Here For Now Theatre 2026 Season Preview with Artistic Director Fiona Mongillo

Curious. Courageous. A little bit dangerous (in the best way possible).

In this special 2026 Season Preview episode, Artistic Director Fiona Mongillo joins host Joanne Wallace to walk through Here For Now Theatre’s boldest season yet — eight productions that swing big, embrace risk, and centre complicated, unforgettable women.

From a high-stakes hospital drama about surrogacy to a surreal meditation on climate change and denial; from backstage Shakespearean satire to Greek-tragedy-infused family reckoning; from a Nobel Prize–winning Norwegian playwright making his Canadian debut to a heartwarming new holiday comedy for kids — this season refuses to sit quietly inside the Canadian theatre zeitgeist.

Along the way, Fiona shares:

• Why HFN audiences have given her permission to take bigger artistic risks
• How several plays this year reimagine classic male-dominated stories through female perspectives
• What makes Steve Ross’s Early Genius such a crowd-pleasing comedy
• Why Suzannah (by Nobel laureate Jon Fosse) was rejected in Norway — and why it belongs here
• How fungal networks in As Above become a metaphor for connection, regret, and redemption
• And why keeping ticket prices accessible allows both artists and audiences to take creative risks

If you’ve been waiting for the year to finally try Here For Now, this might be it.

🎟️ Tickets are on sale now.
Single tickets, 5-ticket summer-season subscriptions, and 8-ticket all-season subscriptions are available.
Visit: www.herefornowtheatre.com

Call: 519.272.4368

And a friendly reminder: our theatre has just 58 seats. Performances do sell out.

Comments? Questions? I read everything you write.
 📩 joanne@herefornowtheatre.com

Credits
Producer/Host: Joanne Wallace
Sound Design/Engineering: Jim Park
Music: “Zorro: Oh My God” via Epidemic Sound

Transcript

Here For Now Theatre 2026 Season Preview with Artistic Director Fiona Mongillo

SPEAKERS

Joanne Wallace, Fiona Mongillo

Fiona Mongillo  00:00

Ooh, there's this little unofficial triplicate of plays that examines older plays in some ways, because you have love us most. You have King Lear, you have ghosts, which is Agamemnon, and then you have Susanna, which is Ibsen's work. So it's sort of these re imagining from these fresh kind of female perspectives of these historically male stories.

Joanne Wallace  00:32

Hi theater fans. I'm Joanne Wallace with here for now theater company, we're getting ready to open our 2026 season in a few short weeks. You just heard artistic director Fiona mangillo with one of the fascinating insights she shares about the upcoming season in our conversation, she's here to walk us through the entire play bill with plenty of scoop on casting Norway's weird obsession with Heinrich Ibsen and what you can expect to see on here for now stages all the way through until December, all that and more coming right up. Fiona mangillo, welcome back. Nice to see you again. 

Fiona Mongillo  01:09

Hi, Joanne, thanks for having me.

Joanne Wallace  01:11

All right. Well, we're here to talk about here for now. Theatre's 2026, season, and when you talk about this season, I've heard you use language like curiosity, courage, big swings, boldness of imagination. So that feels to me, like a statement about where the company is right now and what it's focusing on. So could you start by describing what's at the heart of the season for you, like, not just what it's about, but what it feels like? 

Fiona Mongillo  01:39

Yeah .I mean, I think the reason I'm saying big swings is because a lot of the plays this season really do exist outside of the zeitgeist of what we do in Canadian theater. A lot of them are really mold breaking. We have a Jan fossa play. This is a Norwegian playwright who has never been produced in Canada, who is really, he's written something that really feels like a meditation and doesn't have a plot. You know, we've produced that. We have Julie Julia Lederer back, who's an incredible playwright, but she has a really authentic and interesting voice. We have a wonderful play called ghost of my house by Susanna, which also really Susanna Fournier, yeah, Susanna Fournier, who also really steps outside of the sort of typical mold of a well made play.

Joanne Wallace  02:33

So did you like, go out intentionally and pick these plays, or did it just happen?

Fiona Mongillo  02:37

No, I mean, I think, I think something that's probably evolved throughout the years, and happened kind of organically, is we've developed really intrepid audiences. Our audiences are really keen to go along with whatever we do, and I think that has emboldened me over the years to take, I think, more and more risks.

Joanne Wallace  02:56

Fantastic. So it's a real symbiotic relationship between the artists and the audience. 

Fiona Mongillo  03:03

Because I think when we have the permission to take those risks, sometimes those big swings really pay off, right? We're doing something that that is testing the boundaries of what is done. And every once in a while, you really strike gold when you when you work like that.

Joanne Wallace  03:18

All right, well, let's get into it. We have eight shows to talk about today, so I thought maybe we could group them into spring, early summer, summer and fall mini seasons. Maybe. So let's talk about the spring shows which open our season. We have the surrogate opening in April, and it's coming to us after a run in Toronto. And then the second spring show well, and it's technically early summer. It opens at the end of May. Is I am an island, a brand new play by Julia Lederer. Let's talk about the surrogate first, because it sounds to me like it's a pretty meaty piece, and it's going to be wading into the personal and political aspects of surrogacy, which is not an aspect of family or parenthood I've often seen addressed in our stages. So tell us a little bit more about this.

