New season new boss at Shadow Theatre: meet artistic director Lana Michelle Hughes

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

New season. New boss.

At Shadow Theatre, Lana Michelle Hughes, the company’s multi-talented new artistic director (only their second in a 33-year history), has announced an all-Canadian quartet of productions.

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Hughes’ debut lineup has a striking variety that says something about the exuberant new a.d., and also about the range of Canadian playwriting and roots in small-cast indie theatricality. And it also pays tribute to Hughes’ predecessor, Shadow co-founder John Hudson, who’s retiring from the artistic directorship after three decades-plus at the helm of this flagship company that have included, in addition to some 42 premieres, tangible bricks-and-mortar (the re-building of the Varscona Theatre, an arduous 10-year drama in which he played a leading role).

Morningside Road, directed by Lana Michelle Hughes at Shadow Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.

Hughes brings to her new job an impressive skill set that includes acting, directing, playwriting, producing, sound designing, and every permutation of arts management honed during 14 years at Catalyst Theatre. She is steeped in signature Edmonton indie theatre, creating it, performing it, producing it. Shadow’s associate artistic director since 2024, and the instigator of the theatre’s artistic director fellowship program, she directed two of the four Shadow productions this season, the premiere of Morningside Road and the finale Autumn. And this year that scale expanded dramatically when she made her Citadel directing debut with Nick Green’s Casey and Diana, a co-production with Calgary’s Alberta Theatre Projects.

Yaga by Kat Sandler, the upcoming Shadow Theatre season-opener. Graphic supplied.

Hughes’ opening gambit at Shadow next season is a dark funny Kat Sandler comedy that comes with a thriller/horror twist. Yaga, which premiered at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 2019 (and is being remounted there this season), is a contemporary reinvention — “cool and surprising,” says Hughes — by one of the country’s hottest playwrights, of the wicked witch/demon woman mythology. Sandler takes on the Slavic folk tale about the old crone who lives in a hut supported by chicken legs, and grinds the bones of her victims for fodder.

“I love a good horror show!” Hughes says. And Yaga is “scary, yes, but really funny…. I’ve wanted to do it for a while. I’m surprised no one here has. But lucky me!” Her Shadow production (Oct. 14 to Nov. 1) stars Calgary’s Natasha Girgis as Baba Yaga. “I’m currently looking for (actors) who can match that energy.”

The season continues with “a beautiful little two-hander,” as Hughes describes The Waltz, a 2022 romantic comedy by Toronto playwright Marie Beath Badian that’s part of a trilogy (including Prairie Nurse). Two Filipino-Canadian teenagers meet by happenstance in the middle of Saskatchewan when one of them makes a stop on a road trip across the country.  And under a vast prairie sky and “a real-time sunset,” they fall in love. The playwright, says Hughes, “wanted to see two people who weren’t white fall in love really quickly onstage….” And that’s exactly what happens in this “smart and funny and super-charming” 80-minute romance, the world of Filipinos on the prairies “through a youthful lens.”

And Hughes, who grew up in Mill Woods as “a Catholic church school kid” surrounded by Filipino culture, was instantly attracted. “It’s perfect for Edmonton, a city with such a big, beautiful, thriving Filipino community.” Gina Puntil directs the Shadow production (Jan. 20 to Feb. 7, 2027).

Undressed by Louise Casemore, Shadow Theatre upcoming. Graphic supplied

At Shadow (March 17 to April 4) Edmonton finally gets to see Louise Casemore’s Undressed, a multi-character solo show by this theatrically adventurous Edmonton artist that unrolls onstage as an eco-auction of used wedding dresses. And Casemore transforms into the people who wore them. “Even if you haven’t been married, you do have some big senseless (piece of) clothing you’ve spent a lot of money on,” as Hughes cheerfully points out. “A bridesmaid dress maybe? What do you do with it? what does it carry for you?”

“And Louise is so charming, so cool…. She has her finger on the pulse of what makes theatre fun and of the moment,” says Hughes pointing to Casemore’s expertise in immersive and site-specific theatre (Lucky Charm, Gemini, OCD), Hughes calls Undressed “mildly interactive … I promise you won’t get asked onto the stage to tap dance.” She thinks it will suit the Shadow demographic (“a majority of our subscribers are women!”) and appeal to a younger audience too.

In a tribute to Shadow continuity and “John’s beautiful legacy” as Hughes puts it, he returns to Shadow to direct the season finale, The Golden Anniversaries (April 28 to May 16, 2027), a two-hander comedy by Toronto playwright Mark Crawford (Bed and Breakfast). His production stars long-time Shadow faves Coralie Cairns and Glenn Nelson as a couple who celebrate anniversaries at the family cottage. They’re up to number 50, and things have slipped off the rails.

