? is a comedy and a part of the beloved Fall Farce productions, show director, and executive director of TH’YARC Judy Snow said the number of ticket sales she’s seen in encouraging.
“I’m thinking people have probably missed not being able to come here, especially the tourists,” said Snow. “We’ve had members stopping in to peek at the theatre. People are really excited and I think people are ready to get back out there and see some shows again.”
Renovations began in the last week of July.
Improvements include new rugs, new seating in the theatre, new heating and air conditioning, LED stage lighting, accessible front doors, major renovations to the women’s bathroom and 25 new paved parking spaces.
“It was a crazy time, but we got her done,” said Snow.
According to Snow volunteers played a huge part in the renovations, and community members donated their time, effort and money to help with the improvements.
“Anytime we ask our volunteers for anything, they are willing to come in here and help,” said Snow. “It doesn’t matter if it means slinging them up in a bucket they’ll do it.”
She went on to say that the arts are vital to any town, but especially so for Yarmouth.
“In Yarmouth the arts are thriving, we have visual arts, we have dance, we have theatre, live theatre, we have workshops, we have people who want to teach,” said Snow. “We have people coming here from Halifax, from the valley… also the tourists… it’s pretty important that we’re here.”
Is he Dead… Again? runs until Oct. 17, and tickets can be purchased at TH’YARC box office
One of the stars of a historical satire at Neptune Theatre has a personal connection to what she calls her dream play and dream role.
In Women of the Fur Trade, Danelle Charette plays Marie-Angelique, a super fan of Louis Riel, who led the Red River Resistance movement in the late 1800s that formed Manitoba.
Not only is it the first time she is playing a Métis woman from her home of Red River, she is also a descendent of Riel.
“It’s such an honor to be able to tell a story so close to my ancestors’ story. Like, this is my family’s story. This is our truth,” says Charette.
“It’s been a literal dream. I couldn’t have asked for a better cast to do it with and director and team. I feel so lucky.”
Instead of focusing on the men of the Red River Resistance story, as history textbooks typically do, playwright Frances Koncan shifts the perspective to three women during the revolt against European colonizers, says Charette.
She says the play is incredibly funny, mixing the setting of the 1800s with 21st century slang and a lot of pop culture references, but it also touches on some heavy topics, like colonial violence and misogyny.
Truth and Reconciliation Day
The run is part of the Prismatic Arts Festival and happened to coincide with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a day to honour and remember the First Nations, Inuit, and Métis survivors and victims of the residential school system.
Charette says she’s never had a performance on the day and it’s a different experience.
“I’m feeling incredibly lucky that we still exist. It’s a testament to the power of our storytelling that we can share history that was pushed to be erased in our country,” she says.
She adds that it is an honour for herself, her family, and her ancestors to tell this story on that day.
For Joelle Peters, an Ojibwe woman, Truth and Reconciliation Day is, on one hand, great to have, but she says it also brings up a lot of complicated feelings.
And doing a show that talks about a lot of those complicated topics and subjects is great, she says.
“It gives me an opportunity to also share that feeling with other people,” says Peters.
She says supporting Indigenous art on Truth and Reconciliation Day is even more important.
She wants to be there with others who put their money where their mouth is, and who think “I’m going to sit with perhaps some uncomfortable feelings, or I’m going to show folks that, yeah, these types of stories matter.”
‘A gift to return to’
Peters plays Eugenia in the show. Her history with it goes back to even before the first production.
It was about 2018, she says, when she was part of one of the first readings of the show, and she went on to play Eugenia in the first production in 2020.
Now, in 2026, she says the play continues to grow and change alongside her.
“It’s such a gift to return to. It feels so good, and it’s always different. It depends on who’s part of the production. It depends on where we’re doing the production,” says Peters.
Eli Ham as Thomas Scott in “Women of the Fur Trade.” PHOTO CREDIT: Stoo Metz Photography SUBMITTED: Neptune Theatre/Prismatic Arts Festival
Eli Ham is not Indigenous, but he feels grateful he can help centre the story on the Indigenous and Métis perspectives.
He says his take on Thomas Scott is nuanced, making him seem misguided and more of a “lost boy” to get people on his side. Then, when he does and says terrible things, it feels more shocking, he says.
“It’s a way of getting people to understand that racism is hidden, and it’s insidious, and it is a baked-in part of the culture, and it certainly was at the time,” says Ham.
365 days a year
Along with Women of the Fur Trade,Prismatic Arts Festival is putting the spotlight on marginalized voices, like Indigenous people and people of colour, all across the city until Sunday.
Raeesa Lalani, executive and artistic director of the festival, curates the whole selection, including Women of the Fur Trade. She says it was such a beautiful and professional production that they wanted to give it a platform.
