The Shaw Festival announced its highly anticipated 65th season playbill today, for the first time in Shaw history featuring two musicals on the Festival Theatre stage during the main season. The vibrant lineup, beginning March 31, 2027, features a romantic Shavian drama, a stupendous Stoppard satire, Spontaneous Theatre, spooky mysteries and classic fables. In 2027, audiences will experience a compelling diversity of shows highlighting The Shaw’s rich traditions of creativity and adventure while embracing the future of TWO-WAY THEATRE.

“Two big, beloved and wildly different musicals on the Festival Theatre stage – surrounded by murder, mayhem, Shaw, Stoppard and a few rather gruesome fairy tales – gives our artists and audiences an irresistible playground for 2027,” said Tim Carroll, Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival. “With this diverse range of titles, we’re also working on new ways to share these shows through our Beyond the Stage workshops and events to bring our audiences even closer to the art, their creativity and each other.”

Kicking off next season is Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring, a classic dark comedy where family eccentricities take a murderous and hilariously chaotic turn – and Ira Levin’s acclaimed comic thriller Deathtrap, drawing audiences in with the promise of plot twists and a play within a play. Next, one of two musical productions this season, the beloved Broadway hit from the legendary Rodgers & Hammerstein, South Pacific, sets sail at the Festival Theatre, followed by the return of Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man – the first Shaw to play at the Court House Theatre since 2017. These four productions officially open Shaw’s 2027 season from May 28 – 30, 2027.

“Our audiences have enthusiastically welcomed the return of the Court House Theatre as a Shaw venue this year, and we couldn’t be more delighted to bring Bernard Shaw back to the stage where The Shaw began in 1962,” said Tim Jennings, Executive Director/CEO of the Shaw Festival. “There’s something very special about celebrating where we started while also looking ahead to the reopening of the Royal George Theatre in fall 2028 and an exciting new chapter for The Shaw.”

The Shaw Festival’s 2027 season begins March 31 and runs until December 23.

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FESTIVAL THEATRE

SOUTH PACIFIC

Music by Richard Rodgers

Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II

Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan

Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener

Directed by Nina Lee Aquino

Previews: April 10 Closes: October 30

Romance blossoms for American sailors and Navy nurses stationed on a South Pacific island during the Second World War. Glorious, rousing songs – “Some Enchanted Evening,” “There’s Nothing Like a Dame” and “I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outa My Hair” – and a story of love, heartbreak, prejudice and survival make this one of the great theatrical experiences. A Rodgers & Hammerstein classic from the golden age of musicals.

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ARSENIC AND OLD LACE

By Joseph Kesselring

Directed by Jackie Maxwell

Previews: May 9 Closes: October 9

Some families have skeletons in the closet. This family keeps adding to their collection. Mortimer Brewster is a drama critic who just wants to get on with enjoying life by destroying bad plays and courting the beautiful Elaine Harper. But his aunts, Abby and Martha, are about to upset his plans. They may seem a perfectly respectable, indeed harmless, pair of elderly spinsters, but the Brewster sisters are anything but. The chaos and laughter spiral ever higher as each new arrival threatens to expose their macabre secret.

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THE COLOR PURPLE

Based upon the novel written by Alice Walker and the Warner Bros/Amblin Entertainment Motion Picture

Book by Marsha Norman

Music and Lyrics by Brenda Russell Allee Willis Stephen Bray

Directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad

Previews: June 26 Closes: October 31

Celie is a survivor. The story of her remarkable resilience follows her life in the American South from the early to mid-20th century. She endures racism, sexism and abuse, but ultimately finds love, happiness and success. Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and directed by Kimberley Rampersad, this joyous musical – featuring an uplifting score full of jazz, blues and gospel – is a triumphant celebration of life.

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JUMPERS

By Tom Stoppard

Directed by Tim Carroll

Previews: August 11 Closes: October 31

What happens when philosophy collides with gymnastics, murder, religion and love? An acrobatic philosopher – or is he a philosophical acrobat? – is murdered while a mysterious lady performs a striptease on a swing: it can only be the start of a Tom Stoppard play. Part murder mystery, part bedroom farce and part Shavian provocation, this dazzling and hilarious play is unlike anything written before or since. And yet, at its heart, it asks a simple question: where does thinking stop and feeling take over?

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COURT HOUSE THEATRE

DEATHTRAP

By Ira Levin

Directed by Tara Rosling

Previews: March 31 Closes: October 8

How far should a playwright go for another hit? What if it has been 18 years since his last one? What if he’s had a string of bombs and he’s desperate? Well, if you’re Sidney Bruhl, you’ll consider deception, betrayal and even murder. But not everything is as it seems in his Connecticut home, where the plot twists come fast and furious (and funny). No wonder this comic thriller has been delighting audiences since 1978.

