GFT’s Brontë: The World Without is a window into the ordinary lives of literary icons

Scarborough’s Guild Festival Theatre (GFT) has billed its 2026 season as “Gothic girl summer.” But in Jordi Mand’s Brontë: The World Without, fear doesn’t come from madwomen in attics or apparitions on the moors. Instead, it comes from volatile relatives, professional uncertainty, and the cost of envelopes.

Staged by GFT’s artistic director emeritus Helen Juvonen in Guild Park and Gardens’ Greek Amphitheatre, The World Without follows sisters Emily, Charlotte, and Anne Brontë — the authors of Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre, and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, respectively. Mand’s play, set in the Brontës’ house in West Yorkshire, traces the trio’s lives between 1846 and 1849. When The World Without begins, the sisters — all unpublished — are trying to figure out their next moves to support the family. Money is scarce, their father is losing his sight, and their wayward brother Branwell, increasingly in the grip of substance abuse, is of no help.

 “There’s so much mythology about the Brontës,” said Juvonen in a phone conversation. “The play brings them down to a human level. They’re three very responsible people taking care of so many things for their family. They’re also sisters, so they get into scraps and silly bickering. Your sisters can be your biggest rivals, but also your biggest supporters.”

“ They were pushing each other to write and publish and put themselves out there,” she continued. “If they hadn’t done this together, they might never have succeeded.”

The World Without premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2018. The first time Juvonen read it was in 2020, when she and GFT co-artistic director Tyler J. Seguin were looking for new scripts that fit the outdoor theatre’s mandate of expanding and reimagining stagings of canonical stories. “I enjoyed the play, but it didn’t hit me in the feelings when I first read it,” Juvonen said.

That changed when she revisited the script last year. 

“I’m one of three sisters,” explained Juvonen. “In the time between my first and second reading of the play, I lost one of my siblings. My dad also passed away, and I had to pick up the caregiving for my mother and for my other sister, who’s disabled. I realized, ‘This is what it’s like to be grieving and caregiving, and also trying to have a career as an artist.’ I think this is my time to tell this story.”

In this production, the Brontës are played by Laura Del Papa (Charlotte), Hilary Scott (Emily), and Lara Lucia (Anne). At the time of the interview, the cast was only a few days into rehearsal. 

“It’s been beautiful watching them develop these interrelationships between the three of them,” Juvonen reflected. “‘When do two sisters gang up on one? When are they acting as a trio? When are they three individuals?’” 

Mand’s play isn’t the first in Toronto this season to engage with the Brontës’ legacy. This April, Riot King’s production of The Moors remixed key tropes from the sisters’ lives and works, to queer and campy ends. Mand’s play, by contrast, works in a quieter register, with a fidelity to biographical and historical detail. 

“The World Without takes place entirely in one room,” Juvonen said. “It doesn’t seem like an obvious choice for an outdoor theatre. But Tyler and I have discovered over the years that it’s not really where or when a play is set, but the size of the emotions in the story. The mythology of the Brontës — their passions, their ambitions, their imaginations — fit the grandeur of the space.” 

Depending on the weather, Guild Park might also become an immersive experience for audiences. “When we have a foggy day and the mists are blowing behind the Greek Theatre, you really get a sense of the Gothic-ness of it all,” Juvonen added. 

For some playgoers, that sense of immersion will begin before they even reach the park. This year marks the second annual installment of Theatre in Transit, a series of pre-show GFT performances on wheels. Audience members with tickets to a mainstage show can sign up to take a free shuttle from local transit hubs to Guild Park and Gardens. Once aboard, they’ll be treated to an interactive mini-performance that acts as a prequel to the mainstage production: “Brontë Bus” for The World Without, and “Navigating Northanger” for Northanger Abbey in August. Rochelle Thevasagayam, Autumn Davis, and Chris Leveille are the creative and logistical team behind Theatre in Transit. 

One reflection Juvonen hopes audiences will take away from Mand’s play is how each Brontë’s determination to have her vision — to paraphrase another proto-feminist novelist, Virginia Woolf — while navigating pressures of caregiving and livelihood, mirrors the balancing act of many contemporary women juggling artistic careers with the unpaid labour of parenting, household management, and more.  

“These women from the mid-1800s aren’t that far away from us,” she reflected. “ They’re much less interested in things like marriage and having children, and they’re really focused on making a name for themselves and getting their work out there. It’s like the almost 150 years that separate us aren’t there.”

Brontë: The World Without previews July 16 and runs July 17 to August 2. Tickets are available here. 

Guild Festival Theatre 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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