​It all began 26 years ago, in the living room of Melissa Stephens and Craig Saunders. Seventeen theatre enthusiasts from the Highlands Community crowded into the over-filled room to create a theatre company that was soon to be called Highlands Summer Festival.

In the late spring of 1999, the former girls’ gymnasium at the Haliburton Highlands High School had been transformed into a performance space with a 24 foot wide proscenium stage, dressing rooms, a green room, a tech booth at the back and 226 raked seats. The official opening of the newly refurbished Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavilion was held and over 200 participants from a variety of performing arts groups took to the stage to delight of their family,  neighbours and friends. It was a three-performance gala event, with all the pomp and formality the opening of a new theatre deserved. 

After the dust had settled, Curtis Eastmure and Heather Scully presented four performances of Neil Simon’s Same Time Next Year. Then, just silence.

The group gathered that summer and agreed, if they didn’t do something in that space, someone else, possibly from outside the community, would. Having fought long and hard for the conversion, encouraging fund raising and grant applications, each of the partners contributed $200 and pledged to mount the first season of the Highlands Summer Festival in the summer of 2000. And that is how the whole thing started.

​Highlands Summer Festival operated as a partnership which included the founders sharing responsibilities for each season, from show selection through to final curtain, featuring local talent. In 2007 it was decided to dissolve the partnership and created a charitable, not for profit theatre company under the same name, Highlands Summer Festival.
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Since then the Festival has grown, presenting musicals, dramas and comedies as well as first class performers from across Ontario, to the delight of our faithful patrons. 

While Highlands Summer Festival lost two seasons to the COVID restrictions, the counting continued. The company was ready to open the curtains each year, but the theatre was off-limits. Like all live theatre companies, the company took a hit during the pandemic and once restrictions were lifted our patrons returned and Highlands Summer Festival was back.

Most recently, the long-serving Artistic Producer, Scot Denton, in that position since 2007, stepped down. We were fortunate that Douglas “Dougie” Walker a veteran of three Festival productions and countless professional appearances, moved to our community and accepted the position.

As we get ready celebrate the twenty-fifth season, those involved with the Highlands Summer Festival look back with pride at what has been accomplished and look forward to the next quarter century with great anticipation. Thanks to the many people who made the magic happen, our sponsors, donors and patrons who supported us through the past quarter century.

It is common knowledge that one should wish an actor “break a leg” for a great performance; to wish an actor “good luck” is considered to be bad luck!  The origin of this maudlin greeting, first recorded in print in the early 1920s, is a little vague. 
 
Of course, theatre ghosts are always a consideration; it was thought that mischievous theatre ghosts would wreak havoc on good wishes and make the opposite happen.   
 
The most common theory suggests that ‘leg’ refers not to the actor but to the short curtains that hide the backstage from the audience; breaking a leg means the actor has stepped from the wings into the spotlight.  In Vaudeville companies, only those actors who actually stepped on stage got paid so perhaps break a leg was a simple wish that an actor would get paid.
 
Other ideas suggest that the manner in which the audience showed appreciation for the performance is responsible for the phrase.  In ancient Greece the audience stomped their feet and during Elizabethan times, the audience would bang their chairs on the ground.  
 
And still others say that bowing – placing one leg behind the other and bending the front leg, thus breaking the line of the leg as viewed by an audience – is the reason for the phrase.
 
There are, of course, more theories, but the point remains, please wish our actors ‘break a leg’ and not good luck!

​It is said that the actor standing closest to the shortest of a trio of lit candles on stage must beware; they will be the first to die.  For this reason, even today, it is rare to see a trio of candles lit on stage.  As with most theatrical superstitions, this one can be traced back centuries.  While it is uncertain why this superstition weirdly singles out the actor standing closest to the shortest candle, the historical concern for lighting a bunch of candles in a theatre likely had a solid basis in the fear of burning down the theatre.   Over the years, hundreds of theatres have burned to the ground, some theatres numerous times in the same location.  Perhaps, given the abundance of theatre ghosts, this superstition is understandable. 

