The Time Capsule puts Hamilton at centre stage

Production that will launch Theatre Aquarius’s 52 season on Oct. 1 is set in our city and explores just what makes this city tick through five flawed people stuck in a church basement.

When The Time Capsule opens the upcoming season at Theatre Aquarius, expect to see Hamilton unapologetically front and centre in every way possible. 

The action takes place in a church basement in the city, where a handful of people get together to talk about what should be included in a time capsule for the city. Suffice it to say that historical artifacts take a backseat when things go awry and the group must hunker down and wait out a snowstorm.

According to the notes on the Theatre Aquarius website: “What starts as a simple time capsule project turns into a riotous ride of confessions, clashes, and unexpected connections. Think Schitt’s Creek meets Welcome Back, Kotter – a feel-good, female-forward story about friendship, second chances, and finding meaning in the most unexpected places.”

The play’s genesis began about a decade ago when Gil Garratt, artistic director of the Blyth Festival, asked playwright Matt Murray if he would be willing to write a play about his hometown of Sarnia. 

“And so really, from there what I leaned into was how do I create something that celebrates these mid-sized cities that everybody knows by name but nothing else?” says Murray.

The result was Chronicles of Sarnia, which debuted at Blyth in 2023. 

When Theatre Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore expressed interest in bringing the play to Hamilton, Murray was immediately intrigued by the possibility of relocating the setting. 

“The origin of the whole thing was a love letter to Sarnia, my hometown,” he says. “But although Hamilton and Sarnia may be different in scale and size, I think Sarnia is misunderstood and underappreciated, much like Hamilton.”

Though he makes his home in Toronto now, Murray says he remains attached to his hometown. 

“When you’re from a place like that, there's such a protectiveness of it. I find that me and my friends from home, we can shit all over Sarnia, and we can make Sarnia jokes, but it's like, god help somebody else who says it's a shithole. It's like, all of a sudden we all get our backs up.”

Sarnians, he says, will immediately point out that golfer Mike Weir and actor Susan Clark hail from Sarnia. 

“I feel like Hamilton is very similar in lauding celebrities and telling the stories about the place to, I think, validate its importance. And, you know, we're all very proud of where we're from.”

Moore, who grew up in Thunder Bay, has lived in Toronto and moved to Hamilton’s North End several years ago, says that universality appealed to her when she saw Murray’s play at Blyth. 

“I felt like I knew those characters. The play flew by, and I couldn't believe it was over, because I felt like I knew the characters so well, and then we talked about it all the way home. Like all the way back, we chatted and chatted and chatted about it, and I thought it's such a deceptively simple play. Like, you think it's just this comedy and you're laughing through it. But two days later I would be thinking about something else, you know, and I'd call Matt, and I'd be like, the other thing I like about your show is this …” she says.

“The beauty and the genius of Matt is that you're so busy laughing that you don't realize, you don't realize the impact and how profound what Matt's saying is, until you're reflecting on it.”

With The Time Capsule (which clearly required a new name when it moved out of Sarnia), which Moore is directing, the two have worked through the new setting, but also evolution of characters and deeper exploration of themes. 

“Mary Francis is so smart, dramaturgically,” says Murray. “She has been really great about saying I think you can lean in here. I think there's a bigger play here. I think there's more to say.”

Moore says she jumped at the chance to work with Murray again. 

“Matt's one of my favourite collaborators on the planet. We've been collaborators now for almost 10 years,” says Moore.

“And just nobody makes me laugh the way Matt does. And getting to work on something new with Matt, there's no better place to be. There's such mutual respect. And I'm so artistically satisfied when I work with Matt, because we challenge each other. We don't say yes to each other easily. We sort of knock everything about until we come to consensus, and that's a really exciting place to be.” 

And once The Time Capsule opens, Murray and Moore will go right into rehearsals for the Panto show at the Canadian Stage, a new adaptation of Robin Hood. Plus, they continue to fine tune Maggie together, which Murray wrote and Moore directed in its world premiere at Aquarius. It’s a project they’ve shared for close to a decade.

