Frost Bites festival will warm up two winter weekends

Hamilton Theatre Festival Company’s 10-year-old event will feature two weekends of theatre, family activities, workshops and markets. Frost Bites runs Feb. 27 to March 1 and March 6 to 8. 

It’s been 10 years since Frost Bites first warmed up the dead of winter in Hamilton with storytelling, family fun, and intimate performances in “nooks and crannies” of one of the city’s most beloved arts venues.

And Frost Bites is back this year for two weekends of programming, including new works at Theatre Aquarius and family activities at the Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre during the first weekend, and immersive performances at the historic Staircase Theatre + Lounge for the second weekend.

“This our most exciting year yet, as we bring together all the elements that have made Frost Bites one of Hamilton’s most anticipated winter traditions,” said Donna-Michelle St. Bernard, festival coordinator at the Hamilton Festival Theatre Company (HFTco).

Frost Bites was first staged in the Cotton Factory in 2016, then it moved to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, then to New Vision Church. It’s also been staged at Westinghouse HQ and the Hamilton Waterfront Trust building at Pier 8.

“They were finding new places to activate each year, and then the pandemic hit, and it kind of got reimagined,” says Christopher Stanton, executive director at HFTco.  

“The first kind of reborn Frost Bites was 2023, where we introduced the Bernie Morelli family programming. There was a bus tour. There was some stuff at Theatre Aquarius. 2024 it was just the family programming. In 2025, we just did a one-night double header, at Hamilton Artists Inc.”

For this year’s festival, the HFTco team decided to build on requests to return to site-specific programming.

“And so that's where this two-week multi-format festival came from. So it's a bit of an experiment. We're trying to take the best things of Frost Bites past and put it all together in one beautiful two-week package.”

Frost Bites is different from HFTco’s signature event, The Hamilton Fringe Festival, in a few big ways. Most obviously, Frost Bites is a much smaller event set during the frigid winter, while the Fringe is a 12-day summer festival featuring 400 performances. The winter festival features entirely local writers and artists, while Fringe performers come from across Canada and around the world. But perhaps more importantly, Frost Bites is curated. Performers apply to be included and are selected by a jury.

Fringe is an entirely lottery-based selection and performances are staged at participating venues on a first-come, first-serve model.

The selection committee had close to 40 local submissions for eight slots in Frost Bites says Stanton.

“We were excited … there is interest, there is talent. There's some creative sons of bitches in this town.”

The festival opens at Theatre Aquarius with three performances of Land, Place, Home, a community-created performance shaped by the lived experiences of newcomers, immigrants, and refugees. Through movement, voice, and story, Land, Place, Home asks what home means in unfamiliar places, and how relationships to land are carried across borders and generations.

Directed by Ahmad Meree and featuring Elie Assaf, Wend Yasen, and Pravash Pandey, the piece is co-produced by HFTco, Open Heart Arts, and Abrar Mental Health & Trauma Services.

The opening weekend of Frost Bites will also include two performances of The Three Little Pigs: A Musical for the Whole Family! by Enchantment Theatre at Theatre Aquarius Studio. A farmstead adventure where young sow sisters navigate their unique strengths and problem-solving styles to build a house together, The Three Little Pigs is suitable for kids ages 2-8 but fun forall ages. The show features original and classic folk songs, puppets, dances, andaudience participation.

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Theatre Aquarius will also host several professional development initiatives and exciting works-in-progress, including its own Brave New Works Festival, happening in parallel with Frost Bites.

“It’s a true pleasure to welcome the opening weekend of Frost Bites to Theatre Aquarius alongside our annual Brave New Works Festival,” said Mary Francis Moore, artistic director of Theatre Aquarius. “Bringing these festivals together lets the whole building come alive as audiences move through it and discover new work, while celebrating bold new voices and the artists creating in every corner of the theatre.”

At the Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre, festival-goers can take in free workshops, storytelling and art, and skating activities, including a learn to skate presentation, Matrix Synchronized Skaters. and the DJ Family Skate Party hosted by local queer social organizers Fruit Salad, an on-ice dance party with fierce and frosty hits from DJ Savage Good.

The interactive workshops will include workshops on zine and booklet making, and two days of lantern-making workshops by Shadowland Theatre, with participants creating oiled paper lanterns. Everyone is invited to join the illuminated procession of light through the community on March 1 at 6 p.m.

There will also be an interactive drum circle by Auntie Social Singers, and Take A Poem Leave A Poem by gritLIT, where participants can take a poem, leave a poem, or learn how to bind poems into a signature mini-booklet.

On Feb. 28, there will also be a Community Commons Ideas & Resource Marketplace at Bernie Morelli, which offers a chance to learn about the services and activities of local businesses, creatives, and community organizations. Frost Bites expands to L’Arche Hamilton’s Inclusion Coffeehouse on March 1, where there will be an Indigenous Marketplace, featuring traditional craft and beadwork, contemporary jewellery and functional gift items made by local Indigenous makers, artists, and entrepreneurs.

The second weekend of Frost Bites, March 6 to 8, is all staged in The Staircase.

“We have eight site-specific performances going on. Some are in the theatre spaces, but mostly in the weird nooks and crannies of the building,” said Stanton. “There will also be interlude pieces happening in the Lounge, and one performance, set in a speakeasy has audiences coming in the back door. It really is jam-packed.”

Staging within The Staircase means taking advantage of the tight spaces and opportunities to have one show transition right into another, he says.

“That takes a certain kind of artistic collaborator to be part of that. So it's a group full of, not only just incredible world-class talents making this work in these weird little spaces, but just a good group of humanity as well.”

Theatrical works will be presented by: Devin Bateson (A Series Of Forms You Are Required To Fill Out); Fareh Malik Poetry (Benchmarks), Mandy Roveda (Proof), SPICEBOX (How to Cook like a Starving Artist), Tapestry Theatre Collective (The Table Knows Our Name); Transgendantco. Wherefore (Diana?), Eric Cinnsealach (Romeo & Juliet: Not Gnomeo & Juliet), Ghosts Are Everywhere (The Paranormal Parlour LIVE), Anna Chatterton (A Ton of Chatter); Falen Johnson (Meisner Technique), Chidera Ikewibe/CHI*IKE (The Job Interview), and Triple Futures (Mahi on the Mountain), as well as Indigenous short films from Bawaadan Collective.

NEED TO KNOW

Frost Bites
Hamilton Festival Theatre Company
Feb. 27 to March 1, and March 6 to 8
Theatre Aquarius, 190 King William St.
Bernie Morelli Recreation Centre, 876 Cannon St. E.
The Staircase Theatre + Lounge, 27 Dundurn St. N.
Find tickets and more details here.