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Die-Nasty has featured many prominent guest stars, including Mike Myers, Mark McKinney, and Robin Duke.

I went to theatre arts school in Ontario after stints in B.C. and Saskatchewan, and moved to Edmonton around 1980. A lot of people in the arts were moving out here. There was a lot of funding for the arts and a lot of energy; a lot of people fresh out of school.

I moved here without any plans and found a really exciting theatre community that I could be a part of. When I was younger, I thought I might move on eventually, but you develop roots, you know, family, friends, relationships. And just a love of place.

When I was 30 I went and travelled around Europe for a year. And that really clarified the idea that Edmonton was home to me. I’d lived in other places and I didn't go to school here, so in those years there was still some lingering doubts as to my belonging here; I didn’t have, at that time, the same connection that a person who'd lived here his entire life might have had. Being away for so long clarified that Edmonton was home though, and where I was from. And where I'd chosen to be from, on my own terms.

Edmonton is a good-sized city in terms of an arts career. The competition is lower relative to larger cities so it’s easier to get noticed, but still large enough that you can actually have a career. There are 200 or 300 of us in the professional theatre community, maybe more. It's a place where you know everyone in the arts community. There's something very reassuring about that.

In the video below, The Varscona Theatre’s executive director John Hudson talks about Edmonton’s dynamic theatre scene.