Fiona Mongillo  04:11

I think this is a really interesting piece of theater. It's highly topical. It's very much of this moment, because it examines how we, in this polarized society, have we tend to have a lot of political, moral, ethical identities that we feel very strongly about. And in the surrogacy situation, it's a hospital drama, but each one of these characters shows up to the situation with a lot at stake, a lot to lose, and a very strong vantage point on what is right and what is wrong. And you can see from each of the other characters perspectives why they get triggered by the other perspectives. So as an audience member, you're consistently going back and forth. You don't quite know whose side to be on.

Joanne Wallace  04:59

Oh, interesting. Seeing. So it's almost like a microscopic look at the whole issue of polarity.

Fiona Mongillo  05:05

I think so I think that's what's really interesting. I mean, the surrogacy, the ethical implications of surrogacy, conversations around who has the right to be a family. Does money buy you a family? Do we use women's bodies? How do we use women's bodies? What does a permission for something like that look like? All of that exists in this play and is really relevant and interesting, but I think underneath it, what, what really drew me to the script is this idea that we can't be reductive in our thinking around these characters. And I'm really interested in that in a general sense right now, because I feel like we exist in a society where we are. We tend to be, yeah, trying to be reductive.

Joanne Wallace  05:46

The playwright is a fellow called Mohsin Zadie, and he's a pretty big deal.

Fiona Mongillo  05:50

Yeah, so Mohsen wrote a book a few years ago called a dutiful boy. It's an award winning memoir about his experience growing up gay in a strict Shia Muslim household in the UK. It won a ton of British literary awards. Was also named Book of the Year by the Guardian, so it really caused waves, and the surrogate is his first play. So I should say that this is a world premiere. It is a here for now, theater production that's in association with crows, theater house and body and be current. 

Joanne Wallace  06:29

So can you actually talk about a bit about that? Because when we spoke earlier, we talked about this back and forth, here for now, theater has had with crows in Toronto, and how fruitful that's been. 

Fiona Mongillo  06:39

Yeah. So typically, what's happened is our shows that have done really well here have gone to have another life at crows, but this time, we're reversing it a little bit. We we decided to see what happens if we build a show that starts at crows and then comes to transfers to Stratford. This enabled us to have the cast that we really needed for this particular production, as they are Toronto based, so they could rehearse and perform there, and then we're going to transfer it here and see how it sells.

Joanne Wallace  07:06

Interesting. I'm very much looking forward to it. Okay, that's the surrogate opening, April 16. Let's move on to I am an island. This feels really different in tone to me. We're billing it as a surrealistic drama with some very funny bits. So tell me about all this, like, what's surreal about it, what's dramatic and what's funny?

Fiona Mongillo  07:30

Well, I think that this play, on a first read, could easily be seen as a metaphor for climate change. As the premise of the play is it's an island of people who are slowly sinking, and instead of facing that disaster, they can't seem to comprehend it, so they just carry on in their own small ways, living their lives. But I think what the play is actually about, in a deeper way, is actually just human nature that the way that we tell stories shapes our lives. And sometimes these stories we make up ourselves, sometimes they're stories that we inherit, but that narratives have such power for the way that we move through the world.

Joanne Wallace  08:19

Yeah, because the the main character is she's the one who sees that the island is sinking, but everybody around her is kind of stuck in this other version of the story, absolutely. And I think

Fiona Mongillo  08:33

there's something I remember reading a few years ago, something really interesting about this, where it's like highly intelligent people who tend to see things realistically tend to be depressed. Have you read that? And it's like, I think this makes sense to me, because, you know, I think, and I think May is that character right? She's looking at the reality for what the reality is, and everyone around her is creating realities that they can cope with and that they can, that they can exist with and I think that that is what the play is actually about.

Joanne Wallace  09:05

Well, that's what, because I was reading it and thinking, Oh, this is a metaphor for climate change. But as I got further into it, I thought, oh, maybe it's a metaphor for mental health and depression, other issues that are also surfacing in our culture

Fiona Mongillo  09:19

right now. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's very I find it very funny this play, but I think, I think that the trick of it is that it's not really an issues play. It's a play about human nature, and all of these things are a part of human nature, right, like climate change, like mental health. So can you

Joanne Wallace  09:38

talk about the surreal aspect and remind our audiences of the other work that you put up by this playwright.

Fiona Mongillo  09:46

Yeah, so Julia. Julia Lederer is a playwright that I adore. We did a play of hers called with love in a major organ in 2023 and it was actually her first. Canadian professional production. So she is a Canadian playwright. Her work is done all the time in Europe and in the States, and specifically in the states she's now at her house is in Los Angeles, because her style of writing, her voice is so authentic and so interesting. But again, it's kind of not what we see here. So she just hasn't had Canadian productions. So I'm so so so honored to be championing her in the Canadian theatrical landscape. I think she writes with a lot of humor, and there's a real innocence to how she writes, but it's in combination with a real emotional intelligence and a real deep wisdom. I think she has a really fresh way of looking at the world, which takes you off guard a bit. And she creates these similes that are so strange, but they're so resonant and truthful. And I think it just speaks to this very authentic way that she has of processing the world.

