At The Second City this October, fourteen young actors will storm the stage with The Ensemble, a play that asks the question “What happens if the protagonists never show up?”
Adapted from José Sanchis Sinisterra’s Los Figurantes, the production is a witty and daring exploration of free will, identity, and the audacity it takes to claim space as a performer. Directed by Christel Bartelse and adapted by playwrights and co-producers Aliyah Bourgeault and Emmet Logue, it’s an ambitious launch for a collective of emerging artists eager to make their mark.
The seeds of the project were planted when a large group of classmates began dreaming about what would follow their formal education. “When we were in our third and final year of theatre school, a group of us got together and decided we wanted to keep working together once we graduated,” Bourgeault recalls. Easier said than done… because a lot of their favourite plays featured only a handful of characters, and they were 14 “hungry actors” ready to take the stage. Even shows with bigger casts usually relied on several main characters, with the others appearing only for brief periods of time. “We struggled trying to find strong scripts that we liked that relied on a big cast”, notes Bourgeault – at least until Logue showed her Sinisterra’s “insane 2.5 hour, 19 person fever dream”. Bourgeault was immediately hooked – because “this play is insane in all the best ways, while still having humour and heart.” It also had an excess of … well, everything.
The necessity of adaptation
So a practical experiment began. The initial goal was to cut down the script to fit a festival slot – but it quickly became something deeper for the fourteen emerging performers who together form the company Perchance Productions: Cooper Bilton, Diana Eremeeva, Mila Trichilo, Maya Granic, Julia Middleton, Kaleb Piper, Dale Rideout, Iza Rincón, Aliyah Bourgeault, Morgan Roy, Chrisevina Tsoura, Emmet Logue, Aaron Ford, and Jack Mosney.
“Initially, we just intended to trim the play down to the hour run time needed for [the Toronto] Fringe (because no one should do a 90-minute fringe show). But we quickly realized that was an impossible task,” Bourgeault explains. “What started as making edits out of necessity turned into adaptation, as we realized that we wanted to bring our own voice to Sinisterra’s concept: the idea of 14 people who want to do theatre so much that they’ll be the person who’ll hold a spear, or only say a single line, just to be around the art they love. We saw a lot of ourselves in that.”
This spirit of self-made artistry carried the group through their first production of The Ensemble at the 2025 Toronto Fringe Festival, where their inventive staging and collective chemistry earned attention for its wit and audacity. Following that success, Perchance Productions is reviving The Ensemble at The Second City Toronto – a larger stage for a show that thrives on scale, chaos, and collaboration.
For this company, humour and heart are inseparable. As Bourgeault sees it, “a lot of really good comedy isn’t just people saying funny things, but people in a situation that feels very important and serious to them, but, in reality, is a little ridiculous. For instance, ‘my boss at a Pirate Company stole $700 dollars from me, told us he regularly drowns raccoons, and then fled to Iceland.’ That’s hilarious.” It may also be true (and a bit dire) that “‘I had trouble paying rent that month’. But good comedy will always have heart because good comedy has stakes and truth. Jokes are funny when they matter”. And The Ensemble is funny “because all of the characters believe they are being profound – not unlike we are, writing these answers.”
Wrangling the chaos
It’s rare to see such a large cast take the stage in Canadian theatre, but “one of the big benefits of being such a tight-knit group is that we’re really not afraid to try anything. We’ve seen each other at 7:00 am running on 2 hours of sleep, rolling around on the floor in Movement class. So we’re not really worried about looking stupid. This is a plus,” Bourgeault winks, “because this show requires a lot of people to look a lot of stupid.”
Not only are they tight-knit and fearless, “these are the 14 strangest people I know, and they each bring their own flavour of weird to the room.” Hunting for adjectives to describe the Perchance Productions team, Bourgeault offers that “‘Electric’ is a good way to put it” … then that “‘Sweaty’ is another.” And at this comment, Logue can’t resist sharing some hard-won practical wisdom the company has gained: “Make sure the church basement you’re rehearsing in has AC!”
Steering the cast’s sweaty, electric energy is director Christel Bartelse. As an accomplished actor, clown, and solo performer, her background in physical theatre and comedy made her the natural choice to helm the production. “Christel is used to herding an entire classroom of clowns,” notes Bourgeault. “We first met her when she directed us in a TYA show in theatre school, and then we continued to work in her clown class. …Christel is very good at managing chaos, and with 14 young actors on stage, we needed someone who could both encourage us and know when to tell us to reel it in.” “As in the case of my dreams of putting a canoe on stage” quips Logue, prompting Bourgeault to agree that, frankly, “the show would have been a mess without her”.
Living deeply in surprise
The ensemble’s cheeky tagline — “There are no small parts, only cowards” — sums up their ethos. “Any good actor can make a meal out of a small role; it just takes a lack of shame and a dose of courage,” explains Bourgeault. “The actors in our show exemplify this to a ‘T’. Every single one of them has limitless courage. We truly believe that there are no small roles, only cowards.” To which Logue can’t help adding, “and a lack of shame seen only at nude beaches and the airport”.
When asked to describe The Ensemble, Bourgeault leans into a truly epic metaphor. She asks you to imagine “if you were reading a book, and the very first chapter had a footnote, and that footnote was an entirely different book. But it’s a really good book, and weirdly, it’s both funny and makes you think about the way we interact with media. And the book gets a little confusing at times because all of a sudden, the book starts talking about books and reading books … but YOU’RE reading a book! And then the book looks you in the eye and starts banging a pot at you. And then everyone takes their clothes off. Sorry, their… book sleeves off?” At this point, she smilingly concedes, “I’ve lost the metaphor.” But the bottom line is this: “This play is absurd. And it lives deeply in surprise, so if you know completely what to expect going into it, you won’t have as much fun.”
The Ensemble is, at its heart, a project about performers on the cusp of their careers, determined to carve out a space for themselves in an industry that too often overlooks collectives this large and ambitious. It’s chaotic, ridiculous, deeply collaborative, and full of the courage it takes to make something new. And the company hopes that “audiences leave laughing, slightly confused … and marginally sweatier than before.”
The Ensemble runs October 16th-18th with shows every night at 7:30 pm, and a second show at 9:30 pm on Saturday, October 18 at The Second City, Toronto. Don’t miss this one-of-a-kind production. Tickets are available at secondcity.com.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
