Presented by The Bruce County Playhouse in celebration of Remembrance Day 2025, Stevie Vallance is performing MY SHINING HOUR with Vivien Kershaw on Nov 7 & 9.
Portraying her Aunt Viv as an RCAF clerk, Stevie will be singing love songs from WW1 and WW2 while photos of veterans, that include scenes of Saugeen Shores supplied by war-researcher Bill Streeter, will be projected in the background. “The story will be told from the perspective of my aunt as a young woman who has just married her soldier-love on a weekend leave,” she says. “We will follow Viv through the war: through the loving and the leaving, the letters and the worrying, the waiting and the wondering.” When the war ended in 1945, the military awarded Vivien (who spelled her name in the masculine sense) with a scholarship to study Art in Montreal, where one of her teachers was Arthur Lismer, who compared her style to Emily Carr’s. (Music Director/piano: John McLelland)
You may remember Vallance, who also wrote, directed and starred as "Eliza Knowles" in The Night Guy Came to Town, a musical about Guy Lombardo’s performance at the Southampton Dance Pavilion, during the Great Depression. The musical-play was staged at the Southampton Town Hall in 2023, in front of a full house. The audience came dressed in period garb and a group of Southampton residents offered their talent to play their ancestors who attended Guy’s actual Dance in 1935.
Due to unforeseen circumstances, we have had to cancel the November 9 matinee performance of My Shining Hour with Vivian Kershaw. Current ticket holders will be contacted.
Tickets for our Friday evening performance of
My Shining Hour, as well as tickets for
Billy Bishop Goes to War on Saturday evening is still available. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Billy Bishop Goes to War, the award-winning Canadian musical, comedy and drama that brings audiences leaping to their feet!
This beloved show, and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama winner, pays tribute to Canada’s iconic WW1 hero and flying ace, from Owen Sound, Billy Bishop. The two-man musical features actor Matt John Evans portraying the legendary Bishop and an astonishing 15 other characters. Matt has appeared in the Canadian feature films Beowulf & Grendel, Black Swan, and The Bird Men, as well as CBC’s Murdoch Mysteries and Fellow Travellers on Paramount+.
Musician Michael Mulrooney co-pilots "Billy Bishop Goes to War" with Evans, using the on-stage piano to score and punctuate battle scenes, taking us from barrooms to ballrooms and capturing both humour and heartstrings with skillful musicianship. Mulrooney is a sought-after music director, conductor, pianist, and arranger who has worked on the Canadian theatrical productions of "The Lion King," "Phantom of the Opera," "Ragtime," and
"Showboat." Michael has taught at York University and is currently a professor in the prestigious Sheridan College Musical Theatre Program.
Diana Bishop, granddaughter of Billy Bishop, and former producer for CBC, CTV, NBC and Global Television, said of this production, “Matt is my favourite Billy Bishop ever. He is a tour de force as my grandfather. He brought Billy Bishop to life! Your incredible energy and your fresh approach to the material struck me. I completely forgot that you were an actor and felt I was actually watching my grandfather. You were superb.”
