Laughter and more: Farren Timoteo announces an upcoming Teatro Live! 45th anniversary season of comedies, Theater News

By Liz Nicholls,

A laughing matter.

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“I read it and laughed out loud. And I chase that.” Words to live by when you’re the new artistic director of Teatro Live!, choosing plays to program for the upcoming 45th anniversary season at a company that specializes in comedy — and in particular the original comic voice of resident playwright Stewart Lemoine.   

A Lemoine revival, and three other comedies, including an original commissioned by the theatre, are on the playbill for the first season Farren Timoteo has chosen for Teatro audiences. Read on.

Ah, but “it can’t just be ‘a comedy’,” says Timoteo, actor/director/ playwright/ musical theatre librettist/ lyricist — who’s been all those things at Teatro in the last 20 years — of the tricky business of finding the four plays for his first full season as the company artistic director. “It has to feel like Teatro.”

Farren Timoteo, Teatro Live! artistic director. Photo by Curtis Comeau

And that’s a trickier spirit to pin down, lightning in a bottle as he explains. As elusive as the sophisticated wit/kooky spirit combo of the current season’s finale, Lemoine’s Cocktails at Pam’s, which ended its run this past weekend. One of its six revivals was Timoteo’s first experience, age 18, of a Lemoine comedy, the first time he ever went to the Fringe — “the Moment (Timoteo says this with a capital M) of discovering Stewart’s voice and that ensemble in that place.” And, as Timoteo has said (whilst laughing), he hasn’t been the same since.

“Very special, and I feel so compelled to try and re-create that experience for audiences who have been there all along, and also for new audience members joining us.” This is an expanding group, as reported by announced by general manager Cassie Duval: season subscriptions up 30 per cent, casual tickets 48 per cent. “We’re having a Moment,” says Timoteo.

There’s a Lemoine comedy in Timoteo’s lineup for the upcoming season. From the sizeable archive he picked The Glittering Heart, which premiered at the Fringe in 1990, had a Toronto run the next year, and has never been revived in the intervening 37 years. “It’s an important piece in Teatro’s history, and an interesting moment for Stewart as a writer, too,” Timoteo thinks. “Its motor and its tone are dark, interesting, emotional, in addition to its comic impulses. A sharp piece. Unique. Strange.”

And this is what sets The Glittering Heart in motion: In 1959 a Winnipeg housewife announces to her husband one night over dinner that she’s up and leaving for Venice in order to have an extraordinary life. And she does. “The play follows that journey; it’s architecturally designed to be both hilarious and moving…. Ripe for re-visitation,” especially in a 45th anniversary season.   

Lemoine himself directs the revival (May 27 to June 13), starring Bella King, Belinda Cornish, Mathew Hulshof, Aidan Laudersmith.

“I have the same taste as our audiences,” says Timoteo, who, in addition to directing The 39 Steps and Fully Committed, has spent this past season amongst them. His mantra: “I’ve got something for you guys!”

The Cottage, the 2026-27 season-opener at Teatro Live! Poster image supplied.

It applies to the other three plays in the 2026-2027 lineup, which launches (Nov. 12 to 29) with The Cottage by the American playwright Sandy Rustin (whose stage adaptation of Clue was at the Citadel in the summer of 2022). It easily passed the Timoteo laugh-aloud test, he says, “page after page.”

Set in an English country house in 1923 (an era that is a natural habitat for the wit of Teatro’s resident costume designer Leona Brausen), The Cottage, which ran on Broadway 2023, is “in the spirit of Noel Coward, clever, fun, and so silly! Yes, we’re sophisticated, sexy, stylish, but we’re also silly. With a fresh modern voice,” says Timoteo. “It’s been described as ‘a not-quite murderous comedy of manners’. And an aspect of it flirts with the concept of the murder mystery,” a teasing description that deliberately falls way short of spilling any beans.

When he couldn’t get his hands on a ‘perusal copy’ in time, Timoteo connected directly with Rustin, who’s enthusiastically supported Teatro’s Canadian professional premiere. In her letter to the theatre she comments that her comedy “emulates the style and tone” of Noel Coward, with “a contemporary feminist perspective.” And she adds, “I count myself lucky to have my work produced at a theatre that celebrates the evolution of comedic writing in all its forms.”

Timoteo directs a six-actor cast that includes Jill Apopsowicz, Rachel Bowron, Mathew Hulshof, Cynthia Jimenez-Hicks and Jake Tkaczyk.

Popcorn Falls, Teatro Live! 20262027 season. Poster image supplied

Popcorn Falls (Feb. 18 to March 7, 2027), an Off-Broadway comedy by James Hindman — a friend of Rustin as it turns out: “two playwrights wandering around New York talking about Teatro!” — taps into the same sort of small-cast multiple-character virtuosity that fuelled The 39 Steps and Fully Committed. As Timoteo describes, “it’s a play about a small town on the brink of collapse that can only save itself by putting on a play…. And two actors play the entire town!”

As the mighty Fringe approaches, Edmonton as it happens knows something about the transformational effect of theatre. And in conversation with Hindman, Timoteo had “an exuberant thumbs-up” for his request to re-locate the setting to Alberta.

Timoteo himself is in the cast with Garett Ross, and together they play more than 20 characters. Making his directorial debut is Ryan Parker, a premier photographer best known to Edmonton theatre audiences as an actor. What makes his theatre photography special is an understanding of and appreciation for theatre and, says Timoteo, he’ll bring that “comic intelligence and emotional maturity” to directing.

Emma, starring Dayna Lea Hoffmann, premiering in the 2026-27 Teatro Live! season. Poster image supplied

The season finale is a brand new six-actor (and hence high-speed) adaptation of Jane Austen’s sparkling, sharp-eyed 1816 novel Emma. “My favourite,” says Timoteo of the 1816 novel and its spoiled, wilful heroine, so far ignored in the current wave of Austen adaptations. “I wanted to give our season closer a big-event energy,” he says.

The playwright is Calgary-based Camille Pavlenko, whose adaptation of Rapunzel was Timoteo’s final commission at Alberta Musical Theatre Company before he exited to take up the Teatro gig. He’s directed another Pavlenko play, Baba Yaga, at the Fringe.  “So smart, so funny, tuned to my frequency of comedy” says Timoteo. “She takes big swings; her comedy makes me laugh out loud, without leaving intelligence behind.”

Timoteo directs the premiere production (July 8 to 25, 2027). Dayna Lea Hoffmann stars; her cast-mates are yet to be announced.

Season subscriptions (with an “anti-procrastination” price reduction if booked before Aug. 31) are available at teatrolive.com.