Joanne Wallace  10:59

All right, so that is I am an island Julia lederer's new piece. It will be opening may 27 and running through June 7, pardon me. And those are our spring shows. We're going to take a quick break right now, but please stay with us. I'll be back with here for now. Theatre's artistic director, Fiona mangillo, to talk about our upcoming summer and fall seasons.

Joanne Wallace  11:26

Tickets for the 2026 season are on sale right now at www here for now theater.com you can purchase single tickets to any show, and we also have both five show and eight show subscriptions available. Visit the website for details. Welcome back. We're chatting today with Fiona mangello from here for now theater, and we're about to talk about the four shows that comprise here for now, summer season. Let's get started. There's a really rich mix here. There's satire, we've got family drama, we've got comedy, and we have this incredible, internationally renowned Norwegian work that you mentioned at the top of the episode, in translation. So let's get to that. But first opening in June is a new script from Sarah Farb, and Sarah will be well known to Stratford Festival audiences. She's a wonderful actor, and she's written this play called Love us most, which is this backstage confessional sort of story about three actresses playing the female characters in King Lear so Fiona, what can you tell us about this?

Fiona Mongillo  12:39

Well, firstly, I think this play is hilarious. We are in Stratford, so it is home to a very high ratio of theater professionals and theater patrons, and so anybody who's existed in the world of the theater or on the periphery, I think there's a lot of laughs to be had. So the play takes place in a cramped dressing room. It's the three sisters in the story, King Lear, Shakespeare's King Lear, and The play deals with the politics and the complexities of those relationships,

Joanne Wallace  13:14

both the characters relationships and the actresses relationships.

Fiona Mongillo  13:19

Yes, I would say it's more what's happening off stage, right?

Joanne Wallace  13:24

But it's, it's fabulous, because, you know, those sisters are kind of at each other's throats and, yeah, walking behind each other's backs to get what they want from Lear.

Fiona Mongillo  13:37

It's an interesting thing, right? Because it's this, I think the play is a a critical assessment of the world of these large scale arts organizations. It's a really strange thing, right? Because you have this highly competitive arena where all of these people, all of these artists, desperately want work, and at the same time, you need to be highly collaborative. So it creates, it creates a hotbed for complicated relationships.

Joanne Wallace  14:11

And I can't think of anyone better suited to write this story than Sarah. What? How did the story come to you? Like? Did she come? Did she bring it to you?

Fiona Mongillo  14:21

Or yeah, so Sarah did. She was part of a reading last summer workshop of, actually, Steve Ross's early genius, which we'll talk about next, or after, yeah, talk about later. So she was part of Steve Ross's early genius workshop last year, and she mentioned to me she's like, my role to play. I'm gonna send it to you. So I thought, okay, I hadn't seen anything that Sarah had written. But then when I read it, it was a no brainer. Have you cast this show yet? Oh, yes, we have. So love us most has a fantastic cast. So it's starring Jasmine case, Shannon Taylor and Zara. Just at and also here for now, favorite Kevin Bundy playing the

Joanne Wallace  15:05

king the King Lear. The King

Fiona Mongillo  15:07

Lear character, yeah, and it's directed by seborn Rock, who is having her first time, her directorial debut at here for now,

Joanne Wallace  15:14

let me ask you this, and I don't know whether we're going to have to take out some liability insurance for this podcast episode, but you are a female artist deeply embedded in this business and in this town. So does what we see in this show ring true to you?

Fiona Mongillo  15:32

I would say in my own personal trajectory, no, but that's because I only work in places that I want to work with people I want to work with, and I run my own theater company, right? So it's a different beast, but I would certainly say for many of my close friends who work in larger arts organizations, absolutely.

Joanne Wallace  15:53

Well, maybe we can get Sarah on Mike later on. All right, that is Sarah farbs, love us most. Opening June 17 and running until the 28th Fiona, what do we have next?

Fiona Mongillo  16:07

Ghosts of my house. So this is another world premiere, written by Susanna Fournier, directed by Leora Morris, her good friend and longtime collaborator. So this is a play about family, about grief, about the stories we inherit. Something interesting that Susanna says is it's loosely inspired by Agamemnon. I think where you feel it is the family dynamic. So the parents, the mom and the dad in the story, seem to have had a very volatile relationship, and you pick that up from the way that the unresolved anger on the part of the mother, and I think that that anger reverberates throughout that entire family, right? It shapes the daughters and it shapes the son. That is that we never meet. He's talked about a lot in the play, and he's there, he's present in the space, but we actually never hear from him. And I think in some ways, it's a family that's lost a patriarch, but they're still existing within the trail of damage that that patriarch left behind.

