Get in touch with us at contact@birdonstage.com
A new Canadian play by award-winning playwright Garrett M. Ryan
SYNOPSIS:
In the middle of a fictional American-Canadian war, the twin cities of Sault Ste. Marie have been annexed and forced back together under a single rule. Once inseparable childhood best friends, Sue Johnson and Sue Jackson now oversee this newly nationalized bridge. The border is gone. The system remains.
At the centre of it all: two women. Same name. Same past. Very different present.
Told through a darkly comic, documentary-style lens, The Twin Sues is sharp, unsettling, and unexpectedly human. It’s about borders, but also about friendship, identity, and the systems we inherit long after they’ve stopped making sense.
THE TWIN SUES
Dr. Strangelove meets Corner Gas, with the absurdity of The Death of Stalin.
June 10th-14th
The Assembly Theatre
Limited capacity. Intimate space. Don’t wait, this is the kind of show people talk about after they’ve seen it.
MEET THE CAST/CREW
Katelyn Doyle (she/her) is a classically trained Canadian actor and creator. Katelyn is a co-founding member of Half Blind Owl, a theatre collective dedicated to creating original offbeat Canadian theatre. Katelyn loves new Canadian work and is so stoked to be bringing the Twin Sues to life. For a detailed outline of Katelyn’s work and credits, check out https://www.katelyndoyle.com./
Upcoming: The Player, Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead (Thaumatrope Theatre, 2026), Kitty, Pride and Prejudice (Wren Theatre, 2027)
Selected Credits Include: Kitty, Pride and Prejudice (Wren Theatre, 2026); The King, Menace to Society (In the Soil Festival, 2025); Lola, Heel (Alumnae Theatre NIF, 2025) Cecile Volongaes, Dangerous Liaisons (Wren Theatre, 2025)
Tipelo Hildebrand is a Toronto-based actor, creator, and arts marketer who loves storytelling that is strange, heartfelt, and deeply human.
A graduate of the Acting Conservatory at York University, Tipelo is especially drawn to work that explores connection, loneliness, identity, and the complicated ways people try to care for each other inside systems that often make that difficult. Outside of performing, Tipelo is also the Director of Marketing & Outreach and co-owner of Bird On Stage Productions, where she helps build community-driven spaces for emerging and independent artists in Toronto.
Being part of small teams making ambitious work from the ground up has become one of the most meaningful parts of her artistic life. The Twin Sues feels especially close to her heart because, beneath all its border paranoia and dark comedy, it is a story about friendship, belonging, and what happens when the world changes faster than people know how to.
Madeleine Gagnon is excited to be working on “The Twin Sues” in her first production with Bird on Stage and Assembly Theatre. Madeleine is an emerging local Theatre Designer and Illustrator with a great passion for art, design, and performance. She received her BFA in Theatre from York University's Performance Creation and Design program, during her time at York she worked as a Set Designer for the Devised Theatre Festival.
Since graduating she has garnered credits in both theatre and film; most recently working as the Design Assistant for the Canadian Stage production of A Doll’s House. She was also the Assistant Set Designer for The Sankofa Trilogy by Watah Theatre at the Theatre Centre and was the Set, Costume & Props Designer for the Toronto Fringe show Koli Kari by Ganesh Thava. Other credits include Set Design for the short film Cherry On Top, Production Assistant for Shadowland Theatre, Costume and Props Assistant for TFO, Scenic Painting for Coal Mine Theatre. Outside of theatre and film, Madeleine works as the Uniform Lead at the Canadian Opera Company.
Robert Leitner is a Jewish American/Canadian theatre practitioner, who joined the Bird on Stage Productions team in 2018, originally just as an actor. Since then, Robert has been consistently acting, directing, and doing lighting design for the company's productions, while also working alongside our AD, Garrett M. Ryan Abrams, to create boundary-pushing, innovative theatre as the company's Artistic Producer.
THE TWIN SUES is Robert’s full solo directorial debut for Bird on Stage, and he couldn’t be more excited to be working on such a topical show with all these amazing people involved. Pencil dive into the world of the twin Soos, and stay for the deeply complicated friendship between the twin Sues. Stand there. Smile. And make sure you have the approved smile width. Most recently, Robert has been busy designing and touring in award winning new works across Ontario with Garrett M. Ryan’s The Quickest Gun in the North, and Pigeon!. He will also be appearing in Fruitbasket Productions upcoming 2026 Toronto Fringe show, Meat Market.
Garrett M. Ryan Abrams is a Northern Ontarian playwright, director, and dramaturg based in Sault Ste. Marie. His work is rooted in the cultures, humour, and anxieties of Northern Ontarian life, often blending working-class realism with genre fiction, satire, and heightened theatricality to challenge conventional narratives about life in the region.
Since beginning his career, Garrett has developed a distinct voice through original work presented across Canada, earning multiple awards and building a body of work focused on outsiders, regional identity, and the communities often left out of Canada’s dominant cultural conversations.
The Twin Sues is a piece Garrett is especially excited to bring to the stage. In various forms, he has been circling the ideas behind the play for nearly a decade, with this specific iteration taking shape since moving to Sault Ste. Marie. Set against the unique reality of a border city, the play’s satire of division, radicalization, and identity has become frighteningly relevant in recent years. Garrett is thrilled to see the work come to life with the incredible cast and crew assembled for this production.Garrett also serves as the Theatre Manager / Artistic Director of the Sault Community Theatre Centre. He holds undergraduate and master’s degrees in Theatre & Performance Studies from York University.
Bunya Muchaeva is a Toronto-based designer specializing in furniture, sculpture and set design. With a background in Environmental Design from OCAD University, her work spans fabrication, curation, and space-shape interaction.
She has exhibited butter sculptures at the Royal Winter Fair, had a solo furniture exhibition in December, and received NP Architect award for innovative and creative design work during her thesis.
Bunya is currently working as an Assistant Set & Prop Designer on the premiere of The Twin Sues with Bird on Stage Productions. She has especially loved the collaborative nature of the design process, as well as finding creative ways to build a visually poetic world within the theatre set.