Soulpepper’s new artistic director Paolo Santalucia says his curatorial work will continue to unpack what it means to be a ‘classic play’ and what it means to make theatre in Toronto now.Dahlia Katz/Supplied
Soulpepper Theatre Company, the performance hub in Toronto known for producing a blend of classics as well as new plays, has appointed Paolo Santalucia as its next artistic director.
The 35-year-old multi-hyphenate theatre artist, a co-founder of the Howland Company and most recently the associate artistic director of Crow’s Theatre, will begin his tenure with Soulpepper on Sept. 1. He will be responsible for programming the company’s 2026-27 season, following in the footsteps of outgoing artistic director Weyni Mengesha, who announced her departure in January.
In a way, the hire is a homecoming for Santalucia, a graduate of the Soulpepper Academy, the company’s incubator for emerging theatre artists. His relationship with the institution spans decades.
“I’m incredibly excited by the fact that I get to take all I’ve learned over the years and apply it back to such an inspiring place,” Santalucia told The Globe and Mail. “In many ways, it feels like putting on a great pair of shoes that I’ve loved for my whole life.”
Soulpepper executive director Gideon Arthurs said he shares Santalucia’s enthusiasm, adding that the company conducted a national search for the hire. “Paolo’s connection to Soulpepper speaks to the continuity of this company,” he said. “At this juncture, Soulpepper is very local, so while the chosen candidate didn’t need to be from here, we needed somebody who could understand this company’s context.
“It could have been a scary process for me, finding a new partner,” continued Arthurs. “But I came out of the interview process feeling incredibly uplifted.”
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A Toronto native, Santalucia has experimented in nearly every part of theatre-making, from playwriting, acting and directing to running – and even co-founding – a theatre company.
Since joining Crow’s permanently in 2023, Santalucia has regularly been in the director’s chair, with east-end Toronto directing credits including The Bidding War, an 11-person comedy; The Wrong Bashir, a coming-of-age farce about Canada’s Ismaili community; and his own Prodigal, a biting drama about privilege and family.
Further downtown in the Distillery District, Toronto audiences might recall seeing Santalucia perform at Soulpepper during his 11-season stint as a member of the company’s ensemble. Notable roles there included Billy in The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? and Drew in Bed and Breakfast (opposite now-husband Gregory Prest).
“My relationship with Soulpepper started when I was 14 and skipped school to see Uncle Vanya,” said Santalucia, laughing. “Soulpepper redefined what great Canadian theatre-making was for my generation.
“The transformative work that Weyni and Gideon have done in the last seven years, to make the company’s mandate reach further, with more investment into the city with whom the art is trying to connect – that, to me is the only path forward,” he said. “It’s the only way we can continue to make the art as viable, accessible and meaningful as it can possibly be.”
Santalucia’s appointment marks an early milestone in the strategic collaboration between Soulpepper and Crow’s Theatre, announced earlier this year as a means of expanding audiences and streamlining production costs between the two companies.
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“The strategy behind that collaboration hasn’t shifted at all,” said Santalucia. “The needle hasn’t moved – me being at Soulpepper has in fact opened the doors to even bigger dreams about further integrating our processes.
“The bottom line is that both companies want more people to be seeing theatre in Toronto.”
That said, these early months of the partnership have shown the realities of combining operations, even in a nominal way – according to Santalucia and Arthurs, it’s a lot of phone- and e-mail-tag. But they’re optimistic about the coming season, the first in which the companies will work together in a broader capacity than a few one-off co-productions.
“We’ve found a friction model to be the most productive in our work with Crow’s,” Arthurs said. “We’re finding out what Crow’s is good at, what Soulpepper is good at, and allowing a bit of champion-challenger to happen so that we can see what works best, and how we can harness different strengths for each other.”
Crow’s artistic director Chris Abraham called Santalucia an “extraordinary leader” in an e-mailed statement.
“Over the past two years, Paolo has played a vital role in Crow’s post-pandemic growth – bringing rigour and imagination to the work, deep care for artists, and an unshakable sense of purpose,” he said. “I’m proud to call him a friend, and while we’ll miss him dearly, I’m thrilled to see him step into this next chapter.”
Over the next month or so, Santalucia will wrap up his work at Crow’s before taking some time off. Then, in September, the work begins: programming the theatre’s next season, while executing Mengesha’s vision for this year (which includes directing Soulpepper’s, Crow’s and Birdland’s co-production of Summer and Smoke in February).
Santalucia’s curatorial work, he said, will continue to unpack what it means to be a “classic play” – and what it means to make theatre in Toronto now.
“I’m waking up at 4:30 every day because I’m so excited that I can’t sleep,” he said. “My body cannot contain how much I want to get started.”