“I think sometimes playwrights get too caught up in trying to be ‘universal,’” explains director Jake Planinc. “It’s paradoxical: the more specific the writing, the more accessible it becomes for the audience.”
That conviction lies at the heart of his latest project: a Toronto remount of Leaving Home, the landmark 1972 drama by Newfoundland-born playwright David French. Planinc, Artistic Director of Halifax’s Matchstick Theatre, is bringing his company’s award-winning production to Toronto’s Coal Mine Theatre from June 10-22, 2025, where it will launch the venue’s new guest residency series – marking the first time that Coal Mine has opened its stage to an outside company.
More than fifty years after its legendary debut at Tarragon Theatre, French’s moving exploration of intergenerational love, family, and loss has begun anew to affect audiences across the country. Set in 1950s Toronto, Leaving Home centres on the Mercer family: father Jacob, mother Mary, and their two sons Ben and Billy – Newfoundlanders in search of a better life who have resettled in the city. The two-act play unfolds mostly over the course of a single day, and its centerpiece is a tense family dinner, as they prepare for the shotgun wedding of Billy and discover that Ben is also preparing to leave the house. Meanwhile, Jacob clings to the past, struggling to understand the changes pulling his family apart.
Leaving Home features the acting ensemble of Shelley Thompson, Lou Campbell, Sam Vigneault, Andrew Musselman (who takes over the role of Jacob from Nova Scotia’s Hugh Thompson, who performed the role in Halifax), Abby Weisbrot, Sharleen Kalayil, and Sébastien Labelle. And Planic is excited to show off the ensemble’s work.
“It’s a huge honour to be the first guest production at the Coal Mine,” says Planinc. “I’ve been a fan for years. The work I’ve seen there has been inspiring. Ted Dykstra has an amazing eye for talent and great taste in plays. And as a space, the Coal Mine is not unlike the Bus Stop Theatre Co-op in Halifax, the black box where we cut our teeth. It allows for the kind of intimacy that naturalistic plays thrive in.”
A personal passion and vision
While working towards his MFA at the University of Alberta, Planinc studied under Dykstra, Coal Mine’s Chief Engineer and co-founder. In fact, it was their long-ago discussions about the play which planted the long-gestating idea of reviving Leaving Home in Planinc’s mind. “He and I had some excellent conversations… and I thought he might be interested in seeing our show; it was a big one for us, and I was keen to show it off,” Planinc shares. “I’d dreamed of taking the production to Toronto, and the Coal Mine was always my #1 target. I’m incredibly grateful. The whole team at the Coal Mine has made us feel so welcome. It’s a huge opportunity for us to showcase our work to a new audience in one of the greatest cities for theatre in North America.”
For Planinc, the play’s enduring power lies in French’s “honesty, specificity, and craftsmanship”. “David French wrote what he knew…,” he explains. “While I may not identify with some of the action in the play or know its period first hand, I can definitely access the relationships, tension, love, and emotion. French is going for catharsis, and he nails it.”
As a director, Planinc describes the challenge of a classic as “balancing reverence and the inherently contemporary lens”. And in his quest to do this, he took inspiration from Ravi Jain’s spare, innovative staging of Salt-Water Moon at Factory Theatre. “That changed my perception of how to treat ‘classic’ Canadian plays. I’m not saying our production is anything like that one, but it was a shift for me.” Salt-Water Moon is in fact the prequel to Leaving Home: it tells the love story of parents Jacob and Mary when they were teenagers in Newfoundland. “As a director, I honour the text,” Planinc adds. “Leaving Home was first produced in the early 1970s and is set in 1950s Toronto, so there was a lot to learn about time and place. However, I was not surprised to see how much the play resonated with our team and audiences in Halifax. Domestic dramas of this quality tend to last and remain affecting. I also think the play has newfound relevance with contemporary understandings of self-determinism and identity.”
Staging Leaving Home in the round – with the audience seated around the performing space rather than in the traditional top-down formation – was a deliberate artistic choice: “I was inspired by productions I’ve seen at the Coal Mine and elsewhere in Toronto. I love stagings where the audience is confronted with itself. It makes for a heightened and involved experience,” Planinc enthuses, before suggesting the inevitability of the choice: “Naturalistic plays are meant to be seen up close. Staging the play in the round gives more people the opportunity to be right up against the action. I’m also lucky to get to work with incredible actors and designers who shine in this kind of intimate setting.”
A Canadian call to action
The production, which won Outstanding Production and Direction at the 2025 Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Awards, is not only a successful revival but a call for Canadian theatre to reclaim and re-stage its classics. “Why did it take thirty-five years (1972 to 2007) for Leaving Home to be professionally produced for a second time in Toronto?” Planinc asks, then answers his own question: “I don’t think we have an appropriate amount of reverence in Canada for our own body of work.” (In an elegant symmetry, it was Dykstra who directed the first Toronto revival of Leaving Home at Soulpepper Theatre in 2007, 35 years after its original run closed Tarragon’s first season.)
Planinc points to the structure and incentives of public funding as a possible impediment: “We don’t have the long theatrical history of original work that America or England have, but we are overly focused on producing new work as a country… While it’s great for our cultural ecosystem, many new plays have their first life, get published, and then get dusty on the shelf,” he observes, adding, “I want to change that.”
His first exposure to Canadian plays came during his undergraduate studies at Mount Allison University, courtesy of professor Glen Nichols. “I really had no exposure to Canadian plays before his Canadian theatre course. Leaving Home was the first play we read, and it opened my mind. Shout out to Jerry Wasserman too – his collections are full of amazing plays.” Now, as an artist determined to give Canadian works their due, Planinc is paying that experience forward. “When I wanted to start producing my own work outside of school, I quickly realized that very few companies were focused on producing established Canadian texts. It was a clear mission that I threw myself into.”
As both a director and a passionate advocate for Canadian drama, Planinc has found Leaving Home “a masterpiece and a joy to work on. The more you give to it, the more it gives back.” And he gives credit to his company and colleagues for enabling his work: “I have directed 8 plays with Matchstick. The company is my artistic home. Many of the people working behind the scenes on Leaving Home are dear friends and long-time collaborators. I believe in surrounding yourself with people who are smarter and more talented than you. I’m lucky in this sense to have such an incredible team.”
As Leaving Home prepares to open in Toronto, Planinc hopes that people will “take a chance” on the show. “We’re so thankful for the support from the Coal Mine and excited to get a chance to show our stuff in Toronto! Leaving Home has been on the shelf for too long, and we at Matchstick are thrilled to be bringing it back to life.”
The Toronto run of Matchstick Theatre’s Leaving Home takes place from June 10 – 22, 2025 at Coal Mine Theatre. Tickets are available at matchsticktheatre.simpletix.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
