10 artists to watch at the 2025 Toronto Fringe
Some of them have decades of theatre experience behind them, while others have just a few shows. These gifted artists and their work are worth catching at this year's festival.
This year’s edition of the Fringe (July 2 to 13) includes over 100 shows. Which means it’s more important than ever to choose carefully. While I’m always excited about discoveries — that’s what the Fringe is about, after all — you want to make sure to pick a few sure things.
My advice? Make up a list of shows you’re looking forward to and fit some unknowns in and around them. And keep your ear to the ground about what shows are generating buzz. A half a dozen or so always come out of nowhere. Remember last year’s Monks, which went from the Fringe to remounts to awards glory?
While I can’t vouch for the final shows by the artists on this list, I can say that these people have all impressed me in the past — either at the Fringe or during the regular theatre season.
Be sure to check out the Fringe program and schedule here.
See you in line!
Who: Joanne O’Sullivan
What: Writer/performer, Something to Look Forward To
Where: VideoCabaret Deanne Taylor Theatre
It’s been a while since O’Sullivan performed a new solo show. Her last, She Grew Funny, won a Patron’s Pick at the Fringe in 2017, and was chosen by Jon Kaplan and me at NOW as one of the outstanding new plays at the festival that year. Since then, she’s done lots of TV (you’ve likely seen this classic Baroness von Sketch Show scene, which she wrote) and acts as host and producer on a number of podcasts. Her new play deals with the unfathomable personal losses she’s experienced in the past several years, and how they made her return to one of her first passions: storytelling.
Directed by the Emmy Award-winning Allana Harkin (Full Frontal with Samantha Bee), the show is sure to combine O’Sullivan’s wise, grounded voice with her deep empathy and unique sense of humour. See info here.
Who: M.J. Kang
What: Writer/performer, James & Eddie
Where: Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse
Kang’s local theatre history goes back more than a quarter century, when she premiered works about the Korean-Canadian experience and beyond in scripts like Noran Bang: The Yellow Room, Blessings and dreams of blond & blue. She’s also a notable actor, who’s appeared in TV shows like Star Wars: Skeleton Crew and Gangnam Project.
Now, appearing with actors Elsha Kim and Katherine Ko, she’s back in her play James & Eddie, which follows two Korean families navigating difficult memories of life back in Korea with immigrant lives in 1980s Toronto. Sounds like a fitting play for a return visit. See info here.
Who: Laura Anne Harris
What: Writer/performer, Have Fun Kids
Where: Soulpepper’s Tank House Theatre
Grief is a theme of many shows at this year’s Fringe — see also Something to Look Forward To and Adam Bailey: My Three Deaths. After her friend and fellow theatre maker Jordan Mechano died by suicide in 2020, Harris discovered hundreds of pages of his writing. That inspired this solo show, part of the Next Stage program, which blends Mechano’s writing with Harris’ and deals with grief, love, memory and legacy.
Intriguingly, no two performances will be the same; before the show begins, the audience chooses what content — including text and objects — it wants to see. As she’s demonstrated in previous shows like Pitch Blonde and Empathy, U.S.A., the radiant Harris — directed here by Jessie Fraser — has an innate ability to hold a stage. See info here.
Who: Ben Yoganathan
What: Writer/director, Zeitgeist
Where: Cinecycle, 129 Spadina Ave
Yoganathan has steadily built an impressive resumé as a solid actor in shows like Howland Co.’s Three Sisters, King Lear by Shakespeare BASH’d, and sold out Fringe hits Killing Time and 86 Me: The Restaurant Play. Now he’s graduating to writer and director with Zeitgeist, about a group of zillennials discussing life, love, art and late stage capitalism at a party.
The site-specific setting — the recently renovated Cinecycle — should make a fitting, immersive backdrop for the intimate ensemble show featuring a bunch of emerging talents (Elena Milo, Ethan Zuchkan, Sofia Farahani, Ali Farhadi, Rachel Cucheron, Nicholas Eddie). Keep your eye on Yoganathan; this could be his big breakthrough show. See info here.
Who: Yaas and Vyle
What: Writer/performers, A Play We Just Wrote Just Now
Where: Tarragon Solo Room
Hillary Yaas (Camp Wannaniki) and Selena Vyle (Far Cry 6, Queen Tut) are two of the busiest, and funniest (just say Yaas’ name aloud) drag performers around. They’re also fast on their feet, as they’ll doubtless prove in this completely improvised play based on audience suggestions.
Let’s just hope the Tarragon Solo Room cools down by the time their show rolls around. Things can get pretty steamy under wigs, makeup and multiple costumes. But I’m sure they’ll get laughs out of that, too. And with crackdowns on drag artists both here and especially south of the border, expect some political humour with the campy fun. See info here.
Who: Adam Bailey
What: Actor/writer, Adam Bailey: My Three Deaths
Where: Aki Studio
I’m quoted in the press release for this show saying Bailey is “charming and imaginative,” and I stand by that. As he’s demonstrated in previous shows like The Life Henri, Franz Ferdinand Must Die and Adam Bailey is on Fire, Bailey is the consummate Fringe performer. He knows how to pack a lot into an hour: some serious stuff, some personal details, and a whole lot of humour.
