The Best Play He Never Saw
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: The Spirit of Canada
By S. Nadja Zajdman

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.
~Oprah Winfrey

When I was twenty and dreaming of becoming an actress, my father and I made our annual pilgrimage to the Shaw Festival. At sixteen I had stumbled upon a tiny ad for the fledgling festival, and the following summer we rode out to the historic border town that had repelled an American invasion in 1812. When we first discovered it, the old Upper Canada fort of Niagara-on-the-Lake, situated on the shore of Lake Ontario twenty-six kilometres from Niagara Falls, was noted more for its prettiness and historical significance than for its cultural life. But when a local wit posted a sign in front of his cottage that read, “Shaw’s House,” the old fort town hosting the festival came to be referred to, in our house, by the name my father gave it: “Niagara-Falls-on-the-Lake, where Shaw lives.”

When I discovered the Festival, the main stage productions were held in the renovated courthouse; lunchtime theatre was housed in the town’s original theatre, the Royal George. The large, modern Festival Theatre was about to be constructed, and that’s where we saw Kate Reid play the title role in Mrs. Warren’s Profession. At her first entrance, the audience gasped. A character actress known for her cello-toned voice, alcoholic binges, swollen body and out-sized talent, Reid had whittled down to a shadow of herself. Her large dark eyes, always luminous, seemed to bulge out of her head now. For the moment she was on the wagon, channelling her demons into a performance so searing that it left the festival audience sitting in stunned silence. (Keep reading)