Joanne Wallace  17:14

Yes, and I found this so interesting because when I spoke with Susanna, and she told me this whole thing about the play being loosely based on Agamemnon, I was like, Oh, wow. So it is because I hadn't seen it when I was reading. But I think what I found so interesting is that such, I mean, it's a classic piece in the Western canon. It's a, it's probably the archetypal Greek tragedy. But what? It's a very much a Sins of the father's story, right? Where the family for several generations is paying for the sins committed by their parents, and then the son that we never see is Orestes, and he's the one who eventually pays the price. So, yeah, I think what was interesting about this, for me was that that's such a very old myth. It's not something we think is still with us, and yet it is. So can you talk about that? Like the mythic role? I think it's

Fiona Mongillo  18:10

the excavation of inherited damage, right? It's like this, is this play explores how families inherit emotional patterns, right? So it's often a kid's not just dealing with whatever's going on in their own lives. They're also carrying the unresolved anger, grief, shame, whatever, of previous generations. And I think that that is very that story exists powerfully in Greek tragedy in a general sense, but specifically in Agamemnon, right?

Joanne Wallace  18:41

Yeah, yeah, for sure, yeah. It's going to be really interesting. Is there humor lightening

Fiona Mongillo  18:49

this play or Yeah? So what I was going to say about Susanna and why I think she's such a fascinating playwright, and why I really wanted to include her voice in the season is because she constantly plays with form in this piece, so the dialog moves very fluidly between naturalistic conversation and then something very heightened that feels quite mythic, right, and that stylistic swing feels like another subtle nod to Greek tragedy, but it's All delivered in a very contemporary voice, and has surprising humor, which really grounds it in the reality of family. Because I think we talked about this a lot last year, but it's like, we survive painful things through laughter, and she's managed to imbue this play with a lot of that. So I think that, I think that this is actually going to hit home for a lot of people like I think a lot of people like I think a lot of people are going to be moved by this play, and they're going to recognize themselves and their family dynamics in this play.

Joanne Wallace  19:50

All right, so that's ghosts of my house. Susanna fournier's new show running July 8 to 19th, and speaking of humor, next up. We have early genius by a playwright who is rapidly becoming one of our favorites, favorites among our audience, Steve Ross and this script was part of our Monday night reading series last summer, and I remember the tickets sold out in a heartbeat because I couldn't get him to see it. So a lot of our audiences will probably be thrilled to see it's getting a full production this year. So what, what's changed? What are we going to see? I mean,

Fiona Mongillo  20:27

you're going to see a drastically different script, right? Because last year at the reading series, it was, I think this one was, like, two hours long. Oh my, okay. It's lost a lot of weight, let's say. And also, I think Steve was at the time of the reading, he was caught between turning it into a well made play and keeping it his initial instinct with this play was to have it be quite episodic. He references peanuts, maybe just

Joanne Wallace  20:52

recap what the story is about. For people

Fiona Mongillo  20:55

who didn't see it last Absolutely. So it's a very funny piece. I'm always getting flack from people about not programming enough comedy. So here's your comedy, people. So it's about four young geniuses who are under the age of seven and their potentially inept substitute teacher who comes on to guide them because their beloved miss, their beloved teacher is off on maternity leave. Okay, so it's a fairly like, we all know that story, right? We all know this, this kind of setup, but because it's Steve, the thing that's brilliant about it is his ability to draw people who we fall in love with, feels unparalleled like he as a new playwright, I think he's, I think my feeling is, is that he hears the voices of the characters really, really clearly, because he draws such layered and truthful people. You can feel their you can feel their heartbeats.

Joanne Wallace  21:52

Yeah, well, he's such an actor, right? I mean, so maybe that's his secret. I think so, yeah,

Fiona Mongillo  21:59

because a lot of new writers write a lot of the characters. They have an idea for a story, but all the characters are in the same voice. But Steve, even if we don't quite know what the story is, you always know who those people are.

Joanne Wallace  22:11

So can you take us back to what you were saying about Steve's invoking the Peanuts characters

Fiona Mongillo  22:17

the Charlie, yeah. So I think he's been he was thinking about this play as just these like episodes in these people's lives. So so we get to see these children throughout the course of a year, and we get to see how their relationships evolves. But it's snippets throughout the year that do build on each other. And of course, there is a hint of emotional pathos at the end, because again, it's Steve Ross, yeah, he's not gonna not do that, yeah, but it's a really, really funny show. And something that I love about it, I think my favorite thing about it is the fact that these are kids, small kids, that are being played by adult actors, right? Okay, we forget about this very quickly, like they come out and we go, okay, we accept it. But then it's almost like you watch it from your own inner child, and so you have permission to open up to it in a way that you don't when it's adults, like, we'll, we'll be more judgmental and we'll be more, yeah, we'll distance ourselves more from adult characters. But somehow, because they're we know that they're under the age of seven, it sort of opens up your own inner child. Yeah, have you cast it yet? Yeah. Can you tell us? Yeah. So Kevin kruskovich is playing the substitute teacher, and then the kids are being played by Aidan de Salas, okay. Lucy Hill, Oh, wow. Naomi nag bellana and Andrew

Joanne Wallace  23:36

Purin. Oh, well, I think it's gonna be so fun. Yeah.