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The thrill of hearing about Hamilton for hometown audiences will come from the shared familiarity, says Murray.  

“It's like going to a concert. We're all waiting to hear the songs we know, right? We might love the new album, but it's like, bring on the hits.” 

On a deeper level, audiences will enjoy exploring the flawed humanity of each character, how each embodies Hamilton, and how their city has shaped them. 

While the play is a comedy, it’s a story that surprises as it unwinds, underpinned by serious ideas about judgement, relationships between women, the struggles people bear, and the legacies we leave. 

“Whether your name is on a building or your name is on a gravestone or no one remembers your name, your life matters, and your story matters, and our stories collectively are what really imbue the places that we love with what they are, and it is about the individual and also their collective connection,” says Murray.

Moore and Murray are thrilled that Deborah Drakeford, who lived in Hamilton as a teen, will play the role of Erin, the force of nature who is organizing the time capsule for the city. Other cast members are Richard Alan Campbell, Richard Young, Lorna Wilson and Stephanie Sy.

“This is really a terrific cast and we were looking for a specific quality in all of them,” says Murray. “One, they had to be funny, yes. But two, they had to feel like they were from the place the play was set in, which is a taller order, a taller order than you'd think. You know, there's a groundedness and a little bit of an edge, a little bit of a backbone, to Hamiltonians.”

Moore says each actor brings an accessibility and humanity to their roles. 

“I feel like audiences want to laugh, they want to be entertained. They don't want to be lectured.  The world is a hard enough place right now, but they also don't want to be spoon fed. They still want substance. So they don't want empty calories, you know. They want something smart and funny that's going to make them think, but it's also going to be entertaining. And I feel like this combination of cast, I just feel like these are really smart, sexy performers, who will bring Matt's material to life in a really exciting way.”

Drakeford says the character of Erin, a tightly wound, retirement-age teacher, really spoke to her.

“Between acting jobs, I'm a supply teacher for the Toronto board, so I have a real connection with Erin. She has this strong desire to make a difference and to feel that she hasn't made a difference, I find so heartbreaking and beautiful. Now she's heading up this time capsule thing, and she's still working so hard to make sure that she is remembered. She really wants to feel like she's made a contribution.”

Drakeford, who was born in England and then lived in Montreal and northern Ontario, attended Sherwood Secondary School for Grade 12 and 13. One of her sisters continues to live in Hamilton, while Drakeford left for university and her acting career. 

“I’m going to stay with my sister during the play’s run and I’m just really excited for her to see those Hamilton moments,” she says.

“I'm excited to be part of the process of bringing that story to a Hamilton audience, and to talk about familiar places. This is a Hamilton story but it’s kind of a universal story, too.”

These days, Drakeford has many good friends, fellow artists, who live in Hamilton. 

“I can't wait, actually, to spend some time there again and hang out with all those creative people. It’s such a bustling, artistic city.”

Drakeford has another connection to the setting of The Time Capsule. Her father was a United Church minister and he led the congregation at St. John's United Church on East 38th Street and Queensdale Avenue on the central Mountain.

“When I first read the script, I went, ‘OK, hang on.’ She's a woman of a certain age. She has been at her craft for 35 years. She is in a church basement. She is a teacher. She’s got this great artistic soul that wants to have meaning. I just went, ‘OK, Deb, meet Erin. Erin, meet Deb. Yeah, you're going to do it.’”

Though Drakeford’s theatre credits are many, this will be her first time on the main stage at Theatre Aquarius. Her only other appearance there was in the studio theatre in Midnight Madness in 1994. 

“I love being an actor. I love being a theatre actor for sure, and I've had a lovely, lovely career. But being able to work a new script is particularly delicious. It’s a really special thing. Mary Francis is a very fine dramaturge. And Matt’s work is just full of so much heart.” 

