Blyth Festival 2025: Christante steps up in her second season
BY SHAWN LOUGHLIN
After a successful first season with the Blyth Festival in 2024, Shelayna Christante is back with a full slate of work for the 2025 season, starring in The Wind Coming Over The Sea and as part of the cast for Quiet in the Land and Radio Town: The Doc Cruickshank Story.
Christante was part of last year’s charming and talented all-female cast of Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz: The Farmerettes. Her casting in that show was the product of some early work during her time at George Brown Theatre School with Severn Thompson, the award-winning director and associate artistic director of the Blyth Festival. The two worked together when Christante was studying and, when Thompson was casting Onion Skins and Peach Fuzz, she gave her old colleague a call.
The relationship has proven to be a good one with the success of last year’s show and now a triumphant return that will see her take on three shows in one season, something she has not yet done in her young career.
For Christante, it all started in the relatively small town of Red Deer, Alberta, where she was drawn to drama and performance very early, always finding an opportunity to act or sing for her friends and family. In fact, Christante says her mother tells a story about Christante’s older brother’s Kindergarten play being performed and Christante sneaking her way on stage and dancing, so it was in her blood from a very early age. She then took part in drama programming at her high school, however, with Red Deer not exactly being one of the world’s artistic hotbeds, she wasn’t able to attend a dedicated art or theatre high school and worked within the structure of her school in Alberta.
That led her to theatre school. She made her way east and began learning at George Brown Theatre School, graduating in 2023.
Since then, she has worked with the Bad Hats Theatre in Narnia, directed by Fiona Sauder, and Don Giovanni at the Canadian Opera Company, directed by Amy Lane, ahead of her Blyth Festival debut in last year’s season.
In her first production this year, she’ll play the role of Jane in The Wind Coming Over The Sea, a love story penned by celebrated author and playwright Emma Donoghue. This opportunity has been especially sweet for Christante, at least in the early days. First off, she is a big fan of Donoghue’s, so she’s been in awe of the writer during the early days of rehearsal. Second, she’ll be starring in this romantic epic about Irish immigrants coming to Canada with her real-life partner, Landon Doak, who will play Henry in the show, which she says is a true thrill.
Later in the season, Christante will play the role of Kate in Quiet in the Land and then be part of the Radio Town company.
She says she’s grateful for the opportunity to be such a big part of the season, but also a bit overwhelmed at the sheer workload of the season, acting in three shows over the course of the next few months. She says she had done two shows in repertory before, but never three, so this will be a challenge, but one she’s excited to take on.
As far as her relationship with the Blyth Festival is concerned, Christante says she thoroughly enjoyed her introduction to Blyth last season and was happy to make her return earlier this year. The Farm Show, the founding of the Blyth Festival and the work of people like Paul Thompson and his contemporaries has become required reading in theatre school as far as the birth of Canadian theatre. So, to come to Blyth and be part of the Festival and meet some of the people who were part of that transformation has been amazing, she said.