The air inside Sho Studios on Monmouth Road carries that specific, sharp scent of industrial history mixed with fresh paint and ambition. It is an unlikely incubator for high-concept drama, yet this is where Bloomsbury House has decided to plant its flag. It is rare to see a new theatre company emerge with this much velocity. When Martin Ouellette and Carly Morrison-Hart went public with their plans, the local circuit did not just notice; it braced itself.
Ouellette is a fixture in the scene, a reliable hand for local groups who need someone with a vision that extends beyond the footlights. Morrison-Hart brings a different energy, a raw necessity to create that feels more like a survival instinct than a hobby. They gave us a teaser back in Jan. with *Curious George: The Golden Meatball* at the Chrysler Theatre, but that was just a handshake. Now, they are inviting us into their living room.
The space at Sho Studios is intimate, bordering on claustrophobic in the way good drama requires. Their inaugural season is a heavy-hitter list: *Proof*, *Red*, *The Mousetrap*, *Constellations*, *Detroit* and *Amadeus*. But they are choosing to break the seal with Jordan Harrison’s *Marjorie Prime*, a 2015 Pulitzer Prize finalist that interrogates the digital afterlife. I sat down with the pair to figure out why they are bothering to build a "house" in an age of digital noise.
The motivation for starting a fresh company usually boils down to ego or insanity. For Morrison-Hart, it sounds more like a haunting. She tells me, "Ever since I stepped onto a stage, I knew it was home. When I took a hiatus in my mid-20s, I felt the ghost of theatre haunting my thoughts. After getting back into acting, I started to get big ideas that could only be conceived if we controlled my own space. Opening this theatre is a way for us to give back to the community and create art for (hopefully) the masses."
Ouellette’s drive is more geographical, a long-game play for the soul of the city. He says, "It’s been a goal since my teens to establish a professional theatre in my hometown. For now, it’s a very small cast and crew, on a revenue share, but it’s a start. We moved our photography studio, Churchwood Pictures, into Sho and that lease gave us the opportunity to develop and use their performance spaces."
There is a gritty pragmatism to using a photography studio lease as a Trojan horse for a theatre company. It bypasses the usual bureaucratic rot that kills arts organizations before they produce a single script. But the real question is what Bloomsbury House offers that the existing guard does not. Ouellette’s answer is surprisingly devoid of the usual high-art pretension.
"We have an unironic Pop sensibility," Ouellette explains. "We don’t have a 'mission' other than that we want to explore clever and entertaining scripts and make popular, accessible theatre. Pleasure and escape and horror and excitement have value, especially these days, and musicals don’t have to be the only vehicles for those things."
This rejection of the "mission statement" culture is refreshing. Most companies spend more time on their DEI manifestos than their blocking. Morrison-Hart views the theatre as a bulwark against the disposable nature of modern life. She notes, "Society today is all about buying something and throwing it away. With theatre, you can’t throw away that experience. We made a season of small cast plays that offer a digestible way to take in intelligent theatre."
The name itself, Bloomsbury House, carries a heavy intellectual baggage that Ouellette is happy to unpack. It is a nod to the 1920s London set—the pacifists, the socialists, the thinkers who rebuilt worlds. Ouellette credits the choice to his own interests, which Morrison-Hart jokingly confirms by saying, "That’s all Martin!"
Ouellette elaborates on the historical pedigree: "The Bloomsbury group of artists was active in London, England, in the 1920s and 30s. Jaded by World War I, they were pacifist socialists and included Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, and the economist John Maynard Keynes, a future architect of Roosevelt’s New Deal and the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Germany. Also, 'blooms' and 'bury' neatly encapsulate the natural cycle, and 'house' was added for warmth."
It is a heady mix of Keynesian economics and Woolfian stream-of-consciousness. But when you look at the season as a whole, a pattern emerges. It is not just a random collection of scripts. Ouellette sees a connective tissue he calls "liminality"—the uncomfortable spaces between defined states.
"After looking at the season, I suppose we have a theme of liminality; transitions, borders, and spaces between states of being," Ouellette says. "We open with *Marjorie Prime*, which is about the transition between human and artificial intelligence, and we close with *Amadeus*, which is about the frustratingly vast distance between a person of skill and talent and one of true genius. All the other plays contain similar considerations of spaces between."
Marjorie is unlike anything I’ve seen in Windsor, or anywhere, really; it’s deep, modern science fiction... It’s like an emotionally moving episode of Black Mirror or The Twilight Zone, with a brilliant final scene that will leave your head spinning.
Staging shows like *Detroit* or *Constellations* in a market that often demands the safety of *Annie* or *Mamma Mia!* is a gamble. There is a risk that the audience will stay home if they do not recognize the title on the marquee. Morrison-Hart seems to trust the gravity of the material over the name recognition.
She says, "The artist side in me just wants to say that the plays have their own gravitational pull, and they pulled us in, rather us choosing them per se. The business side says the optics are good, and the writing is excellent. I’m also very excited to see the actors who audition and play this crazy season of characters. The wealth of talent is something I am in awe of."
Ouellette is more calculated about the marketing hurdles. He knows he has to sell these "unknowns" to a Windsor crowd that might be wary of high-concept sci-fi or gritty dark comedies. He breaks down the strategy with the cold eye of a producer.
"The shows that seem unknown to Windsor audiences are *Marjorie Prime*, *Constellations*, and *Detroit*," Ouellette admits. "*Marjorie* was shortlisted for the Pulitzer in 2015 and then made into a well-received film with Jon Hamm. The New York Times called the epic romance *Constellations* 'Broadway’s most sophisticated date play yet,' and we think there will be a market for that as a Valentine’s night out – especially with the immersive light and sound show we have planned. *Detroit* won an Obie Award for Lisa D’Amour in 2013, also a Pulitzer nomination, and we think the title alone will drive interest. Plus, it’s a harsh, wild, hard-R dark comedy. We’ll have to work harder to sell these shows, but they aren’t total unknowns and come with lots of built-in marketing possibilities."
