Right now, beneath two willow trees in Withrow Park, a quartet of actors are spinning a centuries-old story into a glittering new fable.
Created by Nathaniel Hanula-James and Christine Horne, directed by Patricia Allison, and presented by Shakespeare in the Ruff, Tiff’ny of Athens reimagines Shakespeare’s little-performed tragedy Timon of Athens as the story of a celebrity socialite. In this re-telling, the celebrity’s fall from fortune becomes a comic parable about money, community, and what really matters. “The real-world parallel that Christine suggested for Tiff’ny was Dolly Parton,” shares co-creator Nathaniel Hanula-James. “We really latched onto that: … someone who is a force for good… but who isn’t necessarily aware of where everyone else around her is sitting economically.”
Why Timon, and why now
The choice to adapt Timon of Athens grew out of Shakespeare in the Ruff’s collaborative process. “We think about the issues or the things that we feel are pressing to us, or that we want to talk about. Then we think of the play that might help facilitate exploring those ideas,” explains Hanula-James. Following up on the success of last year’s Ruff-commissioned A Witch in Algiers (Makram Ayache’s Dora Award–winning adaptation of The Tempest), the choice also reflects the company’s continued commitment to socially conscious programming that engages with contemporary concerns.
“A year or so ago, we were thinking about money and financial precarity. It was something that we were feeling as a company, as individuals, and as artists,” continues Hanula-Jones. This feeling came into even sharper relief when the Toronto Vital Signs Report named economic precarity as a major threat to Torontonians’ physical and mental well-being. “It’s such a pressing issue right now,” nods Hanula-James, while pointing to the sudden spike in lettuce prices last year as one small but telling example of “living in chaotic and precarious times economically.”
As it turned out, “Patricia Allison has always wanted to do Timon of Athens – because that’s a play that deals with capitalism and debt and wealth and economics.” So the decision was simple: “This is the time. It’s time to do that.” Now, as the team began considering the play’s class dynamics, they wondered, “How rich is Tiff’ny?”, and saw the need to ground each character in a specific financial reality. This extended to reinterpreting the play’s poet and painter characters – not as hacks exploiting wealth, but as figures who are navigating the challenges that today’s arts organizations face, in trying to secure funding and philanthropy.
So this is no abstract dramaturgical exercise for the creators: “Most of the wealth in the world is concentrated in the hands of so few,” Hanula-James explains. “I think there are going to be moments when people in the audience are going to be like, ‘Oh my God, yeah. Me too! I’ve been there!’” For Horne, it’s about wrestling with contradictions: “There’s this feeling of being stuck. We live in capitalism. We need it for funding for the arts, but it also is ruining our lives in other ways,” she notes. “We wanted to talk about it, knowing that we’re [not saying] ‘here’s the answer. We’ve solved capitalism.’ We certainly have not! But we wanted to talk about how we’re sitting in the question and the problem of it.”
Reimagining Timon as Tiff’ny
The decision to make Tiff’ny the protagonist came partly from necessity: the role was originally intended for Jeff Yung, another Shakespeare in the Ruff collective member, but when he became unavailable, Horne proposed that they turn Timon into Tiff’ny – and that she take on the role herself.
“Tiff’ny” is a name with surprising history: it sounds modern, but in fact appears in medieval records. Its timeless quality gave the creators licence to craft a character who could move between eras and sensibilities. And recasting Timon as a woman also opened new thematic ground. “I don’t think there is a single female principal character” In the original play,” notes Hanula-James. “In ours, most of the other characters have been transposed into female characters” – and this “opens up different opportunities for solidarity.”
Horne also underlines how this new Tiff’ny came by her fortune: “She made a bunch of money really young. She didn’t inherit it. She did earn it, but she got really wealthy really fast, and doesn’t know how to handle it. She is trying to do good things with it, but isn’t necessarily aware of this system that is really benefiting her.”
Building the world and the script
Hanula-Jones calls the outdoor staging a “natural fit” because “the main character flees into the forest after realizing that they’ve lost all of their money.” The creators conceived a troupe of scrappy “Thespians” performing a play within a play under two willow trees, using “props and decades-old repainted set pieces” to create a cheeky, self-aware theatrical world. This framing device gave them room to weave into the action both contemporary commentary and accessibility features.
The script blends the play attributed to Shakespeare, with original writing and various found materials. Horne and Hanula-James see this as continuing the spirit of collaboration at the heart of the original play, which scholars believe was co-written by Shakespeare and playwright Thomas Middleton. The script’s language folds into the two writers’ creation contemporary political speeches, poetry – and even, thanks to Horne’s timely receipt of an unexpected letter, the bureaucratic and vaguely menacing stylings of the Canada Revenue Agency. “That is something that I am certainly familiar with — the anxiety of, ‘you have a phone call from the CRA’. What does that mean?’ I think a lot of people can relate to that feeling!” notes Horne.
The bottom line is that she and Hanula-James “just really gave ourselves full permission to be as outlandish as possible” with the mix: embracing shifts in tone and style, rather than smoothing them into a single voice. And this collage-like approach also allowed them to reshape the ending. “We knew that we didn’t want Timon dying in the woods. We knew the arc that we wanted,” Horne explains. “We would find things that helped us tell the story we were discovering.”
Accessibility, inclusion and interdependence
In keeping with the accessibility that is central to Ruff’s ethos, the collective’s leadership is collaborating on Tiff’ny of Athens with consultants from the blind community. For example, “there is audio description embedded right into the text of the play, which sighted audiences probably aren’t going to even notice,” Horne notes. ”But a blind audience is going to be receiving a lot more information about what’s happening.”
And that’s just one layer. “We make our shows financially accessible and friendly and welcoming.” Every performance is free or pay-what-you-can, and all are relaxed. Accessibility measures include open live captions, mobility-device ramps, touch tours, and sighted guides.
“It’s important to us,” she says simply. And it’s the real-life extension of a spirit of mutual reliance that the creators have built right into Tiff’ny of Athens: “When we were developing the play, Patricia Allison [wanted] this idea of interdependence. That’s something that, by the end of the story, Tiff’ny and the artists are arriving at … just needing each other.” And the cast — Horne, Lucy Hill, Warona Setshwaelo, and Ben Yoganathan — embody it in “how desperately we all need each other on stage. We are really helping each other with ‘Where’s my costume?’, handing this prop over… We are like one organism, trying to make this thing happen altogether.” “They never stop moving,” marvels Hanula-James. And “this ragtag group also operates the lights and the sound. They’re like heroes!”
Right now, beneath two willow trees in Withrow Park, a quartet of actors are spinning a centuries-old collaboration into a glittering new blend of Elizabethan satire, contemporary wit, and urgent social commentary. And just maybe, Horne hopes, audiences are finding something important that they “didn’t think about before”. Or finding themselves, and realizing, “I feel seen.”
Tiff’ny of Athens runs until August 31, at 7:30 pm in Withrow Park, 725 Logan Avenue, Toronto, Ontario. Tickets are available through the link here.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
