FOUNDER/ PERFORMER/ WRITER

Based in Hamilton, ON, Sherry Garner is an actor-singer who grew up in small-town Ontario dreaming of a life on the stage. After graduating from The University of Western Ontario and Sheridan College, Sherry has had the great privilege of fulfilling that dream building a performing career that has taken her across Canada and beyond.

Some favourite roles include Maria in the Sound of Music (Neptune Theatre, Stage West Calgary and Stage West Mississauga), Marian in the Music Man (Capital Theatre, Port Hope), Jenny Anydots in Cats (Neptune Theatre) and her Dora nominated role of The Narrator in the Happy Prince, (YPT).

Sherry’s favourite role to date is that of Mom to two extraordinary young women, Quinn and Maggie.

A proud advocate for families with Children with Down Syndrome and those living with Mental Health challenges, she is raising a child with Down Syndrome as well as living with her own Bipolar disorder. Sherry dedicates her life to being a story of triumph, telling that story through theatre and song.

DIRECTOR/ DRAMATURG/ WRITER

Trained as an actor at The Drama Centre, London, Marcia began her career at the Royal Court Theatre before appearing on Broadway, the Stratford Festival and in many regional theatres. As a director over the past twenty-five years her credits number over 100 productions. Favourites include the US/Canadian Tour of Saturday Night Fever, Les Miserables, (Rainbow Stage), Annie, White Christmas, The last Five Years (Neptune), See How They Run, Blackbird (Theatre Aquarius), The Diary of Anne Frank, The Syringa Tree, The Price (RMTC) Too Many Cooks, Run For Your Wife, The Ladies Foursome (Drayton Entertainment) She was chosen to direct the “reimagined” Anne of Green Gables at the Charlottetown Festival in 2011 and was the original director/dramaturg for the premiere production of the new Canadian musical Prom Queen (now entitled The Louder We Get) at The Segal Centre, Montreal.

Marcia is also an award-winning, internationally produced playwright with 12 plays to her credit. Her work has been translated into numerous languages with several productions running currently in Poland, China, Quebec, the US and the UK. Her most recent play, the comedy-thriller Deadline (co-written with Douglas E. Hughes) premiered in the US in October 2022.

MUSIC DIRECTOR

Leslie Arden has had a varied career as a composer, lyricist, librettist, performer, director, music director and teacher. She has written and composed over a dozen musicals, including the critically acclaimed and multi-award-winning The House of Martin Guerre and the Chalmers Award winningThe Happy Prince.  Leslie collaborated with Norm Foster on the oft produced The Last Resort and Ned Durango.  She wrote the scores for Harvest Moon Rising, A Meeting of Minds, and The Boys Are Coming Home, which was produced by Chicago’s American Musical Theater Projects in 2006 and was showcased at New York City’s National Alliance for Musical Theatre later the same year.  Leslie has composed the music for the Toronto stage productions of The Beard of Avon, Faust and It’s a Wonderful Life, in which she also performed. She’s been commissioned by choirs all across North America, and she’s spent six seasons as a composer with The Stratford Festival.  From 2019 – 2023Leslie was the inaugural writer-in-residence at Queen’s University’s Dan School of Drama and Music, where she was commissioned to write and compose a new musical, The Lancashire Lass. It was premiered at The Grand Theatre in Kingston, Ontario, Canada in the spring of 2023. In 2024, Leslie was invited to the United Arab Emirates to develop a new musical with and for the students of the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.

Leslie was Artistic Director of her own award winning Theatre For Young Audiences company, The Children’s Trio, which toured North America for over twenty years.

In 1990 Leslie was one of thirteen professional musical theatre writers chosen from around the world by Cameron MacIntosh to study with Stephen Sondheim at Oxford University.