If the content you are seeing is presented as unstyled HTML your browser is an older version that cannot support cascading style sheets. If you wish to upgrade your browser you may download Mozilla or Internet Explorer for Windows.

Carousel Players

Professional theatre for young audiences, located in St. Catharines Ontario, founded in 1972 by Desmond Davis, a Professor of Drama at Brock University in St. Catharines. The Company takes its name from one of Canada’s oldest operating carousels, located in Port Dalhousie.

Carousel Players is committed to the development of new work and the production of theatre that entertains and challenges children aged five to fifteen in schools, theatres and other venues at affordable prices. It tours to schools, theatres, and festivals across Ontario, in Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Calgary, and in England and Japan. It also collaborates with other theatres, including Young People’s Theatre, Manitoba Theatre for Young People, Theatre Direct, Roseneath Theatre, Youtheatre, Puppetmongers, Theatre Orangeville, and Theatre Aquarius.

Carousel Players performs in the historic Courthouse in downtown St. Catharines, and in the Sullivan Mahoney Courthouse Theatre (120 seats). It also operates an annual summer theatre school in six different camps, including puppetry, musical theatre, and the Shaw Acting Intensive for Youth (with the Shaw Festival).

The Company’s shows have been nominated fourteen times for Dora Mavor Moore Awards for Outstanding Theatre for Young Audiences, and received Dora Awards for Dinosaurs & All the Rubbish in 1993 and Patty’s Cake in 2003. It has also received the 2003 Canada Council for the Arts Theatre for Young Audiences Prize for Patty’s Cake, the Great Grants Award from Ontario Trillium Foundation in 2005, the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for the Arts in 1997, and the Trillium Innovation in the Arts Award for its Niagara Artists in the Classroom program in 2009.

Artistic directors of the company have included Duncan McGregor (1980 to 1990), Pierre Tetrault (1990 to 1998), Kim Selody (1998 to 2006), Pablo Felices-Luna (2007-2014), and Jessica Carmichael. The current artistic director is Monica Dufault.

Productions include Boys, Girls, and Other Mythological Creatures by Mark Crawford (2017) which calls for a public celebration of difference with the help of a monster in the basement; The Adventures of Mary Jane Mosquito by Tomson Highway; and Lig and Bittle by Elyne Quan and Jared Matsunaga Turnbull.

Web site: www.carouselplayers.com

Last updated 2021-02-05