Fiona Mongillo  23:40

So there's some new we actually have quite a few returning actors this season, but this creative team is a lot of first time here for now. Nice.

Joanne Wallace  23:47

All right, that is Steve Ross's early genius that will be on stage at the end of July, opening the 29th and running through August 9. And I understand tickets are already selling extremely quickly. So if that show interests you, I would encourage you to get your tickets. Yeah, it

Fiona Mongillo  24:05

will be sold out months before it saw All right, okay.

Joanne Wallace  24:09

Now, finally, the last show in our summer season is called Susanna, and this is the infamous Norwegian play you mentioned the top of our chat. So tell us what this is all about.

Fiona Mongillo  24:20

Yeah, so normally at here, for now, you'll have just heard about all world premieres so far, and this isn't a world premiere. This isn't a brand new play. It was written 20 years ago, and the reason that we're doing it is because Jan fosse has never been professionally produced in Canada. He is a Norwegian playwright who just won the Nobel Prize for playwriting in 2023 so he is a big deal. He's a big deal in Norway. They call him the little Ibsen, which I'm sure he loves. And he's done all over Europe all the time, but we haven't done him here. And this play, really interestingly, was commissioned as part of this 2006 year to commemorate the great Henrik Ibsen the Norway was doing. And he was meant to write this play that was about Henrik Ibsen. And instead, he hands them a play that's called Susanna. And he calls it a kind of monolog for three women,

Joanne Wallace  25:24

and who is Susanna?

Fiona Mongillo  25:25

So Susanna, Susanna Thorson was Henrik Ibsen's wife. Oh Ho and I don't think that this play is an indictment of Ibsen, but it certainly doesn't revere him, because Ibsen was such a he's really praised for his social commentary, for his commentary on gender, on social norms, right? And this play looks at his his maybe less savory home life situation.

Joanne Wallace  25:59

So what happened when Fawcett handed this play to the committee who was trying to venerate

Fiona Mongillo  26:05

Ibsen, they said, No, thank you, and they didn't do it. Oh, my goodness, yeah. So it's a bit of a dark sheep of a play, okay? And it's really quite interesting, because something that Susanna did that's present in this play is right before she died. After Ibsen died, she burned all of their correspondence. So you remember in Hedda Gabler, this happens, right? Yes, yes. Susanna real life. Susanna burns all of the letters between her and Ibsen before she dies, so nobody can really know how she felt or what went on in that relationship.

Joanne Wallace  26:38

So is but how did fosse write it like? Did he?

Fiona Mongillo  26:42

Well, there's lots of reports, right? There's lots of people who wrote about their relationship. Some of them are very if you feel like propaganda, they're like, this was a perfect marriage full of love and support. They talk about how Susanna put the pen in Ibsen's hand, so she was the one who kept guiding him back to write, but then he also had really well known extramarital affairs, so there was a lot going on there. And I think something that's really interesting is what's happening in this play is it's Susanna when she's just met Ibsen, and they're about to get married, her at midlife, and her in later life, after he's died, and all of them are sitting at the table waiting for Ibsen to come home.

Joanne Wallace  27:30

So yeah. So that's the premise of the of the show. You have three actors playing the same character at three different points in her life, and yet they're on stage at the same time. Yeah, and we, we see the stories unfolding. It's very, I don't know, Kaleidoscope or a, yeah, origami, folded thing. I don't know. It's quite extraordinary.

Fiona Mongillo  27:53

Yeah, he gets underneath plot it you, you feel like you're living in the most sacred and internal part of somebody's psyche in this play, and we're going to do it in the round, and we're going to do it by candlelight. Oh my and who have you brought in to direct this? So actually, Peter Hinton, the one and only. Who else? Order of Canada, yes. Peter Hinton, genius, yeah. He will be directing this, but he actually brought it to me. Oh, did he? So he had seen quite a lot of shows at here for now. And he said, I think that this is something that would really appeal. And I know that he's wanted to do this show for years and years and years.

Joanne Wallace  28:31

Who is he going to be working with? So

Fiona Mongillo  28:33

he will be working with, yours truly. You're going to be on stage middle aged Susanna. Oh, wonderful. And then Rosemary Dunsmore, the one and only extraordinary as well as a young actress named Brianna Rodriguez.

Joanne Wallace  28:47

All right. Well, that sounds also like a must not miss experience this summer. I think it's

Fiona Mongillo  28:52

going to be a fascinating, fascinating production.

Joanne Wallace  28:55

All right, so that is yo yon face Susanna, opening August 19, and running through until the 30th. It's going to be quite a summer. We're going to take another quick break right now, and then we'll be right back to hear about what is in store for here, for now theater for the late fall and winter. So don't go away.

Joanne Wallace  29:22

Something you may not know is here for now. Theater is a registered charity, and hundreds of thoughtful, generous donors help us mount every single one of these shows. If you'd like to help, you can do so easily. Just visit our website and click the support button in the website header, and thank you so very much. Okay, Fiona, let's dig into what's going to happen in the fall and winter. At here for now, theater, we are all going to take a well deserved break in September, so the stage will be dark, yes, yes, okay, but then we're coming back at the end of October with a show. I'm personally really looking forward to it's a new script by BC writer Christine Quintana, and it's called as above. We're building this as a dramatic thriller. So tell me what this is all about.

