Arts and Entertainment

The Foster Festival celebrates 10th anniversary

July 10, 2025   ·   0 Comments

By Constance Scrafield 

How does a young actress with the idea of creating a theatre festival named after a Canadian playwright make that happen? She keeps thinking about it until she manages it. At least that is how Emily Oriold, artistic director and founder of the Foster Festival, told the Citizen she began it in a recent telephone interview. 

She said, “It wasn’t that difficult. Norm was honoured, but he said, ‘good luck.’ He offered his time, coming in person, although he lives in Fredericton. Once the pandemic started, he hasn’t been able to come as much.

“He was really, honoured.” 

Oriold said her motive for starting a festival for a living Canadian playwright was because traditionally, Canadians are not good at supporting their own artists.

Humorously, her theory was, “We had a festival British guy and then a dead Irish guy and I thought – what about a living Canadian guy?”

People had been producing Foster’s plays; Oriold and Patricia Vanstone, her co-founder, wanted to do this full time: honour Canadian success. Once they founded the festival, Foster was awarded the Order of Canada and the Key to the City of St. Catharines, which is the home of the Foster Festival.

When they started the festival, Foster had written 55 plays, and he has now completed 80 plays. The festival’s organizers look to invest in Canadian work and the development of Canadian playwrights.

“Canadians are very good at comedy,” was Oriold’s comment. 

How it really happened was a question that brought the delightful history. Oriold was living in a bachelor apartment as a young actor and thought a Foster Festival was a good idea even then.

In 1997, as her story goes, “I went to the Blythe Festival – that was where I grew up – they did the Melville Boys, by Foster. I was 19 years old and I fell in love with his stuff.

“Fast forward but I was so young I didn’t know how to begin. I created a logo and held on to it for 10 years. I learned how to be an administrator.”

The day he arrived, when Oriold knew: “It’s time, summer 2014. I was preparing to go to Summerside PEI to be in The Battle of Stompin’ Tom…”

Instead, she started talking to producers and wrote to Foster, who invited her to meet him in Morrisburg, where he sanctioned the idea and “then, he got involved.”

From the summer, 2014 to December 2014, they worked with the executive of the First Ontario Performing Arts Festival and “We did a deal.” Over the past 10 years, a sincere friendship has grown, “I’ve come to care for him,” she said.

The years have seen a variation in venues for the festival, but consistency in the message of producing Foster plays and encouraging Canadian talent.

Originally, performances were staged at the First Ontario Arts Centre in St. Catharines, but after the pandemic ended. Foster wrote about golf, and they brought the play to a golf course. A story in a rural area was held in a barn.

In 2022, the Foster Festival premiered Foster’s play “1812,” about two very small towns on either side of the border, friends and neighbours who were told that they were now at war but decided they were not going to fight. The play was staged as an open-air production at Fort George, Niagara-on-the-Lake. 

David Nairn, then artistic director of Theatre Orangeville, starred in the play as Wallace Evens, the Mayor of St. Stephen, the Canadian town of the story.

Foster Festival plays have been performed at the Mandeville Theatre and St. Catharines. The audience loves the space and the seats but it is a school, so it’s hard during school days.

What is next for the Foster Festival is to discover “what it would mean to get a place of our own,” Oriold considered the need. “If we put a show in November, run our own box office from an office in downtown St Catharines, that would be ideal, to greet patrons at the theatre. We are having conversations now.”

“We are very similar to Theatre Orangeville, not just because we produce Norm’s plays but with similar ideals in how we want to engage. David [Nairn] with his leadership feels theatre is a service to the community. A place of gathering and human connection, lifting people spirits. Beckie Morris [project manager for Theatre Orangeville] designs for us; there has been a good partnership happening,” adding that she has also acted at Theatre Orangeville.

The second annual Fostered Playwrights was held in March and is meant for emerging and established playwrights to create plays that have “humour with heart.”

From Oriold, “It is rare they get that time in a theatre. We workshop new plays every two years. This is our commitment to Canadian talent. And we continue to seek funding to support it.” 

New plays are workshopped, and eight are chosen, professionally directed and performed as readings for audiences to attend. 

The Foster Festival’s 2025 Mainstage Season shows are being performed at the Mandeville Theatre on Ridley Road with two Foster Classics and two World Premiers over July and August, and November and December. Oct. 2 to 5 is a special event of Foster’s play, “The Stakeout at Old Pelham Town Hall, Fenwick.”

Located in the Niagara region, St. Catharines is an easy day trip to enjoy a Norm Foster show with matinees from Wednesday to Sunday. Evening shows are on from Wednesday to Saturday.

For details and to purchase tickets, go to www.fosterfestival.com

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