When pushed on which production holds the most personal weight, Morrison-Hart refuses to play favourites. For her, the season is a living, breathing entity that is still evolving. "I don’t have the privilege of looking forward to any one play," she says. "They are all my children, and I think of each of them often. Some plays are more formed in my mind, and I get excited how the details are etched out, while others are more abstract, still in colour form in my mind."
Ouellette is less diplomatic. He has his sights set on the heavy hitters. "Peter Shaffer’s *Amadeus* is my favourite play – it’s beautiful, ambitious, vicious, dark as hell, hilarious, blasphemous, and essentially, intentionally musical. Runner up is *Detroit*, which has some truly grotesque moments of physical and prop comedy and zany bacchanalian surprises that we look forward to springing on audiences."
The choice to lead with *Marjorie Prime* is a statement of intent. It is a play that demands the audience think about their own obsolescence. Ouellette wants to distance this production from the campy sci-fi tropes that often plague local theatre.
"It’s fairly simple to stage but *Marjorie* is unlike anything I’ve seen in Windsor, or anywhere, really; it’s deep, modern science fiction, not camp like *Little Shop* or *Rocky Horror* (which are great)," Ouellette explains. "It’s like an emotionally moving episode of *Black Mirror* or *The Twilight Zone*, with a brilliant final scene that will leave your head spinning." Morrison-Hart adds a punchy, direct motivation: "It’s a cool play, and we want to be cool."
The tech-heavy premise of *Marjorie Prime*—where the elderly use AI to recreate deceased loved ones—could easily become a gimmick. But Morrison-Hart finds a personal connection in the "uncanny valley," that unsettling space where artificiality mimics humanity too closely.
"I’m a science nerd and follow AI," she says. "I love the debates that arise from it and have always been fascinated by the uncanny valley. The true love story between this family is deep and thoughtful. All families have their secrets and struggles, and this play gives us hope in a modern world."
Ouellette is more interested in the "strange loops" of human memory. He views the play as a study in how we curate our own histories through lies. "The family at the centre of the drama has a core of mental illness, secrecy, and sadness that is very affecting, but I am most fascinated by its ideas about how we build family myths around white lies, and how those myths would be interpreted by a friendly machine intelligence and, even more provocatively, how those strange loops of myth could eventually invoke a machine version of emotion."
The technical execution of these AI "Primes" is a challenge. In a small space like Sho Studios, you cannot hide behind expensive CGI. Morrison-Hart notes that the integration of technology in the show mirrors our real-world experience. "As I watch tech grow into our daily lives, I notice how seamless it all seems to go. The tech will be small and simple, though the AI will be 3D!"
Ouellette, however, is leaning into a more traditional theatricality. He is betting on performance over gadgets. "This is a very traditionally-engineered show. Even though it takes place in the future, the characters themselves, like many people today, are not particularly tech-savvy. Though it involves AI holograms as onstage characters, we rely only on lighting and performances, like in the original US production and as described in the script."
This is a bold move. Relying on lighting to convey a 3D hologram requires a level of precision that can easily fail if the actor misses their mark by an inch. But Ouellette believes the human drama is the real anchor. "No matter how fantastic the ideas get about myth-building and emotional trans-humanism, the relatable, tragic, and smartly-written family drama is what pulls the audience into the world of the show; that relatable drama becomes the safety bar on your roller coaster as the writing swoops out to big ideas."
Morrison-Hart is even more confident in the emotional payoff. "They’ll laugh, they’ll cry, it’ll be better than CGI *Cats*," she quips. It is a low bar, perhaps, but the sentiment is there.
The production marks what they believe is the Windsor premiere of the play. It kicks off Aug. 8 at Sho Studios, and they are making an event of it. Ouellette confirms, "So far as we know, yes! We’ll have a catered reception after opening night on August 8th at Sho, 628 Monmouth Road, open to all patrons. Curtain is at 8pm."
Casting was a deliberate process. They have assembled a trio of local heavyweights to carry the emotional load. Ouellette starts by acknowledging the engine room of the production. "First we must shout out Alexandra Hristoff, our co-producer, assistant director, scripty, PR, stage manager, Zen master."
Then, he turns to the actors. "Regarding the actors, Allison Still in the title role, and in person, has the charm and gravity of a Hollywood icon. We use wig and makeup to age her up considerably for the role, which pays off in a way I won’t spoil here. Joey Ouellette is a thoughtful writer and an immensely skilled and experienced actor, and he does a lot of the heavy lifting as Jon, the son-in-law who holds this fractured family together. Finally, Kim Babb as Marjorie’s bitter daughter Tess is a sea of complex emotions that will hold audiences spellbound. There is a fourth actor trying to keep up in a smaller role but he isn’t worth mentioning here."
Morrison-Hart sees the chemistry as a form of alchemy. She believes the casting was almost predestined once the readings began. "Each actor has a type of magic, and when you get them all on stage, it is something to behold. I love wowing a crowd, and with these very talented actors, who have given so much of themselves, the audience will leave full up on the magic of theatre. It was truly a natural selection, though we had a lovely bunch of people come out for auditions. When each actor read their sides, it was obvious who would be who."
Whether Bloomsbury House can sustain this momentum remains to be seen. The Windsor theatre scene is a fickle beast, often rewarding the familiar and punishing the experimental. But with a "Pop" sensibility and a refusal to be disposable, Ouellette and Morrison-Hart might just have the right formula to make something stick. Tickets and season passes are available at bloomsburyhouse.wordpress.com. Go see if they can actually pull off the "magic" they are promising.
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