Fiona Mongillo  30:16

Well, Christine Quintana, firstly, I need to say that this is the Ontario premiere of as above. So it did have its first production out at the belfry theater, so out west on Vancouver Island, and it's getting its ever important second production. So so often beautiful shows get a world premiere and they never see the stage again. So we're giving it the second production, I would say that this play is very much a character story. It's not really a plot driven story. It's very much about the central protagonist, whose name is Jo. Jo is a woman in her late 60s who was a tenured professor of botany. She lost her tenure because she was also a bad alcoholic, and lost about 40 years of her life to alcoholism. Jo is at a point in her life where she started dating again, so she's quite sexy and sexual, and she's exploring this new relationship while also trying to reconcile with her past.

Joanne Wallace  31:25

And she's she's a botanist, right? And She studies the fungal networks that sustain the great old growth forests out on the West Coast and everywhere else. But so is this a metaphor for the deeper themes?

Fiona Mongillo  31:44

Yes, absolutely. I think that the idea that these fungal networks that exist in the ground that we don't see, they're invisible to us, are networks wherein the trees actually talk to each other and actually support each other and give each other what they need. This metaphor comes up a lot in the play, because I think Jo is at this point in her life where she's trying to reconcile with her past. She has an estranged daughter. Her husband died, and she wasn't at the time able to support him as he was going through that process. So she has a lot of regrets and a lot to feel badly about. And I think is trying to reconcile, if she is deserving of a future, is she deserving of new relationships? Is she worthy of a relationship with her daughter again? And I think the idea is that we're actually all connected to each other. And actually, at the end of the day, all of this stuff, all of the shame, all of the pain and the regret are secondary to the fact that we're all connected.

Joanne Wallace  32:53

Yeah, so they don't sever the networks exactly that tie us together. I was very I found this play very moving. And it's also, it's very like the dialog is lovely. It's very crisp. There's a lot of witty back and forth between Jo and her love interest, whose name escapes me at the moment, but I understand Kevin Bundy is coming to play that part. Who's going to play Joe?

Fiona Mongillo  33:18

Kim horseman, Oh, nice. That's her first time performing with here. For now, she's a wonderful West Coast based

Joanne Wallace  33:24

actor, yeah. But what I was going to say was I found something I don't, maybe almost spiritual about this, like, like, what it's talking about when, like, it's using science to talk about this thing, which we're seeing presented to us as the fungal networks that link the trees, and I mean basically that link us all, because we all depend on the trees because they make oxygens. But if the fungal network is not in any way destroyable, neither is the spirit and I guess maybe love that ties us to one another.

Fiona Mongillo  34:03

Yeah, yeah. To me, this reads as a really highly intelligent playwright grappling with meaning. And you know this idea yearning for proof of magic, proof that there is something, something exists beyond what we see. And I think she uses a highly intelligent, very skeptical protagonist, who is a scientist looking at something that, who studies something indisputably magical. Right to to work this out for herself. That's what that feels that

Joanne Wallace  34:42

feels like. And then we have, like a kind of a magical thing that happens in the climax of the play.

Fiona Mongillo  34:49

Yeah, I don't want to give too much away about that, but I do think it's there is so much that can't be explained, that we can't logic or reason away. We. One of the things I think about quite frequently is when somebody dies. This is reported quite often, right? If somebody dies, a close sibling or a husband or a father or a parent will sometimes know, like they'll be on the other side of the world, and they'll wake up and they'll know that this person they loved has left the earth. And this is a reported phenomenon. Happens all the time, and I think that's fairly magical. We have no way to explain that.

Joanne Wallace  35:27

Yeah, yeah. And so the playwright is playing with this, along with what is

Fiona Mongillo  35:33

what is invisible, like what's invisible? What do we not see? What governs us beyond just the three dimensional and just because it's

Joanne Wallace  35:41

invisible doesn't mean it's not real. Yeah. It's not real. Yeah, I think it sounds very special. That is, as above, Christine quintana's First Ontario production of this lovely play, directed by Marie Farsi, and opening here on October 28 running until November 8. Now, speaking of very special, our last show of the 2026 season is a holiday offering. And I think after the massive success of last year's Ruby and the reindeer, everyone is going to be pretty excited about another brand new Canadian Christmas play. So let's talk about the gift exchange. Yeah.

Fiona Mongillo  36:20

So something that I noticed last year with Ruby and the reindeer is that a lot of people wanted to bring their very young children, and I had asked Mark Crawford for a play that was primarily for adults, but that could be all ages. So we felt like some of the littler ones maybe were missing it a little bit, but we also felt our community clearly wants a children's Christmas show. So this is really geared for kids. I would say the sweet spot is ages six to 1213, I think they'll find it very funny and very relatable.

