Cold Maple Cloth: The Farewell Tour of a Delusional Diva opens Thursday 20th August at The Libra Theatre Cafe, inviting audiences to meet Sydney Page who is retiring from show business (at the age of 27). Learn more about what you can expect:
1: What inspired you to create this story?
The inspiration for Cold Maple Cloth came from quite a few different sources and
experiences, which all came together in a perfect storm that allowed me to finally sit down and write the show. I had been going through a tough time since graduating from theatre school, feeling inadequate and like a failure (I know, I know, you’re not special Sydney, join the club!). Then, in 2024, I went to see a production of Chicago. The only problem was, I forgot my glasses. As is the case with glasses, I needed them to see! So see I did not. From my back of the orchestra seats, I heard what sounded like a fantastic production of Chicago, and saw vaguely Fosse-esque shapes moving around. As I sat there my mind began to wander, and during Roxie’s iconic monologue where she says “I’ve always wanted to see my name in the paper” I thought it would be funny if someone said “I’ve always wanted to see my name in a Playbill.” Naturally, I had the idea of doing a “Farewell Show” to musical theatre and the career I never had – something campy, silly, existing in the space between sketch comedy and musical theatre. Now, for my entire life I have come up with a million little ideas in a similar way and people have told me to just write a show and see what happens, but I didn’t think of myself as a writer yet, so the idea was tucked away. I mostly left with a hyperfixation to perfect the Hot Honey Rag, which led me to realize that no amount of passion can make-up for a lack of dance-ability and gangly limbs – Bob Fosse would have cut me from the chorus line on sight! Flash forward to the end of 2025, and I was really, really struggling. I ad a particularly difficult string of rejection, personal struggles, and just a general confusion about who I was and what I wanted to do moving forward. I didn’t want to leave this art form that I loved so much, but I didn’t see a place for myself in it. Then, as the cherry on top, on a night out with friends I broke my knee on the dance floor. I (k)needed (ha! See what I did there?) to have emergency surgery and take some serious time-off from everything, and I decided to use that time to write that show that I’d tucked the idea away for back in 2024 – all it needed to do was get onto the page. The rest is history!
2: The show’s genre is a musical comedy. Do you have a favourite musical moment?
Oh, I have too many to count! The entire show is a love letter to musical theatre, and to the particular shows and songs that shaped my life, so every musical moment is profound on a personal level. It’s always really special to get to sing with Sierra, who plays my younger self. However, I think my favourite musical moment might have to be a remix of an extremely iconic Broadway tune that was created especially for the show by a local DJ here in Toronto (DJ PJ, check them out!) I don’t want to reveal too much, but it’s a moment where everyone in the audience and the two of us on stage get to join together in a big party! Every night during our run in Toronto I would look around during that moment and feelsuch an immense amount of gratitude that I felt like a main character in a cheesy Disney Channel movie. This is what dreeeaaams are made of! If you want to experience that joyful moment for yourself you’ll just have to come join us at the Libra Theatre Cafe!
3: How much of the story is inspired by real events?
The story is inspired by real events, and the emotional core remains very truthful, but with a few liberties taken for comedic and narrative purposes. The characters are based on me, but it’s not really me, except it kind of is? You know what I mean! I think of the Delusional Diva Sydney almost like my drag persona, she’s built off of me but we’re not exactly the same person. I do include in the show some real quotes from people who have said things to me during drama school that I stored away at the time thinking I would put them in a show someday. Well, I did and some of those people have come to see the show, which was pretty nerve-wracking to say the least! But hey, a diva never backs down!
4: What moments in the show were the most important for you to get right?
There’s a particular moment in the show that has quite a large shift in tone (again, I don’t want to spoil it!) that I re-worked for months along with our director, Caroline Wiechers, to get just right. I think when you want to put some sincerity into a show that’s so campy and over the top, you need to get the audience on-board with it right away or you lose them. And that’s the moment that people always talk to me about after the show and have said they resonate with the most, so it means a lot that we got it right, and I’m very proud of it.
5: Did the story change much from its original idea to the version audiences will be watching?
I love this question, because the lore of this show and its many, many, versions before its current form is really quite hilarious to look back on. There is a world where the show revolves around me killing my younger self, in order to save her from pursuing a career in the cold, cruel world of musical theatre. Another one includes a man named Belton (named after my worst fear – belting – of course!) who takes me on a Christmas Carol style journey through my past, present and future of my career in musical theatre, which was pretty much fully written until I watched the livestream of the Trisha Paytas Broadway show and saw that they had done that exact idea…and much better than me! But I hope Belton comes back someday, I miss him. The one thing that has always remained from the beginning is the idea of the Chicago inspired opening monologue/song, and of my younger self being played by Sierra, because I knew that at its heart this was a show that I was creating for the two of us to perform together.
6: What has been the most enjoyable part about creating Cold Maple Cloth: The Farewell Tour of a Delusional Diva?
I’m not going to lie dude, at the risk of being way over the top cheesy, this entire experience has been my ultimate dream come true. Sometimes I’m sitting on the bus and I just cry thinking about how lucky I am to get to do this, it’s surreal to me!
Without a doubt, the greatest gift this show has given me is the collaboration between the artists who have helped to create the show. I feel so incredibly grateful that I have such amazing friends who believed in this silly idea and have helped to turn it into something much greater than I could have ever dreamed. I have never been in a room that is so collaborative, supportive and fun, while also being very fast-paced. I wasn’t surprised because the people I asked are all the most lovely, kind, talented people in the world, but you never know how it will go when you take a relationship into a work environment, and we really lucked out!
Then there’s also the fact that this project has given me back my joy and sense of belonging as an artist. When I look back at everything that has happened to lead up to the creation of this show, I see that it needed to happen this way so that I could end up here. How ironic that a show about wanting to quit theatre is exactly what brought me back home again?
Cold Maple Cloth: The Farewell Tour of a Delusional Diva opens Thursday 20th August at The Libra Theatre Cafe. Many thanks to the creative team for answering our questions. Book your tickets here!
Leave a Reply