In photos: Theatre Sheridan showcases strong Fall 2024 season with Big Fish and Something Rotten!

If laughter, tears and standing ovations are the telltale signs of a successful theatre production, then the full-scale shows of Theatre Sheridan’s Fall 2024 season were a smashing success. 

Big Fish and Something Rotten! took the stage at the Studio Theatre and Macdonald Heaslip Hall at Sheridan’s Trafalgar Road Campus in December for a total of 19 shows, delighting audiences and impressing the industry professionals in attendance.  

Theatre Sheridan has been playing a pivotal role in developing talented performers and theatre technicians for more than 50 years. Students in the Honours Bachelor of Music Theatre Performance and Technical Production for the Performing Arts Industry put their skills to work under the guidance of industry professionals who teach acting, singing, dancing, choreography, lighting, set design, and more. 

Students in both productions demonstrated resilience and growth in the face of a number of challenges that came their way during the shows’ runs. A featured cast member from Something Rotten! fractured her foot during a preview performance of the musical, requiring the use of a wheelchair for the performances. Elsewhere, a cast member in Big Fish became ill and the understudies, in domino effect, rallied to replace the lead so the show could go on. The process required the show's dance captain and stage managers to work with all performers and stagehands to adjust their show track on the fly, thus maintaining the original vision and intent of the piece. 

Big Fish featured the talents of 27 performance and technical production students in the running crew (the crew who supports the technical aspects during a performance), while Something Rotten! was supported by 55 students in the cast and running crew. All students studying in Sheridan’s three-year Technical Production for the Performing Arts Industry program worked on the shows in some capacity. 

Every upper-year student in the program chooses three areas of focus from carpentry, lighting, sound, stage management, tech management, wardrobe, props and scene paint. Next semester, the students will swap crews for the Winter 2025 season and learn the skills from a new focus area that are needed to complete their robust program. In this apprentice-style learning process, students in all three years engage directly with industry professionals to hone their skills and work collaboratively with one another as they progress through the three-year program.  

Preparations are already underway for the Winter 2025 season, featuring Armchair Confidential, Child of the Wild, Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, and Heathers: The Musical.  

This lineup includes two new musicals in development and two full-scale musicals. Visit Theatre Sheridan to get your tickets. 

Fourteen students from Sheridan’s Bachelor of Music Theatre Performance took to the stage in Sheridan’s Studio Theatre to Perform Big Fish – the tale of one boy’s efforts to uncover his family history and the truth behind his father’s fantastical tall tales. 

Something Rotten! was performed by 31 students in Sheridan’s MacDonald Heaslip Hall. The Tony Award-winning show tells the Renaissance-era story of two brothers trying to make their big break in theatre and hatch a plan to outshine the infamous William Shakespeare.

 

More than 23 pieces were created in Sheridan’s carpentry studio across both shows, including a three-tier riser that was the bulk of the set for Big Fish. Something Rotten! featured a centre stage, full-height automated moving wall unit and a hearth/fireplace that Production Manager Jon Grosz calls a “major triumph.” The elements created in carpentry are often interdisciplinary, using the skills of props, paint and technical direction to bring the pieces to life. 

Students built lantern string lights from scratch and designed and hand-cut metal attachments for onstage theatre lights to make them look era-appropriate for Something Rotten! Twelve students were part of the in-venue crews across both shows. 

The students specializing in paint worked on all of the carpentry elements plus two painted floors and greenery, and the large drapery seen above in Something Rotten! The wood grain floors in Big Fish were created so realistically that the Theatre Sheridan teams are considering keeping them for the Winter 2025 shows. 

More than 200 props were created for Something Rotten! while more than 120 were used in Big Fish. Life-sized eggs were a Wardrobe/Props collaboration, requiring additional student volunteers to help with the completion – another example of interdepartmental collaboration. The Props department noted their favourite pieces for Something Rotten! were the hand-painted signs, scythes and plague doctor masks used in a Black Death musical number. 

For Something Rotten!, the Wardrobe department had the herculean task of creating dozens of unique costume pieces from scratch, to create a cohesive look for each show, melding with pieces from the Stratford Festival. 

The work of the Wardrobe department is seen in these imaginative culinary costumes - bacon, lettuce, tomato and cheese, along with chefs - during one of the final musical and dance numbers of Something Rotten!

Costumes for Big Fish featured mermaids, circus performers, witches and more. In some of the larger-scale musical numbers, such as the one above, the talent of the Wardrobe department was on full display.

The cast and crew of Theatre Sheridan's Big Fish 

Director and Choreographer: Tracey Flye 
Music Director: Chris Tsujiuchi 
Associate Choreographer: Kyla Musselman 
Set Designer: Denise Lisson 
Costume Designer: Katrina Carrier 
Lighting Designer: Logan Raju Cracknell 
Projection Designer: Magi Oman 
Sound Designer: Bex Tralli 
Associate Lighting Designer: Emilie Trimbee 
Photographer: Sandro Pehar (@maybesandro) 

The cast and crew of Theatre Sheridan's Something Rotten! 

Director: Herbie Barnes 
Choreographer: Monica Dottor 
Music Director: Stephan Ermel 
Set Designer: Jung-Hye Kim 
Costume Designer: Barbara Rowe 
Lighting Designer: Alia Stephen 
Sound Designer: Tim Lindsay 
Dialect Coach: Kate Webster 
Intimacy Director: Alix Sideris 
Photographer: Sandro Pehar (@maybesandro)