She says, though the fall festival happens to coincide with Truth and Reconciliation Day, that is on their minds all the time.
“Every single day of the year, we want to make sure that they’re supported. We want to make sure that their voices are amplified,” says Lalani.
The production is directed by Keith Barker and opened in Halifax on Sept 22. It runs until Oct. 11.
Halifax Fringe Festival officially starts Thursday evening, and this year they really want you to see something you might not think you would like.
They have a few new incentives to get that done.
One is festival passes for 5 and 10 shows, which give a bit of a discount on the door price, according to festival director Jake Planinc.
“We’re trying to get people to take risks and see things that they might not otherwise consider seeing. And generally, if you’re going to go see two or three $20-shows, you can just buy a five-show pass and go see a couple extras. All the artists have opted into this pass. They really want to get bums in seats,” says Planinc.
The theatre festival runs Thursday through September 13th, with more schedule information available on their website and social media.
There are 51 shows on offer, according to Planinc, and more than half are from outside of Atlantic Canada.
That is another way they are trying to connect audiences here with shows they would not otherwise typically see.
He says they started using the same digital application system as other fringe festivals, and that got a lot more eyes on the Halifax festival from across the country and internationally, he says.
On top of that, they now have an audience review platform. And while word will typically spread about fringe shows after the first weekend and seats will fill up faster, Planinc says there are some reviews already.
“We have a whole bunch of shows joining us from the Edmonton Fringe Festival, which just ended, and they’re bringing with them all these reviews,” says Planinc.
“There is some crazy strong work coming from the touring artists this year, so really want to get people out to see those shows and encourage people to take chances, especially on the first weekend.”
SubHuman is the latest work by the award-winning playwright and Shelburne native Natalie Meisner, a project she says has been “years in the making”.
The production is based on the true stories of the Navy Wrens who “served in silence” at the Shelburne Military Base listening for submarines during the cold war, only to be purged from service due to their sexual orientation.
“Even though it’s this dark, dark history, the people I interviewed for this were very funny,” said Meisner. “It’s been the work of my career, to write comedy about difficult things. The bigger the tragedy the more you should laugh.”
Meisner said the culture and setting of Nova Scotia’s south shore play a big role in her work, and that telling stories about the places closest to home is an important part of art as a whole.
“Growing up in the area, you think about stories, the big stories that you see, but you never think about the things happening around you as being those big stories, and yet there are so many incredibly fascinating things happening here,” said Meisner. “The maritimes have so much history that you don’t see on the big stages, it’s been incredible to be able to tell these stories.”
Despite the local lens of the story, Meisner said the themes of the story are universal, and has hopes to take the production across Canada.
When the play ran as a limited production at the Wilde Stages Festival in Dublin, it won awards for best production, best actor and was nominated for best director, and is currently nominated for the upcoming Jenny Munday Award, given to the best new play in the Atlantic region.
Catch SubHuman, from July 9 to July 12 at the Osprey Arts Centre in Shelburne.
A woman who touched thousands across New Brunswick is being remembered.
Suzanne Doyle Yerxa passed away on Sunday.
She was born just outside of Boston, in Waltham, Massachusetts. She moved to Canada in the late 70s and became a teacher at KV High.
“She had been a cheerleader, and she had been involved in her local theatre troupe in Waltham, and she just turned it into a love for herself and a passion. She was so great at bringing that passion out in the students at KV, and then through that, the people that joined in production through KV Players,” Music Director Christopher Lane told our newsroom.
He shared a memory from just last month when they celebrated Yerxa’s 75th birthday, “So there were about, I’m going to say a dozen, a dozen and a half of us that gathered at her home. We had an ice cream cake, and we sang songs and musical theatre songs. She sat there and just took it all in, and at the end of the night, she said to her son, who was there with us, this is the perfect evening. This is exactly what I wanted.”
Lane said that being able to create that for her was wonderful.
Yerxa and Bob Doherty created KV Players in the early 80’s, as a way for students to continue their love for theatre in the community after they graduated.
“Her aspect of KV Players was that it was very much community theatre, that it was open to everyone who wanted to have that moment to shine on stage, whether it was a lead or in the chorus, helping to paint sets, helping to create sets, and build props. She just wanted to create a huge community,” Lane expressed.
Lane explained that her love for theatre and other interests were what helped her to draw people in and share her passion.
“She was a great supporter of the Boston sports teams. She would build a connection with the athletes in the school as well. So she’d be talking to the football players and the hockey players and the basketball players and say, come be on the stage.”
He described Yerxa as someone who lived a huge life for theatre, creating a legacy for musical theatre in the Kennebecasis Valley.
Another memory he shared was a time during the pandemic, when the whole world was shut down. They had plans for a summer theatre, but instead, they created two virtual shows.
