Licensed to Laugh: Inside Ephraim Ellis’ Secret Service

May 16, 2026

By: Don Kearney-Bourque

Lighthouse Festival 2026 Summer Season

There’s a particular kind of joy that comes from watching a spy movie take itself just seriously enough. The tuxedos are sharp, the stakes are impossibly high, and someone is always delivering a one-liner moments before disaster strikes. For playwright Ephraim Ellis, those stories weren’t just entertainment growing up; they became an obsession.

“I had a full set of vintage 007 VHS tapes I played ad nauseam throughout my teenage years,” Ellis says with a laugh. “I saw Mission Impossible II in theatres four times.”

That lifelong love of espionage thrillers eventually became the foundation for Secret Service, Lighthouse Festival’s third production of the 2026 summer season. But while audiences can expect undercover agents, chaotic missions, and plenty of laugh-out-loud moments, Ellis insists the play ultimately became about something much more personal than spy gadgets or international intrigue.

At its core, Secret Service asks a surprisingly relatable question: how much of our self-worth should come from our jobs?

The idea for the play first emerged through one character in particular: Nick, portrayed in this world premiere production by Stephen Sparks.

“This play started with the character Nick,” Ellis explains. “The idea of a James Bond style secret agent having a really hard time pretending to be a low-status person, like a waiter, because he’s full of himself and used to being undercover as upper-class business executives and rich playboys was just so funny to me.”

That comic image quickly snowballed into something bigger.

“What if an action hero’s ego was just really getting in the way of him doing his job?”

That tension became the engine powering Secret Service. Set inside Toronto’s swankiest Italian restaurant, the play follows a covert team of spies attempting to complete a high-stakes mission while posing as restaurant staff. Naturally, almost nothing goes according to plan.

The result is fast-paced, absurd, and joyfully theatrical. But beneath the espionage chaos, Ellis discovered deeper themes emerging as he wrote.

“This show was originally just supposed to be an action-packed romp,” he says, “but the more I wrote, the more themes of personal fulfillment and self-esteem came to the forefront.”

For Ellis, those themes felt deeply connected to his own generation.

“A lot of elder millennials like myself put way too much of their self-worth into their career,” he explains. “Do you need to be an important super-spy and change the world to find meaning in your life, or can you be happy just being a waiter and find fulfillment outside work? Can a job just be a job?”

Beyond his work as a playwright, Ellis has built an impressive career across television, film, and stage. Many audiences first came to know him through his breakout role as Rick Murray on the iconic Canadian television series Degrassi: The Next Generation, before appearing in productions including Murdoch Mysteries, Falcon Beach, and The LA Complex. In addition to acting, Ellis has steadily developed a reputation as one of Canada’s exciting emerging comedic playwrights. His previous work, On The Air, was produced at Lighthouse Festival during the 2023 season, showcasing his sharp humour and heartfelt storytelling style. Alongside his work for stage and screen, Ellis is also an accomplished writer of comics and fiction, with an upcoming debut novel currently in development.

It’s that emotional grounding that gives Secret Service its surprising depth. The characters may be dodging disaster and fumbling undercover operations, but underneath the comedy, they’re all searching for validation.

“To stop the bad guy, complete their secret mission, and make the world safer for freedom and democracy!” Ellis jokes when asked what his characters want. “But on a more personal level, all the characters in this play want to feel that they’re worth it, that they’re capable.”

And what’s standing in their way?

“For the most part, it’s ego,” he says. “Either having too much of it, in Nick and Maddy’s case, or too little of it, in Harry and Quentin’s.”

One of the most fascinating examples of that evolution came through the character Vivianna.

“In the earliest drafts, she didn’t have much of a journey,” Ellis admits. “She existed mainly as an obstacle and a really fun super-villain.”

That changed during the workshop process last spring, when Ellis began uncovering unexpected emotional layers within the character.

“Discovering that maybe Vivianna feels disconnected from people because her work makes her intimidating and unapproachable, and that she too just craves real connection, was really interesting.”

That balance between broad comedy and emotional honesty has become something of a trademark in Ellis’s writing. Audiences may come for the outrageous misunderstandings and undercover antics, but they leave connecting with the humanity underneath.

It’s also a reflection of Ellis’s own experiences.

“Like most actors, playwrights, and other creative professionals,” he says carefully, “I may have some experience working in restaurants on my resume. Allegedly.”

