Now that 2025 is soon coming to an end and we’ve had a chance to rest and reflect after a very busy and exciting year, I am left feeling very grateful. Grateful that we as an organization were able to accomplish so much this year, and that we were able to overcome obstacles and still find success in producing our annual festival, WTF ‘25 this past September. We couldn’t have done it alone and are so grateful to be a part of a community that has shown up for us when we needed help and continues to motivate us to move forward knowing that our efforts are appreciated by various groups of local strange-making artists and anticipated by our growing audience.
In 2025, WTF hosted Spring Thing 2.0 in May with the return of our THING ONE and THING TWO cabarets and the addition of our Swap N’Sale costume and props sale. The summer leading into the fall was a total whirlwind. We had the pleasure of launching our Strange Maker Award at the TO Fringe in July and brought creative activation to the SummerWorks Festival’s closing night party in August. We hosted our first late-night cabaret at the Toronto International Buskerfest over the labour day long weekend and participated in the Queen West Arts Crawl with roaming circus acts presented by Hercinia Arts to enhance engagement with patrons and promote our upcoming festival. Amid all this activity, we also held a successful crowd-funding campaign which filled a significant funding gap and somehow planned an entire festival.
(L to R Meegan Sweet (The Shiniest Piece of Trailer Trash) Pearle Harbour (Strange Maker Showcase) Jonas Trottier and Emma Nelles (Milk Milk Lemonade), Morgan Joy (Peggy’s Place), Anne Alien (The (IM)Possible Cabaret), Animacy Theatre Collective’s Alexandra Simpson and Morgan Brie Johnson (Juice Break)
WTF ‘25 took place from Sep 25 to 27th, 2025 at Youngplace’s Sweet Action Theatre and Small World Music. We had 4 completely sold out shows and a 95% attendance rate overall. Our programming included the world premier of Animacy Theatre Collective’s Juice Break and the multi-talented Morgan Joy’s Peggy’s Place. This year, we also had our first out of town production, Meegan Sweet’s The Shiniest Piece of Trailer Trash from Edmonton and the Strange Maker Award winning production Milk Milk Lemonade performed by Emma Nelles and Jonas Trottier.
Our second annual festival also included the return of our signature Strange Maker Showcase, hosted by Pearle Harbour and the debut of the new (IM)Possible Cabaret intended for the most odd and outrageous acts we could find, hosted by Anne Alien. Our cabarets continue to be a wild display of local strange-making talent including Clown, Puppetry, Drag, as well as Burlesque, Circus and more. These events provide the opportunity where anything can happen. For example, this year’s Strange Maker Showcase included an alien invasion (by Andre The Alien) and the delight of “Millions” an eager-to-play audience member who added much silly surprise to the event.
(L to R Pearle Harbour, Fox C Shanty, Pinkity Twiniky, Christine Moynihan, Jupiter Lightningstorm, Kanna Worm, Carly Rae Stepson, Anne Alien, Dyce 2 Watch Out 4, Bobby Knauff and Andre the Alien, Joshua Bonnici and Goldy Yason, Conjunctivisis, Jayden Gigliotti, Garden Gnome, Glinda Mercury, Cherry Bomb Photo credit: Alejandro Reyes)
Our community engagement efforts were also a great success in the delivery of our Get Bent: Balloon Twisting Workshop facilitated by Sheelagh Traché, and our Clown and Bouffon: Despair and Hope panel discussion that showed a great level of interest in a deeper exploration of different approaches to Clown as well as an appetite for the opportunity to hear from some of Canada’s most accomplished Clown performers, teachers and directors in terms of their own experiences and insights.
(L to R. Get Bent Balloon Twisting Workshop participants with workshop facilitator Sheelagh Traché. Clown and Bouffon: Despair and Hope panelists Karen Hines, Heather Marie Annis, John Beal and moderator Justin Miller. Photo Credit: Alejandro Reyes)
We also had exciting Lobby entertainment brought to our audiences by Magician Robert Chan, Puppeteer Bobby Knauff and Drag King Archie Called. New this year, we also hosted a pop-up market on Saturday featuring vendors from Toronto’s Arts Market including Effing Dice (Re Magill) who is the maker of puppets and 3D print materials, and Sonyah Shop, run by Olha Dovzhenko who is a maker of original Lino prints, wool jewelry, stickers and more.
For everything to come together so seamlessly after overcoming funding shortfalls and managing a reduced planning timeline for the festival, is a huge accomplishment. We were fortunate to have the support of a great team of staff, amazing volunteers and our venue and community partners who were truly dedicated to help us ensure that WTF 2025 was a great success. (You can read more about the team involved with WTF ‘25 here.)
As this is our fourth and final article written for Generator, we are grateful for the opportunity to reflect on and share our journey with others and we thank Generator for giving us the soapbox to reach readers. What we set out to do, in creating WTF as a home for Toronto’s strange-making theatre artists, was and still is very ambitious. As much as we have been successful in producing 5 major events to date and forming partnerships with several other local organizations, we still have a long road ahead in order to keep this train running for years to come.
Looking into 2026, the future of WTF is somewhat unclear not out of a lack of commitment to the cause, but in finding more sustainable ways to operate and manage growth. We’ve been incredibly lucky so far to always generate just enough funding to get us where we needed to go, however this has required many hours of unpaid labour and now after 3+ years of dedicated work, burnout.
We have been fortunate since the very beginning to have had the artistic direction of Byron Laviolette who has been instrumental in our birth, introduction with many community partners and overall success. As Byron has decided to move on from this role, his contributions as WTF’s co-founder will continue to be appreciated and acknowledged in our organization's mission and values. As we bid farewell to Byron, we send best wishes for his future endeavours with much gratitude.
As Executive Director, my goal for 2026 is to recruit new members to join Strange Maker Collective as the force behind What The Festival and to work towards incorporation so that WTF can benefit from the support and protection of an active and committed board who share a passion for our mission. But for now, after a non-stop year of activity and a lot of fun, time to rest and recharge is necessary.
We look forward to seeing you again in 2026!