Ghosts of My House Digital Program

HERE FOR NOW THEATRE

July 8 - 19, 2026

WORLD PREMIERE www.herefornowtheatre.com 519.272.HFNT (4368)

WELCOME TO OUR 2026 SEASON I am thrilled to As the Executive welcome you to Director of Here an extraordinary For Now year of theatre.

Theatre, I am so Our 2026 season genuinely celebrates excited to be on curiosity, this journey with you. I have sat where you are courage, and the exhilarating sitting now, watching this artistry of taking bold creative company create something truly leaps. Each play in this year’s special, and I have felt the magic lineup is united by fearless that unfolds on this stage. imagination. These remarkable playwrights embrace risk in ways that feel fresh, daring, and deeply Together, we will continue our commitment to great actors, resonant. Their stories challenge thoughtful directors, strong expectations and invite us to see scripts, and performances that the world - and ourselves - from move us, now within this new perspectives. beautifully re-configured, intimate thrust space that brings As a company devoted to artists and audiences closer than developing new work, we believe ever before. theatre should be alive with possibility: a space where Thank you for believing in this work. Your support has made all boundaries are pushed, of this possible. With all of us narratives are expanded, and gathered here, sharing this space discovery happens night after night. This season embodies that and this moment, I know we will continue to create bold, powerful spirit. theatre in the Rose McQueen Performance Space, work that is I cannot wait to share these alive, daring, and deeply human. powerful stories with you.

Welcome to 2026.

Fiona Mongillo Artistic Director

Crystal L. Spicer Executive Director

GHOSTS OF MY HOUSE

by Susanna Fournier Is this a family dinner or a Greek tragedy?

A mother and her three daughters gather to mark the anniversary of a death. But the past has other plans.

Ghosts of My House is a darkly funny exploration of family, grief, memory, and the pressures on modern women to have it all.

Loosely inspired by Agamemnon, this raw, lyrical new work unravels the stories women inherit while also invoking ancient archetypes that refuse to rest.

A Note from the Artistic Director Susanna Fournier, playwright of Ghosts of My House, has spoken about how this play is loosely inspired by the Greek Tragedy Agamemnon, and while that connection isn’t immediately obvious, upon closer inspection you begin to feel it in the emotional architecture of the family. This is a play about what gets passed down - anger, grief, memory, and the lingering presence of a patriarchal figure who is no longer there but still shapes everything.

Susanna is such a special playwright because she’s constantly playing with form. The language moves fluidly between natural conversation and something more heightened and mythic, often in the same breath, and always with surprising humour. It creates a theatrical world that feels both ancient and completely contemporary at once - a family story that somehow carries the echo of something much older underneath it.

Fiona Mongillo Artistic Director Here For Now Theatre

Show Sponsor: Robert Lott and Dr. Anne Robinson Production Supporters: Crystal L. Spicer

CAST & CREATIVE TEAM Cast Laura de Carteret* Mum

Siobhan O’Malley L

Kelly Van der Burg* M

Sarah Wilson* B

Creative Team Susanna Fournier Playwright

Leora Morris Director

Darren Burkett Lighting Designer

Adam Campbell Sound Designer

Ariel Slack Set Designer

Delaney Small* Stage Manager

Sam Snyders Associate Sound Designer

Jennie Wonnacott Costume Designer

Running Time: Approximately 70 minutes, with no intermission Because of the close, immersive nature of our theatre, we’re unable to seat latecomers once the performance has started. For the same reason, we can’t offer re-entry if you step out during the show. We invite you to arrive early, settle in, and enjoy the full experience with us.

For more information about the show and to see production photos scan the QR code:

“Ghosts of My House was developed with support from the Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Arts Council and Canadian Stage. Ghosts of My House received additional development support from and premiered at Here for Now Theatre (Stratford, ON) in July 2026.

Ghosts of My House is produced by permission of the Playwright and Marquis Literary (Colin Rivers) www.MQlit.ca.

Susanna Fournier is a member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada.” *The participation of these Artists is arranged by permission of Canadian Actors’ Equity Association under the provisions of the Dance-Opera-Theatre Policy (DOT).

PLAYWRIGHT’S NOTE Ask a female actor how she feels about ‘available roles’ for women in most stories and she’ll tell you. Ask a female person how she feels about the ‘available roles’ for women in society and she’ll tell you. Ask me, and I’ll write you several plays.

When I write, I’m attempting to create more freedom. This is in direct tension with the ways in which stories, societies, and families expect women to “keep it all together”. We’re told we’re caretakers; that it’s our job to take care of everyone and of the systems around us even if those systems suck. Far too often women are made to feel that if they don’t perform these roles, they have no value. It’s not just men who enforce these expectations, but other women too.