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ARMS AND THE MAN

By Bernard Shaw

Directed by Alistair Newton

Previews: April 28 Closes: October 9

To Raina Petkoff, betrothed to a decorated hero, war seems glamorous. But when an enemy soldier climbs in at her window to escape the fighting, she sees the other side of the picture. Like any sensible fellow, Captain Bluntschli’s first duty is to his own survival; that’s why he’s armed with chocolates instead of bullets. This witty satire on romantic attitudes to war, heroism and marriage remains one of Shaw’s most popular comedies.

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GRIMM TALES

Adapted from the Brothers Grimm by Carol Ann Duffy

Dramatised by Tim Supple

Directed by Jay Turvey

Previews: June 9 Closes: October 10

Forget the fairy tales you grew up with. These stories have teeth. Now more than two centuries old, the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales have stood the test of time so well that it’s easy to take them for granted. We know them, but how well do we remember them? Do we only know the sanitized versions? British poet Carol Ann Duffy brings some of the most beloved Grimm stories – including Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel – to red-blooded, even gruesome, life.

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THE RATS and THE PATIENT

By Agatah Christie

Previews: September 11 Closes: October 10

Two bite-sized helpings of murder from the Queen of Mystery. In The Rats, secret lovers Sandra and David show up for drinks at their friends’ apartment, only to find that no one is home. They have no idea how much worse their evening is about to get. In The Patient, Mrs. Wingfield has fallen from her balcony and is unable to speak. Gathered around her hospital bed, relatives must figure out if she jumped … or was she pushed?

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JACKIE MAXWELL STUDIO THEATRE

WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS

By J.M. Barrie

Directed by Kimberley Rampersad

Previews: May 20 Closes: October 10

After a wealthy Scottish family discovers John, a university student, breaking into their house to read books in their library, they make him a deal. They’ll fund his education if he will marry their daughter, Maggie. John agrees to the loveless marriage and is oblivious to Maggie’s crucial role in his successful political career. This sly pre-suffrage comedy by J.M. Barrie is full of wit.

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GOBLIN:PYGMALION

A Spontaneous Theatre Creation

By Bruce Horak, Ellis Lalonde, and Rebecca Northan

Directed by Rebecca Northan

Previews: June 16 Closes: October 10

You loved the electric unpredictability of Murder-on-the-Lake, now meet the Goblins.

The brilliant minds behind the smash-hit, Murder-on-the-Lake, return to the Shaw Festival with a showcase of Shavian shenanigans that will upset the applecart of everything you thought you knew about social class, the power of language, and Eliza Doolittle. The internationally acclaimed, Spontaneous Theatre, would like to introduce you to their alter-egos: Wug, Kragva, and Moog – three theatre-obsessed Goblins with an insatiable appetite for human literature, and an endless confusion about theatre etiquette. Having already dismantled Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Dickens, Canada's most notorious Goblins are about to descend on The Shaw, seize control of our stages, and pepper Pygmalion with spontaneity and chaos.

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INTIMATE APPAREL

By Lynn Nottage

Directed by Philip Akin

Previews: August 5 Closes: October 9

Esther, a seamstress since she was a child, dreams of a life as romantic as those of the people for whom she makes intimate apparel; but middle age is approaching and she still lives alone in a New York boarding house. When she receives a letter from a man working on the Panama Canal, the door to a different life seems to open. But love is not as straightforward as sewing lingerie. Lynn Nottage’s 2003 play is a moving modern classic.

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HOLIDAY SEASON

November 18 until December 23

Details about Shaw’s holiday production, readings and cabaret series will be announced soon.

More details about the Shaw Festival’s upcoming 2027 season, casts and creative teams will be announced in the coming weeks. For the latest updates, visit www.shawfest.com. *Dates listed are subject to change.

Tickets to the 2027 season go on sale beginning November 7 for Friends of The Shaw and December 8 to the public. Orders can be placed through the Box Office at 1-800-511-SHAW (7429) or online at www.shawfest.com

Patrons can receive front-of-the-line access to tickets by becoming Friends of The Shaw.

Call 1-800-657-1106 ext. 2556 to learn more.

Beyond the Stage Events and Activities:

To complement its world-class performances, each year the Shaw Festival offers more than 5,000 Beyond the Stage events, classes and activities for people of all ages. Programming in 2026 includes Positive Aging events, Arts Education for children and youth, Backstage Tours and Artist Conversations, Coffee Concerts, Speakeasies, What’s In Your Songbook, Gospel Choir, Perfect Pairings Concerts, Pop-Up Patios and so much more. Visit www.shawfest.com for more information.

The Shaw Festival’s 2026 season runs through to December 23 and is supported by the Ontario Arts Council and the Canada Council for the Arts.