One of the great gifts of living in the Durham Region is that meaningful, challenging, and genuinely adventurous theatre is not something we have to travel downtown Toronto to find. It is happening right here, in our own backyard — quietly, persistently, and with remarkable integrity. A shining example of this is Durham Shoestring Performers (DSP), a Durham Region company, now entering its 52nd year of accessible theatre.
DSP was founded in 1974 by Jeannine Butler with a bold and enduring mandate: to present challenging and entertaining plays, with an emphasis on innovative acting, writing, directing, and design — and to do so while keeping costs low so that live theatre remains accessible to all members of the community. Carolyn Wilson was involved from the earliest days and assumed responsibility for the company’s administration in 1990, helping to guide and sustain that original vision over many decades. That mandate is not just historical window dressing. It is alive and well today.
In 2022, DSP incorporated as a not-for-profit Ontario corporation. Its current Board reflects a deeply committed and hands-on leadership team:
Carolyn Wilson (President), Laurie Scattergood (Treasurer), Andra Kelly (Secretary), Megan Graichen, Jeff Kellar, Dante McLean, and Sheri Pereira.
At the artistic helm is Carolyn Wilson, whose steady leadership and curatorial courage deserve particular recognition. With a small but highly engaged board, DSP continues to do something that is surprisingly rare: it lives up to its own promise.
DSP mounts plays that are not often seen in community theatre. It produces new full-length works by local writers. It prominently features Canadian plays. It deliberately balances available roles by gender, age, and experience. And it ensures that backstage workers — designers, technicians, builders, and organisers — find their own creative niche as well.
This is not “safe” programming. This is not a theatre designed simply to sell tickets by familiarity. This is a theatre that trusts its audience.
Just as thoughtful as DSP’s programming is the visual language that surrounds its work. The artwork currently featured on the Durham Shoestring Performers website — announcing the 2025–26 season — is the work of Oetta Geraghty, a multi-talented artist whose contributions extend well beyond the canvas. I had the pleasure of meeting Oetta when I attended The Extractionist, and was struck not only by the beauty and confidence of her artwork, but by the fact that she is also deeply involved in the day-to-day life of the company. That combination of artistic vision and practical commitment feels quintessentially DSP. Her work will be featured on The Trouper website in connection with DSP’s upcoming production opening at the end of March, The Valley by Joan MacLeod — a small but heartfelt acknowledgement of the many unseen artists whose creativity helps give this theatre its distinctive voice.
Which brings me to The Extractionist, by Michaela Jeffrey. It was during my visit to DSP’s recent production of The Extractionist by Michaela Jeffrey that I had the pleasure of meeting Oetta in person. The play itself proved to be a striking embodiment of DSP’s mandate — bold, probing, and unwilling to soften its edges for the sake of comfort.
The Extractionist is exactly the kind of work that reminds us why community theatres like DSP matter so much.
The Extractionist is exactly the kind of play that reminds us why community theatres like DSP matter so much. It is not light diversion. It is not predictable. It does not hand us comforting answers neatly tied with a bow. Instead, it stretches us — emotionally, morally, intellectually. It asks us to sit with discomfort. It challenges our assumptions. It opens a door onto realities we may not usually encounter.
And that, certainly, is one of the deepest purposes of theatre.
Great theatre does more than entertain. It enlarges our moral imagination. It puts us in someone else’s shoes. It invites us to wrestle with ambiguity. It asks us not merely to watch, but to reflect.
When a community theatre chooses to stage a work like The Extractionist, it is making a quiet but courageous statement:
“We believe our audience is capable of meeting this story with curiosity and openness. We believe theatre can still be a place of risk, depth, and transformation.”
DSP has been making that statement for decades.
Their venue — the intimate 98-seat “fishbowl” at the Arts Resource Centre behind Oshawa City Hall — is itself a perfect embodiment of their philosophy. No seat is more than eight metres from the stage. There is nowhere to hide from the emotional truth of a performance. This closeness creates an intensity and immediacy that larger houses simply cannot duplicate. DSP chooses plays that suit this intimacy, allowing the audience to feel not like observers, but like witnesses.
Just as important as what DSP puts on stage is how they invite people into the process.
All auditions are public. No monologues are required. There is no membership fee. Adults and teenagers are equally welcome. Backstage, design, and production volunteers are encouraged to attend auditions even if they have no intention of performing. Scripts can be borrowed for advanced reading. The only real entry requirements are curiosity, goodwill, and a willingness to commit the time and effort needed to make theatre happen.
In an age when so many spaces feel gate-kept or exclusionary, DSP remains radically open.
What I find especially heartening is how widely DSP is supported across the Durham theatre ecosystem. Actors, directors, stage managers, designers, and technicians who work with DSP are the same people you will see contributing to Ajax Community Theatre, Oshawa Little Theatre, Whitby Courthouse Theatre, Theatre on the Ridge, and beyond. Audience members who attend DSP productions are often the same loyal theatregoers who support multiple companies across the region.
This cross-pollination of talent, labour, and audience is not accidental. It is a sign of a healthy cultural ecology.
DSP does not compete with other community theatres. It exists in conversation with them.
In fact, it could be argued — and I will argue it — that DSP is a model upon which other community theatres in Durham could, and perhaps should, reflect.
- Its low-cost accessibility mandate.
- Its willingness to program challenging material.
- Its openness to newcomers.
- Its embrace of Canadian work and local writers.
- Its respect of backstage craft as equal to onstage performance.
- Its deep integration into the broader volunteer theatre community.
These are not just admirable traits. They are survival traits.
Which brings me, gently and sadly, to one of the community theatres we have lost.
Herongate Barn Theatre in Pickering.
It’s demise after 50 years in business begs difficult questions that none of us can afford to ignore if we care about the future of community theatre in Durham:
What makes a small theatre sustainable?
How do leadership structures, programming choices, accessibility, and community engagement affect long-term survival?
How fragile are our cultural institutions, really?
DSP’s longevity — now spanning more than five decades — is not an accident. It is the result of thoughtful stewardship, clear mandate, shared labour, artistic courage, and a genuine relationship with its audience.
When we attend productions like The Extractionist, we are not just buying a ticket to a play. We are voting, quietly but powerfully, for a certain vision of what theatre in our community can be.
A vision that says:
- Art can be affordable.
- Art can be brave.
- Art can be intimate.
- Art can be local.
- Art can belong to everyone.
Durham Shoestring Performers lives up to its promise.
And for that — for its courage, its generosity, and its faith in both artists and audiences — it deserves not only our admiration, but our active support.