​Giving flowers in appreciation or congratulations is one of the greatest and best-known traditions of the theatre. This common place gesture, like much about the theatre, has specific rules so as not to jinx a performance.

Flowers should be presented to an actor only after a performance and, where possible, in front of the audience. Historically, flowers were thrown to the stage when the actors took their final bows. It is considered by theatre folk to be bad luck to give flowers prior to the performance as it was, and still is, thought that the actors would not perform at their best if they receive their reward prior to the performance.

Bouquets of roses are the traditional choice, however irises (admiration), carnations (respect & pride) and lilies (hopes and dreams) are happily received. 

On closing night, it is considered good luck for actors to present their director with flowers, after the performance of course. Here is where it gets a little weird - the bouquet must be one stolen from a graveyard, a macabre symbolic gesture to denote the end of a production. Theatre folk love their symbolism. It is said that this tradition likely originated with actors, historically poorly paid, that wished to gain favour with the director for the next audition.

Press Release
January 28, 2022                     
For Immediate Release


The Highlands Summer Festival is holding auditions for a variety of roles still open for this coming season. The local theatre company has a mandate to foster the growth of live theatre talent in our community. This could be the call you have been waiting for.

Auditions will be held February 26 and 27 at the Haliburton United Church. An earlier audition call has been postponed in anticipation that eased Covid restrictions will make the process easier to navigate. 

“We have openings in all three shows scheduled for this summer,” Artistic Producer Scot Denton said. “That includes: the musical, The Sound of Music; the comedy, The Importance of Being Earnest; and the one person show, Every Brilliant Thing. See list below for details of roles still available.

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​Shakespeare’s Macbeth, probably one of the most famous theatrical productions, is believed by theater people to be the most cursed.  Just saying “Macbeth” in a theatre is thought to invoke the curse, so the play is general referred to as “The Scottish Play” to avoid disaster.  Except during the actual performance of the play, actors avoid quoting lines from the play, and in particular, the Witches incantations.  
 
Legend has it that a curse was set upon the play by a coven of witches who were angry that Shakespeare used an actual spell in the play – “Double, double toil and trouble/Fire burn and cauldron bubble…”.  Some believe that the play was considered cursed as it was so often associated with theatres going out of business; many theatres produced the popular play to restore their prosperity but could not meet the high production costs.  And, of course, the more practical view that any play running for more than 400 years is sure to have its share of misfortune.
 
The play’s saga of bad luck dates back to its very first performance (circa 1606) when the actor playing Lady Macbeth died suddenly and Shakespeare was forced to take his place on stage.  Other reports of the curse include the death of an actor on stage in Amsterdam in the 17th century when a prop dagger was replaced with a real dagger.  Productions of the play have incited audience riots, most famously in New York in 1849 when a riot turned violent leaving 22 dead and more than 100 injured.
 
Fortunately, there is an antidote.  The speaker of the name must leave the theatre building, perform a cleansing ritual - spin around three times, spit, curse - and then knock to be allowed back in.  A variation on this ritual, requires the recitation of a line from a different Shakespeare play in place of the curse.
 
Outside the theatre and after the performance, the name may be spoken.  It is interesting to note that the ‘cursed line’ from the witch’s incantation is thought to be one of the most cited line from Shakespeare’s plays.

Theatre folk are, for the most part, a very superstitious lot; they will happily admit it.   While many of their superstitions have their origins in reality, they hold fast long after they are necessary.   Such is the case with not whistling in the theatre.
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This superstition likely dates back to before the 17th century when out-of-work sailors, because of their expertise with ropes and knots, were hired to manage the fly loft – the large space above the stage into which backdrops and set pieces are hoisted out of sight or from which are dropped into place on the stage.  The fly loft is managed using a system of rope lines, pulleys and counterweights.  A system of whistles, much like that on a sailing ship, was used to signal the sailors to raise and lower specific pieces.  Reasonably, casual whistling was banned in theatres to prevent it being accidently interpreted as a fly loft command, avoiding a weighty set piece being dropped on an actor’s head. 
 