Ghosts of My House asks; what might happen when a woman refuses to take care and play along with broken systems in the world, in her family, and most of all in herself? What happens when we let what’s broken break—if we stop holding on and start letting go?

It might be terrifying. It might be ugly. It might be surprising. It might break our hearts. And yet, it might break us free.

Susanna Fournier Playwright

DIRECTOR’S NOTE The day before our rehearsals began, I had the privilege of seeing Here For Now’s Love Us Most. With humour, cruelty, and tenderness, it captured that 2016 moment when women in the theatre were beginning to publicly name the confines of the systems we were all living inside, the “stories we were caught in”. In many ways, Ghosts of My House feels like a follow-up to the conversation ten years later.

Once we have named the structures, dynamics, behaviours that keep us stuck - then what? There is still so much to rage at, so much to grieve. So how do we transform that rage and grief into something that might release us, nourish us, fertilize us so that we can show up to our lives more fully? If we turn away from the ghosts haunting us—or the people we ourselves have been haunting—how might we “change the story”?

What has been delightful and challenging to discover in rehearsal is the way the play itself keeps transmuting. We never settle inside its rules the frame gets wider, the form unfamiliar. It keeps reminding us that there may be other ways to tell the story, and perhaps more radical ways to live it.

While much of this happens to a group of fictional women in a family home, in Susanna’s writing we are also always, undeniably, here together in this room witnessing not only the fiction, but each other. There is nowhere to hide—for the actors or for the audience. In theatre, when the front of house turns the performance space over to the stage manager, they often say, “The house is yours.” So: the house is yours.

Leora Morris Director

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES DARREN BURKETT - LIGHTING DESIGNER Darren is thrilled to be back for the whole summer season at HFN! Previous Design work: Apples in Winter [Set, Lighting and Costume], Dinner with the Duchess [Set in a co-pro with Crows Theatre], 12 Dinners [Set], Life Without [Set and Costume], The Fox [Set] (Here For Now), Legally Blonde [Set] (Metro Theatre), Wizard of Oz [Set] (Pulse Productions), Something Rotten, Seussical The Musical [Set], Mamma Mia! [Set and Lighting] (Secondary Characters), and multiple set and lighting designs for dance and theatre schools in Vancouver. As an actor, he has worked across the globe. Many thanks to the whole HFN team for the unwavering trust in me, and his family, friends and especially Hunter for their never ending love and support!

ADAM CAMPBELL - SOUND DESIGNER Adam Campbell is a Dora-nominated composer, sound designer and musician.

Originally from Summerside, Prince Edward Island, Adam has worked as sound designer/composer with Stratford Festival, Blyth Festival, Human Body Expression, Tarragon Theatre, Canadian Stage, Here For Now Theatre, Edmonton Opera, Capitol Theatre and more. Adam made his Here For Now debut as sound designer and composer for 2025’s Reproduktion, and is thrilled to join HFN for several productions this season. Adam has toured and performed throughout North America as a percussionist with TorQ Percussion Quartet and Ladom Ensemble, and regularly plays in the pit for musical theatre productions with companies such as Mirvish Productions and Stratford Festival. In 2019, Adam released his debut solo singer-songwriter album, Guess I’m A People Too, featuring a mix of folk, rock and 90’s-tinged original music. Adam currently lives in Stratford, Ontario, with his wife Alice and their cats Ninja and Nazca.

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES LAURA DE CARTERET - MUM A working artist for the past 40 years, Ms. de Carteret has made numerous appearances in feature films, television and performed on stages across the country and abroad.

Selected film and television guest appearances

include: Slo Pitch, Bet, The Boys, Cruel Intentions, Accused, Law and Order Criminal Intent: Toronto, Mrs. America, Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol, Pretty Hard Cases, Y: The Last Man, V Wars, Seed (Canadian Screen Award Nomination – Best Actress in a Comedy), Georgetown, Standoff, Mean Girls.

Stage appearances include: Paul And Linda Plan A Threesome (Here For Now Theatre) The Beauty Queen of Leenane (Neptune), Tout Comme Elle, Hamlet (Dora Nomination– Best Actress), Half Life (Necessary Angel), Sideman (Tarragon).

Ms. de Carteret has narrated documentaries for the CBC and the NFB and has voiced dozens of radio spots and cartoons.