That real-world familiarity gives Secret Service an authenticity beneath the silliness. The frantic rhythm of restaurant life, the personalities that emerge under pressure, the strange hierarchies that form in service industries — all of it feeds into the play’s world.

At the same time, Ellis wanted to fully embrace the heightened spectacle of the spy genre he grew up loving.

“Action-packed espionage is a genre I’ve loved and immersed myself in my whole life,” he says. “It’s been a dream to write something in that vein, even if this outing is significantly sillier than most.”

Yet despite the international-spy framework, Secret Service carries something distinctly Canadian at its centre.

“When I sent my mum an earlier draft of the play maybe a year ago, I was really surprised how much she loved the fact that all the hero spies are explicitly Canadian,” Ellis recalls.

That reaction stuck with him.

“I didn’t realize it at the time, but I think there’s an appetite for stories of Canadian heroes standing on their own two feet and being capable of the same derring-do usually reserved for Americans.”

That idea feels especially fitting at Lighthouse Festival, an organization that has increasingly championed original Canadian comedy and homegrown voices. Secret Service doesn’t simply imitate classic spy stories — it filters them through a distinctly Canadian lens, blending global stakes with recognizable insecurities, humour, and heart.

Ellis’s fascination with work, purpose, and identity also connects Secret Service to his earlier writing, including On The Air, which appeared at Lighthouse during the 2023 season.

“Both Secret Service and On The Air have themes of career and work, and finding meaning through them or altering your expectations for finding meaning in them,” he says.

There are also recurring family themes he’s beginning to notice in his own work.

“All three of my produced plays so far have had significant off-stage dad characters,” he says. “Something I didn’t intend to do, and that I should maybe interrogate in therapy. Love you, Dad!”

Even structurally, Secret Service presented new creative challenges for Ellis. Unlike many contemporary comedies that bounce between locations and timelines, this play unfolds continuously in one space.

“This is the first play I’ve written that maintains the classical Aristotelian unities of space and time,” Ellis says proudly.

Meaning?

“It takes place in one location, in ninety minutes of real time, with no scene breaks or time jumps or changes in location.”

For Ellis, that approach heightened the tension and forced the comedy into overdrive.

“It really helps raise the stakes,” he explains. “It was a real challenge, so much fun to write, and very satisfying to finally have a legitimate chance to use the phrase ‘classical Aristotelian unities’ in conversation. Take that, English degree!”

Remarkably, Ellis says very little ended up being cut from the play during revisions.

“On this play, not a whole lot!” he says. “The editing process on this one hasn’t forced me to kill many of my darlings.”

Though he does admit there are “a few jokes” he misses.

When it comes to knowing when a script is truly finished, Ellis trusts instinct more than any formula.

“Generally I decide a play is finished when I can read the whole thing front-to-back and there are no bits that make the very subtle ‘that doesn’t feel right’ alarm go off in my head.”

That doesn’t mean he’s immune to revisiting old ideas.

“My play On The Air was a complete rewrite of a TV pilot,” he notes, “and my upcoming debut novel is a complete rewrite of a comic book I wrote in my early twenties.”

Still, he tries not to linger too long in past projects.

“I’ve got at least six more plays lined up in my head,” he says. “If I go back and tinker with old ones, I’m never gonna write the rest.”

For all the excitement surrounding the world premiere of Secret Service, Ellis remains refreshingly honest about the realities of writing itself. Inspiration may spark a project, but finishing it requires persistence.

“Slogging through a rough draft can sometimes feel like a chore,” he says. “Especially when you’re sitting at the keyboard for hours and it’s like pulling teeth to get to the next line.”

But then something clicks.

“You get into a groove and pump out five pages in forty-five minutes and you feel like you can do anything!”

Still, his favourite part of the process comes at the very end.

“If I’m being honest, my favourite part of the writing process is finally completing a project,” he says. “Writing isn’t often very fun — usually it’s a lot of hard work. But coming out the other side and having written? There’s nothing more satisfying. It’s the best feeling in the world.”

And what does he hope audiences are talking about on the drive home after seeing Secret Service?

“The command performances by this excellent cast, their favourite jokes,” he says, before pausing. “And that maybe, yeah, there is more to life than work.”

For a play packed with spies, secrets, undercover missions, and exploding egos, that may just be the biggest revelation of all.