VideoCabaret was founded in 1976 and is one of Canada’s most inventive, prolific and celebrated theatre ensembles. The company’s founding playwrights Michael Hollingsworth and Deanne Taylor have created many enduring plays, and with renowned designers and actors have devised spectacularly original styles of performance — black-box epics, multi-media cabarets, musicals, opera, and masquerades.

In 2000, Taylor and Hollingsworth refurbished a theatre space in the backroom of the Cameron House, an iconic rooming house and music club. Perched above Queen Street West, Hollingsworth refined The History of the Village of the Small Huts, a satirical history cycle of 21 plays exposing Canada’s history of colonization and government corruption within a ‘black box’ designed by the company to represent a timeless void where scores of characters are conjured up in rapid-fire succession.

VideoCabaret offers paid professional development opportunities to emerging theatre artists and playwrights. The Black Box Sessions encourages acting and directing participants to experiment with plays by Hollingsworth and Taylor in their signature style of production and performance. The Michael Hollingsworth Writing Circle is a paid professional training and development program for emerging theatre creators. Participants come together to discuss the creative process and assisted each other in developing new works.

Since 2019, we are proud to have moved into our permanent home at the Busy Street Theatre located at 10 Busy Street in the Leslieville neighbourhood of Toronto. The theatre was renamed as Deanne Taylor Theatre in 2023 in honour of our late Co-founder, Deanne Taylor.

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