{"id":182650,"date":"2025-10-01T13:47:08","date_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182650\/"},"modified":"2025-10-01T13:47:08","modified_gmt":"2025-10-01T13:47:08","slug":"stratford-festival-names-new-artistic-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/182650\/","title":{"rendered":"Stratford Festival names new artistic director"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Jonathan Church, incoming artistic director of Stratford Festival, on Sept. 29.Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The Stratford Festival<\/a> has announced that British theatre director and producer Jonathan Church will be the company\u2019s next artistic director.<\/p>\n

Church, 58, is perhaps best known for his work at the Chichester Festival Theatre in England, where he served as artistic director from 2006 until 2015. (His contributions to British theatre while at Chichester were honoured in 2015 when he was named a Commander of the Order of the British Empire.)<\/p>\n

Outside of Chichester, Church, a dual citizen of the U.K. and Canada via his Toronto-born mother, has built a successful portfolio of commercial and touring shows under his companies Jonathan Church Productions and, more recently, Jonathan Church Theatre Productions. Mirvish Productions in Toronto has presented a number of works either directed by Church or affiliated with his production companies, including Singin\u2019 in the Rain in 2022, In Dreams in 2023 and 42nd Street during the 2023-24 holiday season.<\/p>\n

While at Chichester, Church programmed Shakespeare several times, including an acclaimed Macbeth directed by Rupert Goold and starring Patrick Stewart. The production moved to the West End in 2007 and eventually Broadway in 2008.<\/p>\n

Church\u2019s initial term with the Stratford Festival will be five years, and he will program the 2027 season. Over the next year, Church, a self-described \u201cproducer who directs,\u201d will serve alongside departing artistic director Antoni Cimolino as artistic director designate, learning the festival while \u201cdisentangling\u201d himself from projects still to come in the Jonathan Church Theatre Productions pipeline. His work as the festival\u2019s sole artistic director will officially commence on Nov. 1, 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be coming over here every month to start.\u201d he said, \u201cthen it\u2019ll reverse, and I\u2019ll be based in Stratford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Church will program the 2027 Stratford season. His initial term will be five years.Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

The appointment seems like a somewhat natural next step in Church\u2019s career: The Chichester Festival Theatre\u2019s thrust stage, around which audiences sit on three sides of the performance space, bears striking resemblance to that of Stratford\u2019s Festival Theatre. In fact, the two are sister theatres, a detail Church highlighted repeatedly when we spoke on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you were appointing directors without the technical skill or imagination to tackle the thrust stage, I think it affected the quality of the work being presented,\u201d said Church of programming the Chichester space during his time there. \u201cI made mistakes under my tenure. I think that knowledge is helpful here \u2013 there are things I can say and do in terms of nurturing others who don\u2019t know the thrust stage as well.\u201d <\/p>\n

The Stratford Festival has three thrust stages: the 2,192-seat Festival Theatre, the 600-seat Tom Patterson Theatre and the 250-seat Studio Theatre, as well as the 1,010-seat proscenium Avon Theatre.<\/p>\n

Church shared that Cimolino has shown him infrastructure upgrades the festival will soon need, particularly inside the aging Festival Theatre. \u201cMy knowledge from refurbishing Chichester, my knowledge of these spaces and their geometry, I think might be helpful to the company,\u201d he said. (Church oversaw an approximately $41-million renovation in Chichester during his time as artistic director.)<\/p>\n

According to board chair David L. Adams, the festival conducted a global search for the artistic director position, with a recruiter in Canada and a consultant in the U.K. In total, 101 people applied for the job. Thirteen were interviewed in the first round, which the search committee reduced to seven \u2013 one of whom dropped out owing to family obligations \u2013 then three.<\/p>\n

Stratford Festival unveils 2026 season, including a remount of Something Rotten!<\/a><\/p>\n

While Adams cited confidentiality concerns around sharing specific details about the shortlist, he did divulge that of the final three candidates, two were Canadian citizens \u2013 including Church \u2013 while the last was another Brit.<\/p>\n

The nine-person search committee was \u201cdiverse in terms of gender and other factors,\u201d he said, but notably, no artists were included in the committee. The festival instead sent out an online survey to 150 participants, including artists, donors and staff, and a \u201csenior artist\u201d without current ties to the festival was brought in as a consultant.<\/p>\n

Adams called the process \u201ca very difficult search\u201d owing to the high quality of the shortlisted candidates. Ultimately, though, Church was successful for his \u201cwide range of international connections and experience,\u201d coupled with his time managing large, complex organizations that deal in repertory theatre.<\/p>\n

Both Church and Adams recognize there may be strong reactions to hiring a candidate whose Canadian experience has largely been limited to short presentations in Toronto. But Adams sees Church\u2019s international ties as a selling point for the appointment.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this blend of attracting internationally renowned talent and continuing to develop Canadian artists and Canadian directors,\u201d Adams said. \u201cAnd it\u2019s not like he hasn\u2019t had any exposure to Stratford \u2013 he\u2019s been coming here for 20 years, and he and Antoni have a very close relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Church says becoming artistic director at Stratford Festival feels ‘a bit like coming home.’Fred Lum\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

One blip on Church\u2019s r\u00e9sum\u00e9 that Adams said the search committee considered was a nine-month stint at Sydney Theatre Company in Australia. Church was appointed to the role soon after departing Chichester in 2015, and was back in the U.K. less than a year later.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe took a good look at that experience and talked to a number of people surrounding it,\u201d said Adams, who suggested Church was \u201cset up to fail\u201d by leadership at Sydney. <\/p>\n

\u201cMy cultural connection with Sydney and those artists felt far less ingrained and significant than the one I have with Canada,\u201d said Church, adding that his time in Australia gave him \u201ca new perspective on how one engages with an organization.\u201d<\/p>\n

This time around, Church is all-in, he said. He\u2019s \u201cready to embed in the country and community,\u201d he continued, volatile weather and all.<\/p>\n

\u201cStratford feels not unlike Chichester in that it\u2019s a small community,\u201d he said, \u201cwhere everybody knows you very well, and where your life interweaves with your work.\u201d He has an affinity for Ontario\u2019s \u201cglorious extremes\u201d of \u201cmarvellous summers and cold winters,\u201d he said, and he\u2019s looking forward to engaging with his family\u2019s history in Canada. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels a bit like coming home,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m quite properly excited \u2026 there are very few companies in the world that can do what Stratford does, as well as it does. To have the opportunity to be part of that is mind-blowing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Jonathan Church, incoming artistic director of Stratford Festival, on Sept. 29.Fred Lum\/The Globe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182651,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[901,888,902,879,877,903,49,48,876,895,896,891,878,875,46,549,75,295,894,887,914,880,881,893,889,890,884,904,885,909,910,912,907,911,905,908,882,898,899,714,897,906,865,61,900,892,886,883,913],"class_list":["post-182650","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-entertainment","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182650","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182650\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182651"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}