Not many groups or clubs can say they have the longevity to last five decades. It’s not something that happens without some committed, passionate, and, in the case of Stage North Theatre Society, dramatic individuals.
And that is meant in the best possible way.
The Fort St. John thespian group has existed since 1977, when it was part of the Northern Lights College Theatre Program.
They will mark their 50th season this fall, which Stage North executive director Taylor Hastings is excited for.
“I think that Stage North, in its 50th year, is in an exciting place,” Hastings said.
“Our membership keeps growing year over year. Our audiences keep coming out and looking forward to shows.”
Hastings was born and raised in Vancouver, and moved to Fort St. John with her husband, Ben Bilodeau, and the first of their children to make it easier for Hastings to stay home with her kids.
It was Ben’s hometown, and she knew nothing about the area when they arrived.
It didn’t take her long to find her people once she went looking.
“I reached out to Emry Mika, the previous executive director, and said I was new to town, but I was into acting and could teach some workshops, and they just opened their arms and said, ‘Sure, what do you want to do? How do you want to be involved?’
“They were very forthcoming with opportunity.”
While a newbie to Stage North, relatively speaking, Hastings is not new to theatre.
She has been involved in theatre her whole life, be it silly community shows or professional productions.
She went to an acting conservatory after graduation and spent 15 years working in film and TV, including a number of Hallmark movies.
“I had a feeling that Hallmark belonged in Fort St. John,” she said.
“Fort St. John is one of those Hallmark small towns, and I was having these experiences of being a big city girl moving to a small town…my husband doesn’t wear enough plaid though.”
This inspired her and Ben to write Peace Country Christmas, a musical parody of the stereotypical Hallmark movies set in Fort St. John.
It was so popular that Hastings had to do a follow-up and wrote Peace Country Harvest.
Hastings may be a Stage North newbie, but others in the group have helped keep things moving forward for decades.
Ted Sloan, the past president of Stage North, took his first role with the group 24 years ago. Despite the number of years spent with the organization, he’s still considered one of the younger members.
“My first role with Stage North, I was supposed to play a 14-year-old kid,” he said, noting that he was 14 at the time, so that made sense.
“However, when I got to the first rehearsal, I was told there’d been a change and I was now playing a 40-something man.
“It’s pretty funny looking back on it now, but that’s just how theatre is sometimes.”
Theatre was part of Sloan’s life even before he joined Stage North. He took part in school plays before actually going to school for theatre in university. He’s currently the theatre teacher at North Peace Secondary School, where he can encourage the next generations of thespians, stage managers, and directors.
“I have loved every minute of it,” he said.
Blair Scott has been a member of Stage North since he moved to Fort St. John in 1997. He remembers being amazed that a town like that not only had a cultural centre, but an actual 400-seat theatre.
“This guy came along and started talking theatre with me and said, ‘oh would you like to see the theatre?’ I went in there — I was used to a 20-foot stage in an old church — and I was just in awe of it. It blew me away,” said Scott. “I worked with guys who had no idea it existed, and it had been here for five years already.”
In his nearly 30 years with the group, Scott has seen it all. There are years where everything goes smoothly, and others where there’s barely any money to put on a season’s worth of shows. Fundraising is a huge part of Stage North’s work.
“We would go around to the garage sales on the weekends, gave them a piece of paper that said, ‘if any of your stuff is left at the end of the garage sale, let us know. If you can drop it off, great; if not we’ll come and get it,’” he said.
“We just stored stuff up and had a massive garage sale. We would make $10,000 on those garage sales. We’d do a car wash there too, and a barbecue selling burgers.”
One thing Scott was committed to from the outset was for Stage North to make a name for itself and really represent the dedication people had to theatre. That involved getting Stage North back into festivals and competing at Mainstage.
Mainstage is a provincial theatre competition put on by Theatre BC.
The province is divided into zones, and each zone will hold their own festival with a professional adjudicator to see which play will go on to represent their zone at Mainstage.
A show that wins Best Production at the zone festival gets the chance to be performed as part of the Mainstage competition.
The other shows in the zone festival have the chance to be a workshop play that the cast and crew will take down to get help from theatre pros, get feedback, and make the show even better.
Stage North won Mainstage in 2006.