SUSANNA FOURNIER - PLAYWRIGHT Susanna Fournier is an award-winning Canadian theatre-maker and educator. She’s best known for her adventurous performance texts, interdisciplinary productions, and that gig she had in X-Men. Susanna’s company, PARADIGM productions, produced her acclaimed trilogy, The Empire, as a full season of theatre and radio-drama podcast. Her other texts include take rimbaud, PYPER, Next Time I Die, HEART/BODY, Always Still the Dawn, antigone lives*. As an educator, Susanna shapes performance pedagogy and coaches Canada’s next generation of artists. She’s taught at Toronto Metropolitan University, Armstrong Acting Studios, Etobicoke School of the Arts, Randolph College, and Cawthra Park Secondary School. www. susannafournier.com

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES LEORA MORRIS - DIRECTOR Leora is a director/creator who splits her time between Canada and the USA. Her work has been developed or produced at places like the Belfry Theatre, Alliance Theatre, Public Theater, NYU Tisch, Coal Mine Theatre, Olney Theatre Center, and NACL. Previous Canadian projects include The Sound Inside (Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award - Best Director) and Knives in Hens (Coal Mine Theatre), The Philosopher’s Wife by Susanna Fournier, and He Left Quietly by Yaël Farber/Duma Kumalo (2014 SummerWorks Best Production). Leora resides in Vancouver, where she is on faculty at the University of British Columbia. MFA Directing, Yale School of Drama. www.leoramorris.com

SIOBHAN O’MALLEY - L Selected Theatre Credits: May in I Am An Island, Jill Banford in The Fox, Jessica in Spit, Belle in Post Alice, Rory in A Hundred Words for Snow, Rue in Whack! (Here For Now Theatre); Eliza Doolittle in Pygmalion (Guild Festival Theatre); Fanny in Mary of Shanty Bay (Theatre by the Bay); Mary in Mary’s Wedding, Helena in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Festival Players of Prince Edward County); Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing (The SecretShakespeare Series); Catherine Givings in In the Next Room (or The Vibrator Play), Martha in Spring Awakening, Rosalind in As You Like It, and Yelena in Uncle Vanya (The Lir). Training: Honours BA in Acting, The Lir National Academy of Dramatic Art (Trinity College Dublin/RADA). Siobhan is an Artistic Associate and Marketing Coordinator with Here For Now Theatre.

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES ARIEL SLACK - SET DESIGNER Ariel Slack is a multidisciplinary artist who writes, performs, and designs, and is currently Props Buyer at the Stratford Festival. Some theatre companies they have worked for as a set designer include Carousel Theatre, Geekenders, Tumbleweeds Theatre, Ensemble Theatre Company, the frank theatre, and now… Here For Now! Ariel has also been an assistant designer at the Stratford Festival on 5 shows, and was the winner of the 2022 Cultchivating the Fringe Award (Vancouver Fringe Festival) for their one person show How to Believe in Anything. They are a Jessie Award nominee, an Ovation Award winner, and completed their first international tour with Tumbleweeds Theatre's show A Little Green Leaf last fall. Proud associate member of ADC and Studio 58 grad.

See more at: https://arielslack.squarespace.com/

DELANEY SMALL - STAGE MANAGER Credits: Death of a Salesman (Stratford Festival) Octet (Crow's/Soulpepper/Musical Stage), Flex (Crow's/Obsidian Theatre), The Master Plan (Theatre Aquarius/Soulpepper/Crows), Liars at a Funeral (PSFT), Shirley Valentine and Pollyanna (Theatre Aquarius), Mamma Mia and Once (Thousand Islands Playhouse), Jeeves at Sea (Chemainus Theatre), Jenny's House of Joy (Foster Festival), Turn the Page (Sheridan College), An Enemy of the People (Theatre Erindale).

Training: Sheridan College Technical Production Program. She would like to thank her family and friends who have always encouraged her to pursue her passion for theatre!

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES SAM SNYDERS - ASSOCIATE SOUND DESIGNER Sam is an emerging theatre artist from Mitchell, Ontario, glad to be back for his third season at Here For Now. Previously at HFN, Sam stage-managed Apples in Winter, Humour Me, Stick Around, The Saviour, and Paul and Linda Plan a Threesome, and sounddesigned The Rules of Playing Risk. No stranger to the Rose McQueen Stage, Sam also played Aaron in last year's Forget About Tomorrow. Other acting credits include Boris Trigorin in The Seagull (Strands of the Night), Pierre in Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (AUTS McGill), Jason in Medea (Player's Theatre) and Moe in Pomona (Moyse Hall). Sam recently graduated from McGill University with a BA in English: Drama & Theatre. Thank you, always, to his family and friends for their constant support.

KELLY VAN DER BURG - M Selected Credits: I Am An Island (Here For Now Theatre), Buying The Farm (Drayton Entertainment), Perfect Wedding (Upper Canada Playhouse), Renovations for Six (Aquarius), Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Leroy Street Theatre).

