{"id":38846,"date":"2026-09-03T12:32:04","date_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:32:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38846"},"modified":"2026-09-03T12:32:19","modified_gmt":"2026-09-03T16:32:19","slug":"theatre-aurora-opens-season-on-cusp-of-musical-revolution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/theatre-aurora-opens-season-on-cusp-of-musical-revolution\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Aurora opens season on cusp of musical \u201crevolution\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A musical \u201crevolution\u201d is set to break out on Henderson Drive this month as Theatre Aurora opens the season with a celebration of the greatest hits the 1960s and 70s have to offer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yesterday Once More, a musical revue conceived in-house by Theatre Aurora veterans Judi Cragg and Neill Kernohan, opens their 2026-2027 Season on September 28.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cClose your eyes and you\u2019re back \u2013 the summer that song was everywhere, the record you wore out, the concert you\u2019ll never forget,\u201d says Theatre Aurora. \u201cFrom Motown to folk, pop to rock, the show is pure joyful nostalgia \u2013 crafted with love for audiences who lived it, and those who wish they had.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is the second consecutive season Theatre Aurora has opened with a musical revue, the last celebrating the works of Rodgers & Hammerstein. This time around, and surveying their recent audiences, Theatre Aurora executives decided to take matters into their own hands and craft a show tailor-made to their audience \u2013 and theatre-goers throughout the Region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cragg and Kernohan were excited to give it a try, based on last year\u2019s show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Musical revues haven\u2019t been Theatre Aurora\u2019s traditional fare over the last 60-plus years, but bringing this style of show into the season allows them to flex new creative muscles, bring in new musicians, and get the season started in the final days of summer rather than in the middle of the autumn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Once they conceived their idea, the tricky part was knowing where to start curating the music bringing Yesterday Once More to Life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt took a while to narrow things down. We had a lot of meetings to put the songs together in an order that makes some sense, and work the narration around them,\u201d says Kernohan, adding with a laugh, \u201cI mistakenly thought it would be a great idea for me to arrange all 45 songs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He didn\u2019t ultimately arrange all 45 songs, but one arrangement he\u2019s particularly proud of is one for Simon and Garfunkel\u2019s The Sound of Silence, which has been reinterpreted into a 12-part choir piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJudi said the other day we\u2019ve put so much of ourselves into it, but that also means we have a lot of ownership over it, which is also hard,\u201d he says. \u201cWe put a lot of hours in \u2013 I was estimating an hour or two per song, then Judi has taken on the load of the direction and musical direction.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a natural fit for Cragg, a Theatre Aurora veteran with a background as a musical theatre performer. That said, however, it has been a decidedly new experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI wanted to take it on and it\u2019s been a huge challenge, but I\u2019ve really enjoyed it \u2013 it\u2019s been fabulous and we have a fabulous cast,\u201d she says. \u201cMy big thing that I\u2019ve said all along is that I didn\u2019t want this to be a spoof or a joke about 60s and 70s music because sometimes that happens. We want to respect it and show how important it was. The 60s and 70s were a huge revolution in popular music, and that\u2019s what we are trying to show.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s also about rekindling memories sparking new ones, she adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey\u2019re all songs everybody knows and it doesn\u2019t matter what generation you\u2019re part of, you know them. Some of them know it through their parents because they liked to listen to it, some of them know it just because that music is so iconic and you hear it in so many places. Music in general ties you to specific times or specific events or instances in your life and that\u2019s really important.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Yesterday Once More, including tickets and showtimes, visit theatreaurora.com or call the Box Office at 905-727-3669.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A musical \u201crevolution\u201d is set to break out on Henderson Drive this month as Theatre Aurora opens the season with a celebration of the greatest hits the 1960s and 70s have to offer. Yesterday Once More, a musical revue conceived in-house by Theatre Aurora veterans Judi Cragg and Neill Kernohan, opens their 2026-2027 Season on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"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-38846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-a6y","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-11 03:05:07","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38846","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=38846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38847,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38846\/revisions\/38847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}