{"id":38715,"date":"2026-08-13T15:47:50","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:47:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38715"},"modified":"2026-08-13T15:48:14","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T19:48:14","slug":"aurora-director-wins-four-thea-awards-for-the-drowning-girls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/aurora-director-wins-four-thea-awards-for-the-drowning-girls\/","title":{"rendered":"Aurora director wins four Thea Awards for The Drowning Girls"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Aurora\u2019s Carol Santagato-Davies stirred her coffee at Poached Dreams Diner on Thursday morning and admitted she was pleasantly \u201csurprised\u201d when The Drowning Girls won multiple awards at the 2026 Association of Community Theatre Central Ontario Awards Gala.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the veteran director smiled about the quartet of Theas that the production raked in and confided, \u201cI knew it was a great play and we had an excellent team.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santagato-Davies attended the ACTCO Awards Night and witnessed her stunning version of Beth Graham\u2019s play earn Thea statuettes for Best Production, Best Ensemble Piece, Best Lighting Design, and Best Stage Management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although Santagato-Davies was edged out of the Best Director Award and acknowledged that she was \u201cthrilled about being nominated for Best Director,\u201d the Aurora resident extolled the virtues of her own Stage Manager and reveled in her production partner\u2019s success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI was really happy that Sarah McDonald won for best Stage Management. It\u2019s a role that\u2019s often overlooked. Sarah did so much work. She been with the Markham Little Theatre for years and she\u2019s one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In addition to praising her Stage Manager, Santagato-Davies addressed the reasons why The Drowning Girls captured the Best Production award: \u201cI was happiest about Drowning Girls winning Best Production\u2014to me, the production and all its complex elements were being recognized. It was a Canadian woman\u2019s story and I was thrilled by the entire journey.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Director\u2019s 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 \u201cBrides in the Bath\u201d murders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2019s fine direction, she says she was pleased that the trio of performers got the credit they earned on stage: \u201cWinning the Best Ensemble Piece honoured all these actors\u2014Christine, Alyssa, and Lindsay were equal in their talents.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The three winning actors moved seamlessly from scene to scene in the post-modern production \u2013 animating a swath of characters and helped the audience co-create “the chilling tale of love, betrayal, and murder.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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

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: \u201cI knew when I saw the finished product before Opening Night that this was award-winning calibre. MJ has been around forever. There\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aiming for similarly spectacular results, Santagato-Davies\u2019s next stage project will be directing Rabbit Hole at Richmond Hill\u2019s Curtain Club during the 2027 Theatre Season. The show runs from January 29 to February 13. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Between directorial gigs, Santagato-Davies discussed her most recent connection to the Curtain Club.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI worked on the crew to stage a comic version of Dracula in one of the Club\u2019s 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\u2019s 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\u2019s 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.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Santagato-Davies is looking forward to staging Rabbit Hole\u2014a play about \u201cthe complexity of family dynamics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt won the Pulitzer Prize in 2007 for its portrayal of a husband and wife eight months after they\u2019ve lost their four-year-old son,\u201d she says. \u201cThere\u2019s also a movie version starring Nicole Kidman. It\u2019s 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\u2019ll be doing callbacks on September 13.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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 \u201cMeeting so many creative souls.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Jim Stewart
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Aurora\u2019s Carol Santagato-Davies stirred her coffee at Poached Dreams Diner on Thursday morning and admitted she was pleasantly \u201csurprised\u201d 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, \u201cI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":38716,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38715","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-a4r","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-21 07:43:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/2026-08-13-03.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38715","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38715"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38715\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38717,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38715\/revisions\/38717"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38716"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38715"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38715"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38715"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}