Aurora director wins four Thea Awards for The Drowning Girls

August 13, 2026 · 0 Comments

Aurora’s Carol Santagato-Davies stirred her coffee at Poached Dreams Diner on Thursday morning and admitted she was pleasantly “surprised” when The Drowning Girls won multiple awards at the 2026 Association of Community Theatre Central Ontario Awards Gala.

However, the veteran director smiled about the quartet of Theas that the production raked in and confided, “I knew it was a great play and we had an excellent team.”

Santagato-Davies attended the ACTCO Awards Night and witnessed her stunning version of Beth Graham’s play earn Thea statuettes for Best Production, Best Ensemble Piece, Best Lighting Design, and Best Stage Management.

Although Santagato-Davies was edged out of the Best Director Award and acknowledged that she was “thrilled about being nominated for Best Director,” the Aurora resident extolled the virtues of her own Stage Manager and reveled in her production partner’s success.

“I was really happy that Sarah McDonald won for best Stage Management. It’s a role that’s often overlooked. Sarah did so much work. She been with the Markham Little Theatre for years and she’s one of the best.”

In addition to praising her Stage Manager, Santagato-Davies addressed the reasons why The Drowning Girls captured the Best Production award: “I was happiest about Drowning Girls winning Best Production—to me, the production and all its complex elements were being recognized. It was a Canadian woman’s story and I was thrilled by the entire journey.”

The Director’s journey included getting the most out of her three-person cast and coaxing award-winning performances from Christine Sawka Fraser, Alyssa Spear, and Lindsay Woodford. All three created much sympathy for their doomed Edwardian Era characters. Margaret, Alice, and Bessie are drowned in their own bathtubs by their serial killer husband, George Joseph Smith, whose terrifying acts became known as the “Brides in the Bath” murders.

Amazingly, Fraser, Spear, and Woodfield took on the roles of more than thirty characters. When Drowning Girls captured the Best Ensemble Piece Award under Santagato-Davies’s fine direction, she says she was pleased that the trio of performers got the credit they earned on stage: “Winning the Best Ensemble Piece honoured all these actors—Christine, Alyssa, and Lindsay were equal in their talents.”

The three winning actors moved seamlessly from scene to scene in the post-modern production – animating a swath of characters and helped the audience co-create “the chilling tale of love, betrayal, and murder.”

Their on-stage performances were complemented by above-stage illumination provided expertly by Mary Jane Boon who won a Thea for Best Lighting Design.

Santagato-Davies offered insights into the vital importance of lighting in Drowning Girls and why her key crew member was full value for the 2026 Award: “I knew when I saw the finished product before Opening Night that this was award-winning calibre. MJ has been around forever. There’s a sense of awe toward MJ and it was no surprise that she won for Best Lighting. There were over one hundred lighting cues in the production. She made the production spectacular.”

Aiming for similarly spectacular results, Santagato-Davies’s next stage project will be directing Rabbit Hole at Richmond Hill’s Curtain Club during the 2027 Theatre Season. The show runs from January 29 to February 13.

Between directorial gigs, Santagato-Davies discussed her most recent connection to the Curtain Club.

“I worked on the crew to stage a comic version of Dracula in one of the Club’s Summer productions. I had agreed to help with props and, suddenly, I was the Assistant Stage Manager. The experience of being on the crew for a Curtain Club’s production allowed me to work with Wayne Milliner again and I got a chance to make connections with so many people. Wayne did the set design for Drowning Girls and he’s the President of The Curtain Club so I was invited to take on the challenges of directing Rabbit Hole with its five-actor cast. Wayne will be mentoring our Set Designer for Rabbit Hole.”

Santagato-Davies is looking forward to staging Rabbit Hole—a play about “the complexity of family dynamics.”

“It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for its portrayal of a husband and wife eight months after they’ve lost their four-year-old son,” she says. “There’s also a movie version starring Nicole Kidman. It’s about the grief that surrounds the family after their preschooler runs out on to the road and is fatally struck by a car driven by a 17-year-old. Auditions for the five-character cast are September 10 and 12. We’ll be doing callbacks on September 13.”

When asked about the most satisfying aspect of directing community theatre in Markham and Richmond Hill, Santagato-Davies sipped her coffee and, on cue, noted “Meeting so many creative souls.”

By Jim Stewart
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter