In 2023 Stone Fence Theatre toured the Valley with Tom Thomson and the Colours of Canada and raised about $10,000 for local hospitals.
It launched Conspiracy Conniptions, a zany comedy set in a doughnut shop and sung in gospel music style.
It’s about how the arrival in the small town of Cobtown, Ontario of unruly protestors causes a young man and a young woman and everyone around them to re-examine their lives and beliefs. Everything’s on the table at the doughnut shop. The play asks serious questions about how to change minds in today’s fragmented, polarized climate, and it suggests possibilities.
The show’s book and music, most of it in gospel style, were written by Ish Theilheimer, and it was directed and choreographed by Chantal Elie. Choir director is keyboard artist Schroeder Nordholt.
A lot of the action takes place in Cobtown Donut Heaven. There, Abigail (Amber Dagenais, of Eganville), a fitness nut whose Mom owns the shop, tries to convince her boyfriend Brayden (Ryan Webster, of Renfrew), a car nut who works in his Dad’s garage, to change his climate-change-denial views. She’s also exasperated with her parents. Her mother, Lois (Fran Pinkerton) bakes doughnuts named for well-known conspiracy theories and her Dad, Mel (Robert Tremblay), has a laundry list of his favourites.
Things explode when a crowd of protestors take over the shop and subsequently wear out their welcome, leaving everyone’s views altered, offering some possible answers to the question – how to change minds – and also how to get back to “normal” in a polarized society.
The cast also included Stone Fence Theatre favourites Jayson Bradshaw, Evan Burgess, Bianca Goldie, Cathy Lyons, Ambrose Mullin, and introduced Tabitha Green. The band was made up of Schroeder Nordholt (keys), Ish Theilheimer (percussion and guitar), Derek Tolhurst (bass), and Evan Burgess (guitar).