Theatre Aquarius’ National Summit for New Musicals showcases original works from across Canada, Theater News

Canada is alive with the sound of homegrown musicals, and a new national gathering wants to sing their praises. 

From January 25 to 27, Hamilton, Ontario’s Theatre Aquarius will host the National Summit for New Musicals. Artists, theatre producers, musical lovers, and presenters are set to gather for three days of showcases, panels, and networking events envisioning the future of the art form and highlighting emerging works in development. The summit is the latest initiative of Theatre Aquarius’ National Centre for New Musicals (NCNM), which Aquarius’ artistic director Mary Francis Moore founded in 2023. During a Zoom interview, Moore spoke about the importance of giving new work both ample resources and a national stage. 

“I grew up in Thunder Bay, [Ontario],” said Moore. “My parents [had] immigrated from Scotland, so we would… go back and forth to the U.K. [often]. I don’t remember being sophisticated enough to differentiate between the West End and Thunder Bay, but I do know that the theatres in both countries were everything to me.” Those visits took place in the late 1980s — “the Phantom of the Opera years, the Les Misérables years,” Moore remembered. “That’s when [those shows] were at their height. [I admired] these spectacular, emotional, easily accessible musicals’ storytelling.”

Since becoming Aquarius’ artistic director in 2021, Moore has directed and dramaturged world premieres of musicals like Maggie (2023) and Beautiful Scars (2024). By starting NCNM, Moore said that she wanted to inspire artists to dream Les Mis-sized dreams. “If I was only going to develop [work] that [Aquarius] would produce, then it would always be dictated by our budget and our needs,” she explained. “At [that point] in the pandemic, as artists, we needed to dream big again. We needed to think about what was possible as opposed to what was probable.”

Those who purchase a full three-day pass to January’s summit will experience excerpts from six out of NCNM’s eight current works-in-progress. (Individual day-passes are also available.) The shows on display range widely in both subject matter and musical style: from Clown Riot,  Christo Graham and Tyrone Savage’s rock opera about a real-life brawl between circus clowns and firefighters in 1850s Toronto, to Dillan Chiblow and Landon Doak’s The Seven Fires, a musical inspired by the Anishnaabe seven fire prophecy. 

Attendees will also have access to mixer events and panel discussions about the nuts and bolts of producing musical theatre, in Canada and internationally. Sharing industry knowledge was a priority for Moore in designing the summit. “There’s knowledge I take for granted because I’ve been doing this [work] for a while, or because I’m approaching things from a producer or a programmer’s point of view,” she explained. “‘What are the things I can share with people who are trying to produce their own work?’” 

Moore said this includes exploring practical questions, such as “‘What are ways that [artists] can make sure [their work] gets heard or read?’…‘Is there a better time of year to try to [submit] material?’ ‘What’s a format that’s easily digestible?’ ‘What do producers do [in Canada, which] defines producers differently than in the U.K. or the U.S.?’” 

In that spirit of demystification, one of the summit’s guest speakers will be Hannah Mirvish, the co-leader of Canada’s largest commercial theatre company. “Hannah is someone who’s seeing theatre around the world,” said Moore. “But she’s so committed to Canadian work. I [thought], ‘wouldn’t it be great [for attendees] to get half-an-hour in a room hearing her speak?’ Sometimes artists can see theatres as gatekeepers, and I would really like to dispel that narrative.”

If Moore was a character in a musical, her “I want” song might be about overcoming the barriers — both real and imagined — that can keep new Canadian musicals from reaching their full potential.

“I want us, as a community, to be confident in our own work,” she reflected. “I want us to get to a place where we don’t need the validation of outside communities to tell us that we’re good. I want us to be in a place where we have the resources to take chances, so our projects don’t have to leave the country to find success.

“That’s not to say we shouldn’t be thinking internationally,” she continued. “We absolutely should, but I think we can do both. We have extraordinary talent here that should be seen all over the world — but it would be great if it could be celebrated here as well.”

The National Summit for New Musicals will take place from January 25 to 27 at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton. Passes are available here. 

Theatre Aquarius is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Nathaniel Hanula-James

Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.

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