“Sitting around her dining room table, post-it notes on the walls, figuring out how to record people, how do we get them to submit. I think that will be one of the special moments that we shared, still finding ways to create theatre in a time when it felt like we couldn’t create anything,” Lane shared.
What started as a way to help students learn French turned into a 58-year tradition.
Mount Allison University’s award-winning bilingual theatre project called Tintamarre has come to an end.
Professor Alex Fancy is the founder, and he took us back in time, “I was teaching already at Mount Allison University, I was teaching French, and first and second year literature. I was teaching a play to a group of second-year students, and I thought there must be a better way of bringing this play to life, because it’s hard to teach a language when students are sitting in rows and have some trouble really understanding the power, the impact of a dramatic piece.”
He decided they would direct stage plays every year, after discovering that theatre is an excellent way of teaching and learning other languages.
“That was great for me because I had a secret passion for theatre. I’d been a student in Paris and had seen a lot of theatre and really wanted to direct,” Fancy added.
He decided to write plays about local and more immediate issues, and the students also got involved.
“So we toured the schools for about 30 years, with original comedies, but the comedies were bilingual, and dealt with contemporary issues. We took these plays to schools, we had talkbacks in the schools and met tens of thousands of wonderful young people who were interested in our work,” Fancy added.
The tours came to an end when the COVID pandemic hit, but they continued to perform at Mount Allison University.
The last major production called Exit 26 was performed last week. It was the first play directed in 1968, and now the last as well.
Mount Allison’s award-winning bilingual theatre project has staged more than 150 productions of classical and contemporary plays as well as original activist comedies.
Fancy has decided to retire and do other things, but he says the history of Tintamarre has impacted the lives of hundreds of students.
“They’re really using the skills they learned in theatre in their professions. For example, I’m just suddenly thinking of a graduate who is now a criminal lawyer who told me that every time she is about to go into a courtroom, she stops, meditates for a minute, and thinks about her experience with Tintamarre, being on stage and delivering a script and a character to an audience,” Fancy explained.
He added that looking back, he had no idea Tintamarre would go on for so long, but it touched so many students who brought their curiosity and desire to work in two languages.
“I want people to know how theatre can play a big role in our lives, and how theatre can help us to ask serious questions about the world in a safe space, while having fun doing it,” Fancy expressed.
Mount Allison University is located in Sackville, New Brunswick.
Fort Frances High School students are looking to take you places.
Oh, The Places You Will Go is the title of this year’s musical revue.
It takes place on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night at the Townshend Theatre.
Grade 10 students, Woods Parent says they will take spectators on a musical trip around the world.
“The theme this year is places, so it’s songs that come from all around the world and reference places. We try to implement that in the choreography throughout eras and such as different,” says Parent.
“We’re to go to the Copacabana. We’re going to go to the Pacific. We’re going to go to New York. We’re going to go all across the globe. Broadway, every corner of the globe,” says Grade 13 student Jameer Cornielle.
“We’re going to Babylon, Waterloo, and Istanbul,” adds Grade 12 student Qianna Bell.
“I think we’re all going to do amazing, and that everybody should come and see the show,”
Bell agrees, knowing that students have put in a lot of work and time for this week’s performances.
“Students have choreographed their own performances. People have been working on this. It’s been a tight time crunch for everyone. It’s been a lot of work at home and on our own time,” says Parent.
“I think this one definitely has potential to be the best of them,” adds Cornielle.
“I’ve done every revue since we’ve come back from COVID, and there’s been some really great ones. I don’t know what it is about this revue, but I think it can be the greatest view we’ve ever done.”
Tickets will be available at the Townshend Theatre, but you get a better deal online by visiting Ticketscene.ca.
“It is actually better if you buy your tickets there because you can choose a seat in advance, and it’s also cheaper if you buy your tickets online. They’re $12 if you buy them at the ticket booth when you come in, and they’re $10 if you buy them online,” says Cornielle.
Parent is making his second appearance in a musical revue, adding to two other performances, most recently starring as Bobby Pepper in last spring’s staging of the Broadway musical Curtains.
“A lot of the people here are very experienced because there are a lot of grade 12s this year. So, a lot of the people here have been doing this (for many years),” Parent says.
Cornielle has made 14 appearances in musical revues and others.
“It started with the fall play when I was in grade nine, which is now called the Christmas play. My friend just needed someone to audition with. I had no interest in it. I was the only one who was willing to audition with her. From there, I fell in love with it,” says Cornielle.
Bell also found the acting and singing bug early on.
“I accidentally stumbled into the fall play back in my grade nine year. I meant to sign up for the musical revue, and I didn’t get into it that year. But I started with the play and went through all of it and loved it,” says Bell.
You can see all three perform with others in the show at the Townshend Theatre, beginning at 7 p.m. each night.
