The Shaw Festival Theatre, nestled in the picturesque town of Niagara-on-the-Lake, Canada, just a 45 minute drive from Buffalo, is a renowned festival dedicated to showcasing a diverse array of plays from the late 19th century to contemporary work. “We’re doing more and more different things, but we are fundamentally a theatre festival,” shared Tim Carroll, artistic director. “We used to run only in the summer, but now we also have some winter programming and we do very high quality intelligent drama.”
The Festival was named for George Bernard Shaw, an influential Irish playwright and critic of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, known for his wit, social commentary, and prolific body of work that challenged societal norms. But as Tim Carroll States, “we do a lot more than Bernard Shaw plays. We usually do one or two Shaw plays in each season, but we also do a musical, and comedies and hard hitting new plays and the common thread with all of the plays we do is simply that they appeal to the head as well as the heart.”
The festival has announced their 2024 season which includes over ten unique performance experiences. “The best part of my job is cooking up a season full of delightful surprises. 2024 is full of delight and surprise: great plays brought to life in unexpected ways and plays you have never seen but which you will never forget,” said Carroll.
The campus of the Shaw Festival includes the large proscenium style Festival Theater, where large scale plays and spectacle laden musicals are presented. The Jackie Maxwell Studio Theater is an intimate space that allows audiences unparalleled access to experience actors work on profound dramatic literature. The Royal George Theater is in the middle of the quaint Victorian Village of Niagara-on-the-Lake, and is a former vaudeville house, built in 1928, and has the charm of an old world theater. Finally, the Spiegeltent, a flexible, outdoor, intimate hall of mirrors, returns to the Shaw for concert performances, and other special experiences.
The season, which officially kicks off this spring, will feature the classic musical My Fair Lady, Sherlock Holmes and the Mystery of the Human Heart, an Agatha Christie play, The Orphan of Chao, (based on a classical Chinese drama), and Marcus Gardley’s House That Will Not Stand. Choosing these diverse offerings is part of Carroll’s work. “Plays come into the season either from the list that I’ve had in my head for years and years and years, from well before I came here, or they suddenly zoom in at the last moment because you have a problem and they solve it. And I think in all of these cases, the rather subjective, but to me very clear, distinguishing feature is that the language of the play has to really make me thrilled,
It has to make me go ‘Ohh, that’s good. Ohh, I couldn’t have written that.’ You know when I read a play by Will Eno, or Brandon Jacobs Jenkins, or Tom Stoppard, or Carol Churchill, the actual taste of the language in your mouth is intoxicating.
The box office is now open, and there are multiple ways to save on tickets for the festival. “I really feel as though the people that get the real value of the Shaw Festival are the people who come to everything and take a chance on the thing that they don’t think they’re going to like. So, take a chance and come and come and see a show that you have no reason to go and see and let it surprise you.”
For a full listing of Shaw’s 2024 season, and information about season passes, please visit their website here.
2024 Season at Shaw Festival Theatre
FESTIVAL THEATRE
LERNER AND LOEWE’S
MY FAIR LADY
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Music by Frederick Loewe
Adapted from Bernard Shaw’s Play and Gabriel Pascal’s motion picture Pygmalion
ONE MAN, TWO GUVNORS
By Richard Bean
Based on The Servant of Two Masters by Carlo Goldoni
With songs by Grant Olding
SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE MYSTERY OF THE HUMAN HEART
By Reginald Candy
Based on characters by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
ROYAL GEORGE THEATRE
WITNESS FOR THE PROSECUTION
By Agatha Christie
THE SECRET GARDEN
A Play with Songs
Based on the novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Adapted for the stage by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli
THE ORPHAN OF CHAO (Lunchtime One-Act)
Adapted by Michael Man
Based on the classical Chinese drama,
The Great Revenge of the Zhao Orphan,
by Ji Junxiang
CANDIDA
By Bernard Shaw
JACKIE MAXWELL STUDIO THEATRE
THE HOUSE THAT WILL NOT STAND
By Marcus Gardley
SNOW IN MIDSUMMER
By Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig
Based on the classical Chinese drama,
The Injustice to Dou E that Moved Heaven and Earth,
by Guan Hanqing
SPIEGELTENT
Enter a secret world of glamour, beauty, and pleasure. Our 1920’s ‘mirror tent’ is the perfect venue for cabaret: listen to music, soak up the atmosphere, catch someone’s eye in their reflection … our cabaret space, alive with music and performance of all kinds.
HOLIDAY SEASON
A CHRISTMAS CAROL
By Charles Dickens
Adapted and originally directed by Tim Carroll
LERNER AND LOEWE’S
MY FAIR LADY
Book and Lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner
Music by Frederick Loewe
Adapted from Bernard Shaw’s Play and Gabriel Pascal’s motion picture Pygmalion