Joanne Wallace  36:56

I found it very funny, and I'm a considerably

Fiona Mongillo  36:59

older than it's true. I actually really, I enjoyed reading it too, and I know this production is going to be stellar. Sarah Jean Hosey is directing it. It's going to be full of laughs. And, yeah, it's just really heartwarming, beautiful story. So what's that? What's the premise? So the premise is, it's about a young girl named Phoebe and her dad river who have just moved off of Salt Spring Island, where she had been home schooled to the big city of Vancouver, and she's trying to figure out how to fit in in this new

Joanne Wallace  37:28

community, right? And then, and there's so it takes place in the school, right? Because so there's all her classmates. And again, I think we're going to see children played by adult actors. There's a teacher, there's more than one teacher, yeah, there's three teachers, three teachers, but hilariously played by the same actor. I think this is going to be the kids are going to laugh, the adults are going to laugh. Because in the climactic scene of the play, when I think it's a play within a play, like they're presenting a pageant or something, and the teacher keeps spinning off stage and coming back with a mustache on to play this character and with a wig on to play that character, and then she gets mixed up. And it's going to be very funny.

Fiona Mongillo  38:11

Yeah, kids are going to really

Joanne Wallace  38:12

enjoy it. I think the kids are going to laugh a lot. Is it? Is it tough to do that kind of slapstick in, like, in here for now, because there's no wing space, right? Like is,

Fiona Mongillo  38:23

I don't think so, because I think part of the joy of it is that you see it all you know, like none of it is hidden. There's not meant to be any slickness to it. And I think the actors are going to have so much fun that it's going to feel quite contagious. So the gift exchange is full of a bunch of clowns. We have Chantal Han, who was with us last year, and stick around Lauren Bowler, who's done quite a bit with us, including myth of the ostrich. She played Pam and Kevin chriscovich, who is a huge improviser, works a lot with Rebecca Northen. And we should also say, at the heart of the story, the actual the actor who's playing Phoebe is a kid, right? So we have brought in Olivia Padfield, who may be familiar to some of our listeners. She was the understudy for Annie last year at the Stratford Festival. She's a wonderfully talented, super truthful, soulful young actor.

Joanne Wallace  39:14

Oh, wonderful. I'm very much looking forward to this. All right, so that's the gift exchange by another West Coast playwright, Megan Gardner, directed by Sarah Jean Hosey, opening December 9 and running all the way until the 23rd so that is it. That's almost the entire 2026 season. And I say almost, because we also have a small limited engagement series. Can you explain what that is? Yeah.

Fiona Mongillo  39:40

So the limited engagement series really exists to host shows that are already built. So if somebody has done the hard work of putting together a show and wants the opportunity to present it again to a new audience, and it's easy enough to pop up like it doesn't require a huge set, then. And that's what that the limited engagement series exists for. So this summer, we're bringing in two one woman shows. The first one is Dora Marr by Danielle of lascalic, and the second one is hypothetical baby by Rachel Carnes.

Joanne Wallace  40:16

Okay. And they're short runs, so there won't be a lot of performances, but they're often really, really wonderful pieces. So yeah, definitely

Fiona Mongillo  40:25

keep an eye out for those. Basically, they're shows that I wanted to see but didn't get a chance to. So you brought them to your own theater. I brought them to my theater.

Joanne Wallace  40:33

Yes, good strategy. All right. We're also bringing back the Monday night reading series. Can you talk about that?

Fiona Mongillo  40:39

Yeah, so we have three shows that are going to be a part of the reading series again this year. And essentially what those are is we bring together a group of actors and a director and a newer draft of a play that we're interested in, and we do a mini workshop on it. So we do three days of about three or four hours with the actors, the playwright goes away and does some rewrites, and then on a Monday night, we do a Pay What You Can presentation of this new play, and then we do a talk back. So it's a really nice way for us to hear how these brand new scripts are landing. It's very clarifying. When you get it up in front of an audience, you learn so much about the play, and you can work for hours and hours alone in your bedroom as a dramaturge, you know, going back and forth with a playwright and be in a room of other artists, and you can never learn what you learn about the play in front of an audience.

Joanne Wallace  41:31

So, I mean, this is an essential piece of of your work as a new development house, absolutely.

Fiona Mongillo  41:37

And I think again, our audiences are so engaged and intelligent and wonderful, that often the feedback is extremely helpful. I know that sometimes that's not always the case in a lot of theaters, but I've found that to be very true.

Joanne Wallace  41:53

I think it's it's a wonderful opportunity, too, for audiences who are curious about the real nuts and bolts of theater. So yeah, if you find yourself visiting Stratford over the summer on one of these Monday nights and you can get a ticket, please do so you'll probably enjoy it. Before we leave the topic, though, of the reading series, can you talk a little bit about the commissioning process you use? Like you've mentioned that Sarah Farb just said, Oh, I've got a play. Do you want to look at it? Is that how it usually happens? Or do you go out and choose writers and say, Would you write me something about this? The way you asked Mark for a Christmas show