In 2025, after years of having to make the journey south, Fort St. John finally got to host the event itself. From what Hastings heard from those in the theatre community outside of the Peace Region, it went extremely well.
“What I put together was that they were wildly impressed with what Fort St. John put together,” she said, “The team that put Mainstage together knocked it out of the ballpark, and now we do have this reputation in the province for theatre, which is very cool.”
Family is important in Stage North. As a young mom, Hastings was able to bring her kids along to work on the sets for Peace Country Christmas; her children’s footprints are visible on the concrete from where they got into a bit of paint.
Scott’s daughter learned to read by helping her dad run lines in their living room. Both of his kids have been in Stage North shows and went on to do theatre outside the region.
Sloan directed Mamma Mia, having not only his wife, Jeryn (Mackey), on stage, but his mother and father involved in the show as well.
“We’ve had a number of parent-child duos being in shows,” said Hastings.
“One guy came out for Mamma Mia for the ensemble because his daughter was graduating high school and she was in the show and he just wanted to do something with her. And then he was the lead in the musical the next year.
“It’s cool to see families come in and participate all together and see their family base grow with new people. I think it’s super duper special.”
Something for everyone
Whether you like musicals, classics or murder mysteries, there’s something for everyone in Stage North’s 50th season.
The first show will feature the group’s annual musical production; this year being the classic, Annie.
Hastings said they had about 90 people show up to audition for the show.
The second show will be a holiday performance of A Christmas Carol in collaboration with the Northern Lights Choral Society.
The show was created by the CBC and is usually performed as a radio play, but the two groups will work together to bring the show to life on stage.
“It’s our first time collaborating with the choir, so we’re really excited,” said Hastings.
In the new year, the group will break out the Olde English with The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged), a comedy that condenses the Bard’s works into more bite-sized tableaus that constantly breaks the fourth wall.
After that is The Cafe Mocha Murders, a hilarious whodunnit set in a coffee shop where the baristas and customers are trying to solve a murder. This show is in collaboration with the Rotary Club and will be a dinner theatre performance.
The final show of the season, Mustard, falls into the category of twisted fairy tale involving an imaginary friend that refuses to leave when his kid grows up.
The cool thing about this season is that every show is being done by a first-time director; having a mix of experienced members with new and developing members allows people to step outside their comfort zone and try new things.
Scott has seen people who swore up and down they would only do backstage work take on a tiny role in a show, leading them to trying out for the lead in the next one.
People who have never directed get to learn just how a show all comes together by talking to and getting advice from mentors within the group. And those who want to learn can shadow a more experienced director or stage manager or choreographer.
“Theatre opens people up,” said Scott, “we’ve had so many parents come to us and tell us that after we’ve had their kids in a show, and they go ‘man, we can’t believe it, it’s like their kid is a different person [in a good way].’”
“It changes lives,” said Hastings.
If there’s one thing Scott would like to see for Stage North going forward, it’s having their own space. When he arrived in Fort St. John, Stage North was set up in the old Sew-It-Yourself Shop, which has since been torn down. From there, they moved to a spot affectionately called Three Doors Down, which was a warehouse, and then they went out on the Airport Road where Tracker Contracting currently resides.
After that, they were in the basement of the Co-op Mall, before landing at their current location on Northern Lights Drive, which is thanks to the Surerus family.
“I would love to get to a point, maybe years down the road, where we have our own space.
“That’s always been our dream is to get our own space and then we can do what we want…build a stage and run shows for a month,” he said.
“Beyond that, I just want to see it always thrive and keep the new members coming in and they’re doing a good job right now, getting younger kids and stuff in.”
Ted is reminded of something one of the early members of Stage North, Brad Paisley, who went on to found the Edmonton Fringe Festival, said during a convocation ceremony at the University of Alberta, where Ted went to theatre school.
“So my hope, and this is a quote that as I said, my hope is that Stage North strives to be a safe and inclusive organization that creates spaces for high-quality plays, theatrical experiences and training.
“We strive to be curious about everything, tenacious in creating our art.
“We strive to be kind and hold it as a pillar of our organization.
“And we strive to be human and let our members explore their humanity through our organization.
“I hope that we continue to do those things, kind, inclusive, and curious.”
**This story has been edited from its original version to correct a name which previously said Nicky and was changed to Jeryn (Mackey). We apologize for any inconvenience our error may have caused.
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