Once Moore decided to bring The Time Capsule to Hamilton, she began to think about how a play with five people stuck in a church basement could play on the big stage at Theatre Aquarius. The stage design is in the hands of Robin Fisher, a Hamilton-based designer who will make her debut at Aquarius with this play. 

Fisher, who grew up in Edmonton and then Kingston, moved to the Parkdale and Queenston area of east Hamilton four years ago. She’s had a 25-year career in theatre after completing the costume studies program at Dalhousie University. From there, she attended the National Theatre School of Canada in Montreal. There, she learned to be a set designer.

She started talking with the folks at Theatre Aquarius about The Time Capsule last fall and was immediately excited to be involved. She’s read the script at least five times and with each read, comes a deeper dive into the shape of the space, what set pieces are needed, and how actors will move in and out of the space.

From there, she collected images of church basements all across Hamilton. 

“I really wanted to include the red brick that is so prominent around town. We’ve created a smaller proscenium. The proscenium is the stage opening, because the Theatre Aquarius main stage is quite wide, so we just sort of cropped it in, and we integrated some of that red brick, which is really exciting.”

The set has to give a sense of a large space, while also ensuring a small cast doesn’t get lost on stage. Fisher’s design includes an angled ceiling with beams and high windows to give the sense of being below grade. 

Once Moore approved the design, it went to the theatre’s production manager, carpenters, scenic artists and props team to review for scale, scope and budget. There are conversations and revisions. 

Building began weeks before the cast arrives to start rehearsals in the first week of September. 

Fisher has relished working on a show in the city in which she lives. It’s given her the luxury of face-to-face meetings, instead of emails and Zoom calls. 

“I've been dying to do a show while I'm at home. So the beautiful thing about working from home is that if something's come up, or they just need you to pop in and have a look at something, you can do that. And you’re not having to sort out life out of a suitcase.”

Fisher loves the collaborative aspect of theatre and working with others around how to achieve a certain look or how to make effects happen. “You just want to try to create something that embodies the storytelling and the work that the playwright has done and the work that the director wants to do. And then the actors come in, and they bring their part of the puzzle as well and how they want to create and add to that storytelling as well.” 

When we speak, rehearsals are several weeks away and Fisher is looking forward to being in a room with the cast and creative team. 

“We’re just going to have a really good time. We're just going to be laughing all the time, you know, talking about Hamilton. What's quintessential Hamilton? What is a Hamiltonian? How do we integrate all of that? And it's really exciting to be able to lend my own experience from having been here and meeting a lot of people in the community.”

Moore says this is the right time to stage a play set in Hamilton. 

“I feel like this play, in this moment right now, where there is this wonderful sense of Hamilton pride, and there's so much happening in terms of the revitalization of downtown, I feel like the timing is right for this show to be done here.”

The Time Capsule will be a great date night or girls’ night out show, says Moore. And even the music played at pre-show and intermission will be that of local artists. 

“So anywhere we can incorporate Hamilton, we're going to try. And if there's special costuming, we're going to try to make sure it's Hamilton designers.”

Planning a theatre season is managing something of a Jenga puzzle of conflicting schedules, practical considerations about building timelines, and thinking about audience appetites, says Moore. Launching Theatre Aquarius’s 52nd season with The Time Capsule just made sense.

“It’s nice to start the season with something fun, something uplifting. A comedy at that time of year feels good. I wanted to start with something new and that this is Canadian was perfect … This feels like a really fun, strong way to start the season and it will be this proud Hamilton moment.”

Laughter and escapism are needed in these fraught times, says Murray. “And I think this show and the production and the design is spectacular, and everyone working on it just really wants to create something that people are going to just have a blast watching. And that's the gift we can be giving back as theatre creators right now.”

The season continues with the blockbuster holiday show Frozen, The Broadway Musical, Boom X, Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express, and concludes with the world premiere of It’s a Good Life If You Don’t Weaken, which features the iconic music of The Tragically Hip. It will be another world premiere at Theatre Aquarius.