Today, the stage manager simple whispers into her radio headset and backdrops and set pieces glide quietly down on electric winches.  

And yet, to this day, it remains bad luck to whistle in a theatre!

Well, here we are…..a New Year and an old contest about to fold up our photos and go home. It all began back in May 2020 and has continued for 19 contests. Over the year and a half we have given away 36 tickets to one of the dynamic summer theatre company in Southern Ontario, with one more grand prize to give away….two season passes for the 2022 season. So as the curtain closes on the Photo Contest it rises with renewed optimism that this year will see live theatre once again on the Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavilion. 

Contest #19 showed the cast of the 2019 production of Mary Poppins singing the never to be forgotten Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

The winner of Contest # 19 - two season passes -  is Laura Atkinson.  

But before we go, we like to say thank you everyone for playing the game. We know you enjoyed seeing the pictures from the 20 seasons of Highlands Summer Festival productions. We look forward to seeing you this summer at the theatre where we can make more memories again!

A ghost light is typically a bare light bulb on a plain pole that illuminates the stage when the theatre is not in use.  The obvious reason for a ghost light is safety; the ghost light sufficiently illuminates the stage so that the edge of the stage and set pieces may be avoided by the first and last cast or crew member on stage.  Legend has it that a burglar successfully sued a theatre company when he broke his leg falling into the orchestra pit.   That said, this is theatre and there must be drama!  Theatrical performances are surrounded by a very superstitious culture and few theatre people would deny the existence of theatre ghosts.
 
Ghost lights date back to the time of Shakespeare, and likely before that. Legend tells us that a candle would be left burning on the stage to dispel the ghosts of past performances, especially if the performance had gone badly.  While some now say the ghost lights scare away the ghosts, others argue that the lights allow the ghosts to perform at night when the theatre is empty.  To this day, many theatres reserve two seats for the ghosts for every performance and two seats remain bolted in the open position for the ghosts in a famous London theatre.

During the COVID pandemic, ghost lights saw a resurgence as theatres around the globe turned on ghost lights, a symbolic glimmer of hope that theatres would not remain dark. They were the sole illumination of so many stages for almost two years.
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Today, ghost lights are being extinguished as the stage lights come up.  The Highlands Summer Festival is delighted to be able to bring up the stage lights in the Northern Lights Performing Arts Pavilion this summer for our exceptional 2022 season. 

​The Highlands Summer Festival will kick off the 2022 theatre season this coming July with a world famous Richard Rodger and Oscar Hammerstein musical. The announcement of the new season was made by Artistic Producer Scot Denton and Festival President Brian Kipping.

“It will be an exciting year for the Festival,” Denton said in making the announcement. “The Highlands Summer Festival will be celebrating its return to the stage leading off with the world’s favourite Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. The Sound of Music will open on Monday, July 4 for ten performances, including three matinees.  Festival President Kipping added, “We are so excited to finally be presenting the Season we promised you before our theatre, and the world for that matter, went dark!  We knew from your enthusiastic response to the announcement in 2019 that we should make every effort to bring that Season to you and we have.”
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At the Highlands Summer Festival we have been making memories for 20 years. We are looking forward to making them for many more seasons to come. We invite you to have a look back at some of our favourite moments – we hope this brings back memories of your favourite shows.  We’re looking forward to creating many more memories for you as soon as we can. Until then, please share this with someone who might enjoy it. And let us know about your favourites.

Typically, at this time of the year, Highlands Summer Festival is proudly announcing next year’s season.  As you know, this has not been a usual year, and so our volunteer appreciation and season announcement at McKeck’s has not taken place. The board of directors regrets missing this opportunity to meet with and thank our many volunteers, who are such a vital part of the Highlands Summer Festival.  We also missed the excitement and anticipation that accompanied Artistic Producer Scot Denton's  announcement of the details of the upcoming season.