Shaw Festival set to expand into Toronto with multi-year residency at the Harboufront Centre

The partnership, which runs through 2029, will see the festival present multiple shows at Harbourfront’s 350-seat waterfront theatre from October and March of each year, in addition to its regular programming in Niagara-on-the-Lake. 

“It’s a really exciting thing to be part of the Toronto theatre scene, which has become more and more of a powerhouse in recent years,” said Shaw Festival artistic director Tim Carroll in a phone interview. “It’s a great opportunity for us to get in front of a new crowd and give them a taste of what they could expect if they popped over the lake.”

The Shaw Festival is set to unveil its inaugural lineup for its Harbourfront residency in March, though the programming will include Shaw’s annual holiday production of “A Christmas Carol.” Carroll said the shows are expected to be remounts of productions previously presented in Niagara-on-the-Lake. 

The announcement arrives at a pivotal moment for both organizations. For the Shaw Festival, Sunday marked the final day of operations for the company’s second-largest venue, the 305-seat Royal George Theatre, which is set to be demolished and rebuilt over the next three years. The company is also in the midst of constructing an artist campus in Niagara-on-the-Lake, featuring an education centre and housing for its staff. 

The Harbourfront Centre, meanwhile, has undergone a sweeping overhaul in recent months, meant to stabilize the organization’s finances.

During the tenure of outgoing CEO Cathy Loblaw, who shared earlier this fall that she plans to step down, the cultural centre parted ways with the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery and the Toronto International Festival of Authors. As well, this past spring, Harbourfront ended its decades-long lease of the Fleck Dance Theatre, the city’s only purpose-built dance venue. 

At the same time, the organization has also brought back more recreational programming, including buskers and its skating rink, in addition to launching a farmers’ market.

In a phone interview with the Star, Loblaw said the Shaw Festival residency is part of a broader push to offer more extensive year-round programming at Harbourfront’s 10-acre, waterfront campus. “Enabling great art — and in this case, theatre — to be more accessible and available to more audiences is at the heart of who we are.”

The partnership came together quickly, with discussions only beginning in the spring of 2025, when Loblaw met with Shaw Festival executive director Tim Jennings. 

The agreement marks the first time Harbourfront has hosted a multi-year theatre residency in nearly three decades, dating back to when it hosted Soulpepper in the late ‘90s.

While planning is still underway, the Shaw Festival’s first season in Toronto is expected to feature three productions, including “A Christmas Carol.” Unlike the company’s programming in Niagara-on-the-Lake, with multiple shows running simultaneously in repertory and featuring shared casts, the productions in Toronto will run out of repertory, presented one after another, said Carroll. 

The Shaw Festival, whose seasons have historically stretched from the late spring to mid-autumn, has experimented over the past decade with extending its programming later into the year. In recent seasons, the company’s lineup has typically featured a play and holiday musical running through late December. 

But the company’s foray into Toronto, with a season continuing into the late winter, will essentially transform the festival into a year-round operation. Carroll acknowledged that this means the company will have to scale up and bolster its staff. “On the other hand, what we’re very pleased about is that we can provide more work to artists and artisans, and that’s very much a part of our ethos,” he said.

The announcement of the Shaw Festival residency comes after the Ontario government unveiled plans earlier this month to temporarily relocate the Ontario Science Centre to Harbourfront beginning next summer, two years after the province abruptly shuttered its former location in Toronto’s Flemingdon Park neighbourhood.