“Large-Scale, Outdoor Shenanigans”: Krista Dalby Prepares for Pageantry in Picton’s Delhi Park
In the week leading up to the winter solstice, I sat down with a handful of local theatre-makers to reflect on the year, learn about people’s upcoming projects, and find out what was keeping them warm through the short, dark days of December. This interview with Krista Dalby is the final installment in a series which appeared on the Kingston Theatre Alliance’s Performance Blog in the early (and not so early) months of 2025.
Krista Dalby is out of office this summer. If you write to her at the Department of Illumination, you’ll hear back immediately: “Thank you for your email. I may be slow to respond as I’m not at my desk much these days… You can also see me in person at Picton’s Delhi Park, where I will likely be covered in paste and paint but will be happy to speak with you.”
While I haven’t made it out to Prince Edward County to see the paste-and-paint-covered artistic director for myself, I had the fortune of speaking with her last winter, when the Delhi Park Project—which culminates in a pageant this Saturday, August 23, at 6pm—was just a twinkle in her eye through the webcam lens.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Joining our Zoom call from her puppet-filled studio in downtown Picton, Dalby began by talking about her lifelong love of theatre. “I got involved in theatre in high school, which is kind of the only thing that kept me in high school for as long as it did. Despite dropping out, I went on to study technical theatre at Mount Royal College in Calgary—everything from stage management, lighting, costumes, props. I had a pretty good experience, but at the end of that, I wasn’t really mature enough to take on a job in theatre, so I did lots of other things for many years.”
After studying creative writing in Montreal and working as a screenwriter for television, Dalby made the move to Toronto. “I was 30 and had a very large student loan that I worked for many years paying off. Literally the day I paid off my student loan, I quit my job, and did not know what was going to come next.” So she moved into a small apartment in the West End with her now-husband, Milê Murtanovski, and befriended her new downstairs neighbour, David Anderson—who, as luck would have it, was the founder and longtime artistic director of Clay & Paper Theatre.
“We met as I was literally carrying boxes into the house, and said, ‘Oh, you’re a theatre person, too? We should really have dinner sometime.’ So we made a date for the next week, and I came over to his place for dinner, and he was very distraught—‘Oh, I have a show opening in a couple of weeks, and my producer just quit.’ I was like, ‘You know what? I just quit my job. I have theatre experience. I don’t know anything about producing, but I can probably figure it out.’ And that was when it really all began. Working in puppetry, working in public spaces, working in very community-engaged processes, doing spectacle art. Large-scale, outdoor shenanigans of all sorts. Installations, performances, puppetry, burning stuff, you name it. We really did a lot of different things there. That was an amazing experience.”
After four years working full-time with Clay & Paper Theatre, Dalby left Toronto for Prince Edward County in 2010. By 2013, she had founded the Department of Illumination, initially to create the inaugural Firelight Lantern Festival. “I had experienced a lantern festival in Toronto with a Red Pepper Spectacles Festival of Lights in Kensington Market. When I worked at Clay & Paper Theatre, we had been a participant in that for many years, doing giant puppets. So I had experienced this magical lantern festival world, and I thought, ‘I think we could do this here.’
“We started out with a budget of $500 the first year, and a very small venue that we overfilled because we were like, ‘I don’t know if anybody here is interested in this sort of thing.’ Well, it turns out they were, and they are, and here we are—we just had our 12th annual Firelight Lantern Festival. It really is our signature event of the whole year—it takes place over two days, has thousands of people participating, and a massive parade.”
The Department of Illumination grew alongside the Firelight Lantern Festival, and another festival, ICE BOX, debuted in winter 2019, featuring installations and performances on the grounds of Macaulay Heritage Park. ICE BOX only lasted two years; the project never quite recovered from its pandemic-era hiatus. Meanwhile, Dalby is developing new ideas to create art that engages the public with the natural beauty of Prince Edward County.
One of these new ideas is the Delhi Park Project, a public residency that launched in Delhi Park this summer, across the street from the Department of Illumination’s studio. “We’re going to be in the park three days a week all summer with our mobile art studio, engaging with the community, getting them to help us build masks, puppets, flags, to rehearse songs, to rehearse choreography, and trying to create some momentum throughout the course of the summer, to draw people in to participate in the pageant.”
For Dalby, the opportunity to bring people together is a highlight of any art project, and she looks forward to connecting with burgeoning theatre-makers in the community while reflecting on the past, present, and future of this beloved park. “I’m leading people who have never done this before, and creating this type of theatre in an outdoor space that will also be very multidisciplinary, with music and dance and puppetry and spectacle—a community pageant telling the story of Delhi Park.”
Krista Dalby is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Department of Illumination, a multi-disciplinary arts organization in Prince Edward County that produces festivals, workshops, and art in public space. Krista cut her teeth as a puppetry artist during four years as Assistant Artistic Director at Toronto’s Clay & Paper Theatre, where she produced 16 major productions, including puppet plays, festivals, and the annual Night of Dread, a large-scale community spectacle and parade.
The Department of Illumination presents the Delhi Park Pageant in Picton, Ontario, on Saturday, August 23, 2025. More information can be found here.