Fiona Mongillo  42:33

last year? So it's really a mix. Sometimes I go to playwrights that I'm interested in and I say, Hey, could you write me a play? And and then we're commissioning from scratch, which is a very different process, right? There's a different investment in a in something like that, because obviously it's a much larger investment of time for the playwright. But more frequently, what happens is people send in projects. We get a lot of pitches now, Joanne, we get, I'm reading a minimum of 100 plays a year. My goodness, yeah. So a lot of people will send their plays in, and mostly they're a draft or two away from being ready to stage, even in a workshop setting like our company, so often, what we do is we will sign on to redraft the play, and then we'll work dramaturgically on it as well, and then we'll

Joanne Wallace  43:26

present it. It's, it's, again, just such an important piece of the Canadian theater ecosystem. Like to keep these, these new shows, alive, and to be feeding the writers and giving them the opportunity to have their work looked at, dramaturged, produced workshop produced so wonderful we're just about ready to wrap, but I wanted to know if we can maybe just circle back to the beginning, where we talked about the season as a whole. You talked earlier about things like curiosity and courage and big artistic wings being the center of this season. So could you talk about how, how those aspects of what you've chosen to present this year are contributing to the growth of here for now theater and where it's going?

Fiona Mongillo  44:22

Yeah, I mean, I think this year there's a much broader selection of voices, and there are, like the Jan fossa play is going to really ask something different of our audience than early geniuses. So there's a real diversity this year, which I think is fantastic as a consumer, right? As a patron, you get to experience a lot of different kinds of stories, but also as a company, what we're trying to do is embrace pieces that don't necessarily fit the current Zeitgeist and. This is to push the boundaries a little bit on form and what we do in Canadian theater. Why is that important? Because I think often companies that have higher production value where shows cost more, can't afford to take those same risks. Because I think with like, with everything right, the bigger the risk, the bigger the chance of failure, and it's like so there are a lot of companies that can't afford too much failure, so they have to play it safer in terms of what they're programming, because if they were to they were programmed something that was a bit of a doozy or nobody liked or didn't quite work, it could cost them, in a way. And we have built a company predicated on risk.

Joanne Wallace  45:44

It's so important to avoid stagnation, like creative artistic stagnation, and to to keep the artistic vision fresh and growing. And I

Fiona Mongillo  45:57

find sometimes those bigger swings have bigger rewards, you know, sometimes they don't. Sometimes you go, Oh, I see what that play was trying to do, but it didn't quite land. But other times they can really hit in a really reverberant way, right?

Joanne Wallace  46:12

I mean, I think it's also wonderful what you're doing here in Stratford, because it your prices are so low, and the the ask is not that big, right? It's an hour and a half. These shows are all one act shows, so an audience can take a risk too, right? They can come and see something like ghosts of my house or I am an island, which, you know, might be a little bit outside their comfort zone, but it's not costing them a lot in terms of money or time, so it allows an audience to take that risk along with you. And this

Fiona Mongillo  46:47

is why I've really fought to keep the price, the ticket prices, accessible, not only because there is a whole portion of our community who are on fixed incomes, who come to here for now and feel like a part of that community. And I would, it would horrify me to price them out. But besides that, it's the idea that I want to be able to take the risks. So I don't want these tickets to get too expensive, because the second they do, you expect a certain level of slickness, of pot, of something that's polished, of something that you are going to enjoy, right?

Joanne Wallace  47:24

Can you What about the mandate you shared with me last time that wanting to sell pardon me. Tell stories about women who might be perceived as being difficult. Where do we see that

Fiona Mongillo  47:37

showing up in this this is a very female centric season. Most of these women are very difficult. Most of them are very difficult. No, but you do, you definitely see a lot of complex female characters at the centers of these stories. So they're not all likable. They're not all mothers or wives or daughters that are well behaved. They're, you know, we're showing the sides of them that are really human.

Joanne Wallace  48:04

Yeah, all right. Thank you so much. Is there anything else you'd like to tell us about this?

Fiona Mongillo  48:09

I think there's an interesting little tidbit that I wanted to share with you that I was thinking about the other day. So something that's quite interesting is there's also this little unofficial triplicate of plays that examines older plays in some ways, right? Because you have love us most. You have King Lear, right? You have ghosts, which is Agamemnon, and then you have Susanna, which is Ibsen's work. So it's sort of these reimagining from these fresh kind of female perspectives of these historically male stories.

Joanne Wallace  48:42

And what would you say now to someone who's thinking about making 2026, the year they finally come to here for now theater, I would say you chose

Fiona Mongillo  48:51

a very good year. Gonna get a lot of really interesting productions.

48:57

All right. Well, thanks, Fiona, this has been fun. Thank you so much. Joanne,

Joanne Wallace  49:07

just a reminder, tickets are on sale for all these shows right now, and you can get them at our website, www here for now, theater.com or you can call the box office, and I will leave that information for you in the show. Notes. One thing, though, if you would like to join us this summer for any of these amazing shows, I would encourage you to book your tickets sooner rather than later. If you haven't been to see us, you might not know our theater is very small. It's fabulously intimate, but there are only 58 seats available for every performance, and last summer, once the word hit the street, many, many dates sold out very quickly. So do get those tickets right now so you won't be disappointed. Until then, I'm Joanne Wallace, and thanks for listening.