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Every year, the Fountain School offers an extraordinary parade of performances powered by our students, on stage and behind the scenes. Emerging actors, musicians, singers, and performers fill our stages and concert hall. Behind the scenes, our students develop music ensembles, compose original scores, build costumes and sets, design lighting, and even stage manage our live theatre productions, bringing creative collaborations to life.

Below is one single year in the life of the Fountain School of Performing Arts. And this does'nt include our masterclasses, lecture series, and noon-hour recitals.

Our amazing and beautiful productions are all open to everyone, so don鈥檛 hesitate to join us for next year鈥檚 season!听

2025 Fall term
Our season began with Everybody, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins鈥� 21st century update of the medieval morality play Everyman. We saw a character who represents ... everybody ... confronting Death, as must we all. This theme was amplified beautifully by the amazing decision to cast some roles by lottery each night: our actors learned the entire play and were ready to take on any part.鈥� And they had the privilege of being directed by Severn Thompson, an associate artistic director of the Blyth Festival who has also directed at Shaw and Stratford.听

Our annual staged opera was Mark Adamo鈥檚 adaptation of Little Women. Adamo鈥檚 opera takes an imaginative approach to Louisa May Alcott鈥檚 original novel by centering it around Jo鈥檚 memories, an idea beautifully evoked by our set: an attic, filled with objects from the family鈥檚 lives. The opera features challenging music and requires great emotional range from its performers, and yet our team of student performers made it seem effortless.听

The term concluded with concerts from two of our music programme鈥檚 ensembles. 鈥淛azzin鈥� it Up!鈥� by the DalJazz Ensemble, treated us to an array of different styles and showcased some glorious solo moments from the talented musicians in the ensemble, so that we could opened up the stage to the Halifax Regional Arts Jazz Ensemble and its team of brilliant younger musicians. In 鈥淪ymphonic Landmarks鈥�, performed by DalSymphony, we experienced a beautifully constructed journey across the sentimental homelands of the composers Grieg, Smetana, de Falla, and Copland, followed by a new piece by FSPA composition instructor Matthias McIntire, which evoked the experience of a lost child who returns home.听

Highlights from our 2025-2026 Season

2026 Winter term
The winter term began with Macbeth, an extraordinary and immersive journey into a dreamscape version of Shakespeare's classic tragedy. A magnificently realized 1930s carnival setting, with a tent above everyone鈥檚 heads, proved the eerie world of the dustbowl to be a perfect twentieth-century version of the haunted Scotch mists. Cast and crew made this fusion of eras and styles feel like its own coherent universe, transforming an old play into something that felt brand new.

Music ensemble concerts abounded in March! The DalGuitar Ensemble鈥檚 鈥淪ix String Spring Concert鈥� was an amazing tour through the many possibilities of one instrument, both acoustic and electric, and ranging through classical, jazz and pop selections, building toward arrangements of Bach performed by the entire ensemble. The Pop Ensemble concert, 鈥淯nwritten: The Music that Wrote Us鈥� included reflections from each of the student performers听听on the songs that had inspired them; Whitney Houston, Prince, Abba, George Harrison, and Fleetwood Mac were among the stars whose songs were performed by our talented singers and musicians, often using inventive new arrangements that made the songs their own. And DalOpera presented 鈥淭he Golden Age of Opera鈥�, which juxtaposed classic Broadway show tunes with operatic arias, drawing out the parallels between them, and also showcased the 鈥渢riple threat鈥� nature of the Voice students, who danced and acted in mini-scenes that transitioned one song to the next.听

Concerto Night is the Music program鈥檚 biggest and most spectacular concert of the year. Held in the gigantic Rebecca Cohn Auditorium, it offers a rare opportunity for student soloists to perform accompanied by an entire orchestra, and for student composers to hear an orchestra perform their work. The huge audience was an important part of the experience, and the climactic performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto in D Major brought them to their feet in an ecstatic and instantaneous standing ovation!听听

For our final theatrical production, we staged The Odyssey, Rick Chafe鈥檚 adaptation of the epic poem by Homer.听听Directed by Nova Scotia theatre legend Ken Schwartz, it was a magnificent and moving way to end the year. It had stupendous costumes, amazing props, dazzling lighting and sound, and a wide range of complex characters for our actors to embody. The extraordinary set, simultaneously evoking a ship, a palace, and an ancient Greek theatre, created a landscape that fitted the incredible theatrical journey that our students have been on.

But the concerts continued! In an exciting innovation, the DalWind and DalChorus Ensembles joined together for 鈥淢usic Under the Big Top鈥�, an experiment in creating a relaxed concert for audiences who might be challenged by the restrictions of a conventional concert ambience. ASL interpretation, silent clapping, house lights, noise-muffling headphones, a quiet room, and tailor-made fidget FSPA spinners made for a welcoming and inclusive environment.鈥疉s the student musicians performed music on the theme of circuses, they were joined by clown performers from Breaking Circus and the Theatre program. The best part of the day was seeing the smiles from people of many ages and ways of being in the world.

Meanwhile, in 鈥淚nside Out鈥�, DalJazz and the New Music Ensemble came together to reveal deep musical connections. The jazz section spanned classic Tin Pan Alley tunes, the iconic sounds of Whitney Houston, the raw energy and unhinged polyphony of Charles Mingus, and an original composition by a Fountain School student. The New Music Ensemble offered a fascinating exploration of contemporary approaches to music, from Cornelius Cardew鈥檚 graphic scores to Pauline Oliveros鈥� deep listening, to a range of original student compositions. It moved seamlessly between introspective moments and playful experimentation.

We brought our season to a glorious conclusion with the annual Costume Studies Historical Dress Showcase (April 13), in which Costume Studies students demonstrated听听extraordinary reproductions of dress from the year 1897 that they had created for their graduating projects.鈥�听

It has a privilege to participate in the 2025-26 season, whether as spectator or performer, and we all wish our graduating class safer travels than Odysseus!听