Q&A: Sara Farb takes a piercing look behind the curtain with her new play Love Us Most

Finding my seat at Here For Now Theatre in Stratford, Ontario, I felt for a moment like I’d wandered through the wrong door. After passing behind a black curtain, I found myself in a dressing room. Costumes and trays of makeup waited for actors to arrive; posters of past productions and a distorted silver mirror lined the wall. 

The sensation of stepping backstage is a fitting entrypoint to Love Us Most, a world premiere play by Sara Farb, a familiar face from several seasons onstage at the Stratford Festival (and her current gig as Fanny Brice in Funny Girl at the Shaw Festival). 

Set backstage during a production of King Lear at an unnamed repertory theatre company, Love Us Most offers a behind-the-scenes glimpse at the performing arts industry through three actresses’ experiences with sexism, racism, ageism, and other systemic inequities. 

The characters — identified in the program as The One Who Plays Goneril, Regan, and Cordelia respectively — share a complicated camaraderie. Shannon Taylor plays a seasoned actor who feels the clock ticking on her career, Zara Jestadt embodies a woman torn between interpersonal loyalties, and Jasmine Case portrays a young Black actor navigating not only a new company but an industry that treats her differently than her white peers. 

From pre-show rituals to post-show drinks, Love Us Most follows the trio in moments offstage during a performance of King Lear. Tension emerges around looming auditions for next season’s Measure for Measure. Isabella’s “To whom should I complain,” a speech grappling with sexual coercion and silence, appears as part of the audition material, taking on devastating weight as the story progresses.

Director Sabryn Rock’s production surrounds Ariel Slack’s dressing room set with seating on three sides, making the audience’s gaze feel ever-present. The dim backstage lights (designed by Darren Burkett) and roaring din of the crowd (designed by Thomas Ryder Payne) add ominous tension to the show’s darker moments. 

Premiering in Stratford, a community with deep theatre roots — and where Farb played Cordelia in a 2014 production of King Lear — Love Us Most feels particularly powerful. After attending a preview performance, I called Farb to discuss how she approached giving structure and voice to such a bold story. 

This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Can you tell me a bit about how this play came to be?

In 2020, the Stratford Festival had a Twitter hashtag, #InTheDressingRoom, inviting folks to share stories of racism at the Festival and in theatre in general. It became a sharing of people’s experiences with racism, sexism, ageism, and all kinds of things that pointed to a pretty rotten foundation of the industry. That moment really got me thinking, and so I started writing this play. 

Since then, I’ve had a couple of readings and workshops, just rewriting it and trying to figure out the best lens to tell the story. For a while it was set in the present day, but I decided to put it just on the cusp of the #MeToo movement and before Donald Trump was elected for the first time. 

What drew you to King Lear as the production for this show to revolve around? 

The choice to make it King Lear was born of my own laziness, to be perfectly frank! I had done that play and I felt a strong impulse to write this play. It was a familiar enough title with three women in it that I didn’t have to do any extra research.

So, understanding I’m picking King Lear: ‘What are things in that play that I could take advantage of as far as the actors who would be around the age bracket?’ Thankfully, the potential is pretty big, and so the story emerged pretty quickly. 

Did you draw any insight from your experience playing Cordelia in 2014? 

I think that if I had just read the play or had seen it, I wouldn’t be able to use it as a device the way that I could. 

My understanding of Lear’s relationship with each individual daughter is deepened. And, [within the context of] a performance of King Lear, it helped track when certain things were happening or what specific events were momentous. 

You don’t forget the feeling of being inside of a Shakespeare play. 

You’ve also brought in Measure for Measure, specifically Isabella’s monologue. When did that connection emerge? 

I wanted there to be a play the next season that would be the reason for different people to audition. I’ve never done Measure for Measure, but I know that scene and that speech are so moving and relevant, always. When I decided that [play] would be the one, it was because of that speech. 

For a woman to speak that in a Shakespeare play is kind of amazing. It really sticks out as a special and devastating speech about the inequality between men and women. It’s a weird play, but that storyline is very captivating. 

What feels different — but also what might not feel different enough — between the pre-#MeToo theatre world we see in the play and what’s out there right now? 

Thankfully, attempts have been made to address universal racism, and acknowledge that it is everywhere and exists in basically all white-presenting individuals. Starting from that place is how to go forward and listen to people of colour, listen to Black actors, and understand what’s needed. 

Certainly when the George Floyd movement of 2020 occurred, the attention to that in the theatre industry became a focus, which is great. But I think, since we’ve all returned to normal life, some of the things we’ve learned have slipped on an institutional level. I think that in the same way with the #MeToo movement, for the last few years there’s [been] a pendulum swing back.

It’s a bummer because it’s pretty clearly happening. And I don’t think it’s due to any malicious intent. I think it’s habitual behavior inside of this industry that’s based on white privilege and male privilege. And it’s very hard when you’re not actively thinking everyday about how to better a space. Nobody can rest on their laurels. It’s active work, always. 

A show like this is definitely part of that work of keeping these issues in the conversation and trying to step beyond tokenism. 

How do you navigate writing experiences that might not be your own?

The whole time, I was very aware that I’m a white writer writing a Black character and giving her a voice. The irony of that in this kind of a play was never ever lost on me. 

The theatre industry is a world that I have been a part of for a very long time, and I think this is a story that encompasses a lot of things inside of a misogynistic workspace. One of those things is racism, and excluding that reality from this space would have been insufficient storytelling. So I approached it with as much sensitivity, awareness, and self-awareness as I could.

Of course, I’m not hoping that anybody would ever think that I understand what it’s like to be a Black person in a theatre space. What I’m grateful for is friends who communicate what that is, and teach me a lot. 

The theatre company in the show is fictional, but it’s a repertory company that does Shakespeare and the play is premiering in the city of Stratford, so that obviously has a lot of meaning to artists and audiences. What does it mean for you to see the show staged at Here For Now? 

It means everything. I couldn’t ask for a better theatre company or place for it to premiere. 

It’s a fictional theatre company — and it’s also very obviously a familiar rep theater company. I think it’s audacious for Here For Now. I’m very grateful that they understand that it’s a satirical and skewering look at something that so many of us have experienced or witnessed.

I couldn’t ask for a better situation. It’s really exciting and I feel very proud of the whole thing.

Love Us Most runs at Here For Now Theatre until July 1. More information is available here.

Izzy Siebert wrote this feature as part of ON Criticism: The 2025/26 Theatre Critics Lab, a collaboration between the Grand Theatre, Talk is Free Theatre, Tarragon Theatre, Theatre Aquarius, and Intermission.

WRITTEN BY

Izzy Siebert

Izzy Siebert (she/her) is a writer based in London, Ontario, where she works in the city’s culture and entertainment scene. Her foray into professional theatre criticism began through ON Criticism: The 2025/2026 Theatre Critics Lab, a collaboration between Intermission and four Ontario theatres. In her spare time (which theoretically exists), Izzy enjoys writing poetry and stepping on stage herself.

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