Film/TV: Borje (Crave), Heartland (CBC), Designed With Love(Lifetime), Decoys (CBC Gem), Cardinal (Netflix), IT: Chapter 2 (WarnerBros), The Kennedys After Camelot (Reelz), and Canadian Indie Feature Body and Bones. Training: BA in Theatre; Bishop’s University. Graduate of the CBC Actor’s Conservatory. Et cetera: Thank you to Christo, Reaney and Clarence for your support and love

COMPANY BIOGRAPHIES SARAH WILSON - B Sarah was born in Sudbury and now lives in Stratford. Recent acting credits include Fifteen Dogs (Crow’s/NAC) and Pride & Prejudice (Grand). She’s acted in many shows at Soulpepper and performed at Canadian Stage, the Stratford Festival, and several other theatres around the province. Selected writing credits include lyrics for De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail (Soulpepper), lyrics and co-book for ROSE (Soulpepper), and Inside American Pie (Harmony House PEI/Mirvish). She is the recipient of two Dora Awards for Best New Musical, a Dora as part of the ensemble of Soulpepper’s Of Human Bondage, and a Gold Medal at the New York Festival of Radio and Drama. Upcoming: Revolutionary Women in Blues (Writer/Soulpepper), Inside the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald (Writer/Harmony House).

JENNIE WONNACOTT - COSTUME DESIGNER Jennie has enjoyed a two-decade theatre career as a costume cutter and tailor, designer and professor. As a theatre professional that takes joy in the success of her peers, Jennie recently made the switch to a career in art administration to assist in facilitating what artists do best! Select design credits include 12 Angry Men and Steel Magnolias (Drayton Entertainment), and The Magic Flute (UWO). Jennie has surpassed 24 seasons at the Stratford Festival in wardrobe production. She is the 2016 recipient of the Pauline McGibbon award, and recently completed an MA is Arts Leadership from Queens University.

HERE FOR NOW THEATRE Founded in 2012 by Artistic Director Fiona Mongillo, Here For Now Theatre began as a pop-up company in Stratford dedicated to bold contemporary plays and underrepresented voices. With a focus on intimate, actor-driven productions, the company quickly established a reputation for fearless storytelling and powerful performances.

In 2020, while theatres across the country were closed, Here For Now launched a groundbreaking outdoor repertory season on the lawns of The Bruce Hotel. The innovative season drew national attention and critical acclaim, creating a unique gathering place for artists and audiences at a time when live theatre felt especially vital.

In the years that followed, the company continued to grow its national profile, commissioning and developing new plays while building a loyal and expanding audience.

In 2025, Here For Now opened its permanent 60-seat home in the beautifully restored Perth County Registry Office and unveiled the Rose McQueen Performance Space.

Today, Here For Now produces year-round programming that champions daring new work and the immediacy of live performance, bringing audiences together for powerful, intimate theatre in the heart of Stratford.

HERE FOR NOW TEAM Fiona Mongillo | Artistic Director Crystal L. Spicer | Executive Director Marie Farsi | Interim Associate Artistic Director Siobhan O’Malley | Artistic Associate & Marketing Coordinator Adam Steinbach | Technical Coordinator Jocelyn Nicholson | Social Media & Audience Experience Coordinator Mark Uhre | 2026 Season Artwork Sara-Jeanne Hosie | Show Images Ann Baggley | Production Photography Siobhan O’Malley | Promotional Photography Jocelyn Nicholson and Fawn Adair| Trailers Tabworks | Bookkeeping & Payroll

BOARD OF DIRECTORS Susan Moffat | Chair Frances O’Malley | Past Chair Alix Grice | Secretary Laura Dinner | Treasurer Jessica B. Hill | Artist Representative Dr. Patrick Smith

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT We acknowledge that our theatre stands on the traditional territory of the Anishnabek, Haudenosaunee, and Ojibway/Chippewa peoples. We recognize the enduring presence and deep artistic traditions of Indigenous communities in this space and across Turtle Island.

As storytellers, we honour the generations of knowledge keepers, artists, and caretakers who have shaped this land’s history. We commit to listening, learning, and building meaningful relationships as we share and celebrate the power of theatre, and invite you to do the same.

Thank you to our Sponsors Foundation Sponsor The William and Nona Heaslip Foundation Season Sponsors Larry Beare Sylvia Chrominska Bill and Janet L’Heureux Kelly and Scott Morrison Beverly and Douglas Valentine Technical Equipment Sponsor Robert Lott and Dr. Anne Robinson

Workshop and Development Sponsor Bob and Martie Sachs

Limited Engagement Series Sponsor Laura Dinner and Richard Rooney

Ghosts of My House Show Sponsor Robert Lott and Dr. Anne Robinson Ghosts of My House Production Supporters Crystal L. Spicer

Coming up next in 2026 ....

2026 CONTACT US 24 St Andrew St. Stratford, ON www.herefornowtheatre.com 519.272.HFNT (4368) @herefornowtheatreco

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