It’s Hughes’ goal, “walking the line” as she puts it, to attract new audiences and restore a subscription base that collapsed during COVID, but also to “honour the people who’ve been coming,” even through tough times, some of them for the full three-plus decades. It comes with a matching goal: “to eventually get the money for a more structured new-play program … and open the door to new voices.” This season “we talked to 20 local playwrights to see what they have, what they’re writing.” More of that, she hopes, as well as continuing the pursuit of the Canada Council funding that’s proven elusive, amazingly, to every company operating at the Varscona.

Jack and the Bean Stalk, directed by Lana Michelle Hughes, Alberta Musical Theatre Company. Photo supplied

Hughes arrived in theatre via journalism. That’s where she met playwright Nicole Moeller. “We had to write an article a week,” so the pair asked if they could do play reviews. “I saw every single show onstage in Edmonton for two years,” Hughes says, and during that time, plus a freelance year “writing features about monster trucks,” theatre took over her life. “I didn’t want to write about it, I wanted to do it.”

Bust ‘Em Up Burlesque, directed by Lana Michelle Hughes, Send in the Girls Burlesque. Photo supplied.

She and Moeller did what young artists do in Edmonton: “we started a tiny theatre company, and wrote and produced Fringe shows,” says Hughes, whose Edmonton indie cred has deep roots as well at Nextfest, as well as directing (and sound designing) eight years of theatre/burlesque fusions, many written by Ellen Chorley, for Send in the Girls, starting with Tudor Queens in 2011.

Moeller and Hughes’ first venture Katy’s Missing was a crazily complicated affair: “a choose your own adventure murder mystery,” that had the audience on the move meeting characters connected to the missing girl, and  stationed at different locations (Hughes’ own site was the Varscona dumpster). The audience ended up choosing the ending, out of seven possibles. “We spent hours and hours at the Next Act” plotting out the permutations. Their next venture was “a big queer cult thing,” Lover Fighter, that got picked up by Urban Curve in Calgary. Then Hughes and her theatre school pals started a theatre collective called Running In Heels Productions.

Lana Michelle Hughes in The Fairy Catcher’s Companion, Promise Productions. Photo supplied

Acting? She was in school tour casts for Chorley’s originals for Promise Productions (Birdie on the Wrong Bus, The Fairy Catcher’s Companion). As an actor “I was competent but not good. And too anxious…. I have the drive to make a career work, obviously, but acting is really hard….”

Winnie Gertske, Champion Off Ice, created by and starring Lana Michelle Hughes. Running in Heels Productions. Photo supplied

Her last outing as playwright/actor, in 2017, was Winnie Gertske: Champion Off Ice, about a little girl who plays hockey. Fashioned as an invitation for the audience to play street hockey with her, the play was part of the outdoor walk-about Skampede festival in Victoria.

Hughes’s onward-and-upward career trajectory at Catalyst started two years out of U of A theatre school — she thought she’d be an actor, until she took directing courses with Sandy Nicholls and Jane Heather —  with an internship. “I was their second choice,” she laughs. “And I’m still listed in Bretta’s phone (Catalyst resident designer Bretta Gerecke) as ‘Intern’,” she reports. “I love that!”

Lana Michelle Hughes in No Wonder(land) at Nextfest. Photo supplied

Hughes was assistant to Catalyst’s managing director, associate marketing and communication director, associate managing director, then manager director. She booked and budgeted national tours, she did the contracting, the marketing, grant applications. She ran the website, she did ‘donor relations’. She arranged FourPlay, Catalyst’s crazily complicated fund-raising playwriting/producing marathon. She produced a giant outdoor spectacle, until the next breath, during COVID. “Other than writing the plays, there was nothing in that company I didn’t do,” she says, laughing.

Casey and Diana, directed by Lana Michelle Hughes. Citadel Theatre/ Alberta Theatre Projects. Photo by Nanc Price

“Lucky me” is a theme that threads through Hughes’ own review of a year that’s seen her direct at one of the country’s biggest regional theatres, the Citadel. And her new Shadow job, after seasons of assistant- and co-directing, comes with Hudson’s enthusiastic support and mentorship.

“His generosity, trust, and thoughtfulness throughout this transition have been more than I could have asked for,” Hughes says. “Few people in this industry have made me feel so trusted, so capable, and so supported. That kind of mentorship creates ripples far beyond a single career. It shapes organizations, communities, and the people who come next. It is something I will carry with me, and something I hope to pay forward.”

More information about the 2026-27 season, and subscriptions: shadowtheatre.org.