Artistic Director Brett Christopher Talks Thousand Islands Playhouse’s 2025 Season and Upcoming Season
On a frigid day this past November, I had the chance to sit down with Brett Christopher, the Artistic Director of the Thousand Islands Playhouse, to reminisce on the company’s past season. The conversation also allowed me a glimpse into their upcoming 2026 season, which is brimming with anything an audience could want, from Broadway hits to award-winning Canadian works.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
With seven shows shown through the company this past year, what were the biggest goals you had ahead of the 2025 season?
I’m going into my 10th season as Artistic Director; [2025 was] my ninth season, and I really have been pushing, especially since the pandemic, for us to do bigger and bigger shows. Like truthfully. In 2022, we started doing the second big musical — when I arrived, I was told, “You can’t do a show with more than 12 actors…”
And I was like, “No, that can’t be right. We have to do big shows…” Since then, we tried to continue to build, particularly the second [big musical] slot, [in] October, which is when everything else shuts down for summer tourism towns, [like] Gananoque. It’s a great way of continuing to bring people into the community… The relationship to the community is so symbiotic and so important. We are indebted to them for the location, for the support, for word of mouth on our productions, [for] great restaurants and hotels. And in turn, this year we had 49,000 people come to a town of 5,000 people. The company has doubled in size in the last seven years. Those musicals can be a gateway drug… a few of those people will look at the rest of a season and go, “What’s Sugar Road? I’ve never heard of that. Let’s go to another show!” The more people that come to those bigger shows, the more people go to the other shows too.
To dive further into that, I know that producing Canadian works has been a major part of TIP’s mandate from the beginning: how does the company strike a balance between these big musicals and the smaller scale Canadian plays that may be unfamiliar to less frequent theatregoers?
It’s amazing to have that second space with the Firehall because it gives me the opportunity to do shows that may only sell like 3,000 tickets, versus something like Mary Poppins, which sold around 16,000. There’s not as wide an audience for a play like The Piano Teacher, but it can still have a really cool relationship to a group of people and [provide] the experience of being in a much smaller, intimate room for performance. I think that makes it all the more effective. So when it came to The Drawer Boy, I had always wanted to do this play. It’s a beautiful, sort of gentle, Canadian story. And when I walked into that room and I saw the set that they had built, I was like, “Oh, this is gonna be spectacular.” It was magical.
Is there anything that you’re especially proud of when looking back on this season?
I co-directed Mary Poppins, so I was really proud of that show, which was a huge one for us. There’s little moments that I know as a director in that show that I brought, and I can see that and feel very proud of them.
It was neat to [co-direct] with Stephanie Graham because Steph is so amazing at seeing the bigger picture. My skill is much more within interpersonal relationships. I started as an actor, so I’m much more interested in the breath between the two people and what the story is, the real human relationships. And so it was a wonderful tag team where I would get Mary and Bert and talk to them about the dynamics, who they are, what their relationship is, and did the same thing throughout the show. I’m always super proud when we can tell the story in a way that is human and super relatable. That’s my goal always: then people will walk away thinking about their own life, maybe learning some lesson of being a more human person.
The other thing I’m really proud of is just the volume of people that came… A big responsibility we have as theatremakers now especially is to gather people in a room in an analog way, to share a communal experience with a group of strangers, to [help people] realize that they’re not alone in this weird world. So I think the more people that we continue to gather in those buildings, the more good we’re doing for people.
As mentioned earlier, you co-directed Mary Poppins this past season alongside Stephanie Graham, but looking at this season ahead, you’re directing The Last Five Years — one of my all-time favourites — but a show that is incredibly different in size and scope. What are you, as a director, looking forward to with a much more intimate show?
A big part of me doing Mary Poppins with Steph was to watch as an artistic leader; to get inside the process of one of those big musicals and see what we are asking of artists. For our own growth as an organization, it’s really important for me to understand behind the scenes of all of those processes.
As an artistic person, as a creative, I much prefer just being with a couple people in a room. The successes that I’ve had creatively are always, two, three handers, or solo performance, where you can really develop a personal relationship with the actors and work on crafting an amazing performance. I learned through the Mary Poppins process [that] there is so much communication required in that kind of show, and Steph is a master. I love working with her because she can envision the grand scale, the choreography, the design, the direction. She can see all of that, but also has such a huge heart and cares so much about the storytelling and individual moments — I think she’s one of the best directors in the country… I feel very blessed to work with her.
For me, what I learned from that was [while] I love musicals, my specialty is really being in a smaller room. I’ve always wanted to work on The Last Five Years, I’ve listened to the soundtrack a billion times too many. And so it’s time for me to take what I learned with Mary Poppins and put it into practice. Also in doing this, we’ve never done a Firehall musical. So, we’re trying to reconsider what our process is for musical theatre, but in a much smaller, more intimate venue… If I start to build a musical style in our smaller space, then we’ll have access to those [more contemporary and edgy] shows, which I love.
The 2026 season was recently announced and is filled with so many fantastic works. Although it’s still early on, what can audiences look forward to with the season ahead?
I’m working with four new directors this year… which I love. Directors really inform the way that the productions are going to be presented and the way we are telling the story, who the artists are, who we’re working with. It’s really exciting to bring in some fresh leadership and say, like, here’s all that resources, make the play you want to make.
It’s a lot of bouncing from play to venue and trying to figure out if there is some sort of intersection thematically between the plays. Even if it’s the opposite, what does that do to a person and their relationship to going to see a play? You expect the reactions when many people see something popular like Mamma Mia or Come From Away. And then when they go to see something like The Drawer Boy, they realize that it doesn’t have to be all bells and whistles, singing and music.
Beyond what we’ve discussed, is there anything else happening within the Playhouse in the meantime before the next season picks up once again?
I’m currently in the midst of building a plan for the next five years… I am a person who is constantly trying to grow what we’re doing, to deepen our relationships, build bigger shows, and have more of a national impact as an organization.
Another big other thing that we do is our education department, which started out of the pandemic. Right now we have 25 high school students who go to school full time at the Playhouse: they’re building their own productions, learning about carpentry, scenic painting, wardrobe, acting, and learning about all the different jobs you can have in theatre, all the ways you could be involved in the making of a play as opposed to being an actor… It’s to give these teenagers the opportunity to be in a room with each other. I think it’s a big part of what we do, to provide people with a more human, live experience.
For twenty-five years, Brett has worked in Theatre as an actor, director, and producer. For the last nine, he has led the Thousand Islands Playhouse as Managing Artistic Director, providing creative opportunities for more than 1000 professional artists, as well as hundreds of young people in the region. The Thousand Islands Playhouse is the largest producing theatre company in Eastern Ontario, producing 7 – 9 plays annually in the town of Gananoque ON.
Thousand Islands Playhouse is Canada’s Dockside Theatre, producing seasons of Canadian and international theatre since 1982. More information about their upcoming season can be found here.