His latest show examines three instances in his life when he “died,” and it also chronicles three losses he experienced during one year, including the death of his mother at 66. Bailey says his mom, who was a huge fan of the Fringe, always wanted him to write a show about her. This is that show. See info here.
Who: Greg Campbell
What: Actor in Divine Monster
Where: Soulpepper’s RBC Finance Studio
There are dozens of talented Toronto actors with tons of experience who don’t appear onstage enough here. One of them is Campbell, whose more than three decades of credits include many productions of Michael Hollingsworth’s The History of the Village of the Small Huts plays, premieres at Buddies and his own play OUT, which premiered at the Fringe. His spirited performance as a variety of characters elevated the uneven The Flin Flon Cowboy last season.
In Elena Kaufman’s Divine Monster, about a young Canadian musician (Hope Goudsward) who encounters the ghost of the legendary actress Sarah Bernhardt (Bonnie Anderson) at the Père Lachaise Cemetery, Campbell plays some of the other literary ghosts haunting the place, like Molière and Oscar Wilde. Divine casting. See info here.
Who: Rebecca Perry
What: Writer/performer, Confessions of a Redheaded Coffeeshop Girl
Where: Alumnae Theatre Mainspace
It’s hard to believe it’s been more than a decade since Perry donned a red apron, poured out a cup of java and acted and sang her way into our hearts in Confessions of a Coffeeshop Girl, her acclaimed solo show about a recent anthropology grad who works as a barista and studies the goings on in her workplace like a latter day Jane Goodall.
Perry has since gone on to do lots of work onstage and on TV, but Fringe goers here, across the country and even the UK can’t get enough of this particular show, as funny and sharply observed as it is poignant. Plus, you get a bunch of well-sung songs. After this run, directed by Matt Bernard and (originally) Michael Rubinstein, Perry and the show returns to the Edinburgh Fringe to celebrate the show’s 10th anniversary. Let’s all drink to that. See info here.
Who: Christopher Manousos
What: Dramaturg, artistic support** for Sex Goddess
Where: Tarragon Solo Room
One of this season’s most unforgettable shows was House + Body’s innovative and bracing production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, performed by voice actors at a recording studio at Crow’s Studio space. The artist behind that high concept was dramaturg and adapter Manousos, who’s also Crow’s Associate Artist.
At this year’s Fringe, Manousos did dramaturgical work and gave artistic support to writer/performer Riel Reddick-Stevens in her show about the listening party for a pop star’s new album in which she relates one wild night in her past that changed her life forever. With hiphop and R&B music on the soundtrack and Manousos’ contribution, expect a wild theatrical ride, too. See info here. **an earlier press release stated that Manousos was directing this show.
Who: Tim Walker
What: Actor in The Adding Machine
Where: Puppy Sphere, the Burroughes Building, 639 Queen West
Walker’s name in a cast list always makes me happy. He is one of those rare performers who seems like such an Everyman but who can — when pressed — ratchet up the intensity of a scene to an unnerving level. He’s done it in shows like Kat Sandler’s Punch-Up and Help Yourself, and he did it again recently in Graham Isador’s Truck.
In The Adding Machine, adapted by director Alice Fox Lundy and dramaturg Guillermo Verdecchia from Elmer Rice’s 1923 play, Walker stars as Mr. Zero, an accountant who’s fired and replaced by a machine — talk about relevant!
Joining him in this expressionist classic are actors Jen McEwen, Dani Zimmer, Jamar Adams-Thompson and Fringe fave Breanna Dillon. The Queen West site-specific venue should provide an extra bit of immersive realism. See info here.
A bonus list of more artists worth catching
• Nam Nguyen (A Perfect Bowl of Pho) and Aaron Brown, writer/performers in Quiz Icarus, about their time on the TV quiz show Jeopardy!
• Writer and Composer Andrew Seok and his Almost Ever After cast, including Julia Pulo, Kimmy Truong, Kelly Holiff, James Daly, Marisa McIntyre and Kevin Morris
• Apothecary writers Laura Piccinin and Allison Wither and director Cass Van Wyck, Fringe veterans all of them
• Theatre veteran Joe Matheson is joined by rising musical theatre stars like Olivia Daniels, Meredith Shedden and Ian Kowalski in the kids’ musical Playground, which features songs by the Juno Award-winning singer/songwriter Jack Grunsky
• Barbara “Babz” Johnston and her show Songs of a Wannabe, loosely inspired by her experiences in a Spice Girls Tribute Band, featuring songs by Johnson, Suzy Wilde and Anika Johnson, and directed by Mitchell Cushman
• Peter Cavell and Megan Phillips, who have revised their 2015 Best of Fringe hit People Suck! A Musical Airing of Grievances, just when people are sucking more than ever. What doesn’t suck is that Dear Evan Hansen actor Jessica Sherman directs.
• Fringe program cover boy Adam Francis Proulx (The Family Crow), who teams up with director Byron Laviolette for Emilio’s a Million Chameleons
• Margot Greve and Ben Kopp, the duo who created Fringe hit Killing Time, are back with a new show: Iris (Says Goodbye)
• plus way too many sketch comics to mention