Acting

Brendan is best known as a diverse and dramatic actor who employs an undertone of sly humour and silliness, and, when given leave to do so (if it serves the production) can and will ham-it-up to the nth degree.

 Who knows when it really all started, but it became official when Brendan was cast in the Cowichan Musical Society’s production of The Music Man as Winthrop when he was 11 years old. The story goes that he was awarded the role because he was shaking so badly with nervousness during his audition that the directors thought that it was character work and were impressed. After an autumn and winter of evening rehearsals, The Music Man was staged at the Cowichan Performing Arts Centre (a 730-seat auditorium and state-of-the-art proscenium theatre) in February of 1997 for a two-week run. Brendan fell in love with the magic of it all: stage lights, sets, costumes, characters, community, ensemble, song and dance, the beats, the structure, an orchestra pit full of superb musicians, mentorship, and the character work (including indulging a natural lisp for the sake of theatre).

Theatre was a family affair from the get-go with the entire Bailey family being involved in one way or another; father usually as musical director and conductor, mother in the ensemble and costuming, kids learning the art of theatre through direction, mentorship, and modelling. Little did the Bailey children know then what a gift it was to grow up performing on that incredible stage in the ‘90s through ‘00s. The Music Man was followed by ensemble roles in productions of Cabaret, Brigadoon, Anne of Green Gables, and Camelot.

Brendan attended Frances Kelsey Secondary School, a new facility and university-prep/learn-at-your-own-pace experimental model. FKSS had an extensive band and theatre program with its own fully-equipped theatre and 150 seat auditorium. Brendan sang in the choir, played alto-saxophone, learned dramaturgy and playwrighting under the guidance of a semi-retired PhD professor, excelled in stagecraft, lighting, acting, and career preparation in performing arts classes, and performed at least once a semester in either FKSS productions or those mounted by local production companies. In his senior year he played John Proctor in The Crucible (“terrific tension from Bailey”), and was one of five principals in the song cycle Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris.

His first play, Misguided Intentions (a mythology-infused horror/tragedy play), was a runner-up in the Kaleidoscope Youth Playwrights Festival and was one of six plays to receive a staged reading during a three-day workshop event. His adjudicator wrote of the work: “I am so impressed by your weaving of the mythic and the mundane. … I believe your characters, and their pain. I appreciate that your scenes often reflect the resonance after the explosion (emotional). We are given deeper insight into the characters, and not bombarded with their emotional reactivity. Your play resonates with me on a deeply mythic note.”

Brendan spent the next two and half years training intensively in a conservatory environment through the Canadian College of Performing Arts. This included singing, dance (ballet, tap, jazz, musical theatre styles), speech, acting, playwrighting, collective devising, directing, career management, company management, stage fight (hand to hand and sword work), physical and mental health, improv, story-theatre, physical theatre, mask and Commedia Dell-Arte, stage management, and acting on screen. 

 At the time, CCPA was being touted as a one-year comprehensive intensive program with an optional second year mentorship program. Brendan received a Certificate in Performing Arts and returned for a second year mentorship in playwriting, earning him a secondary Enriched Certificate in Performing Arts.

Each year, CCPA toured Remembrance Day concerts, staged Christmas productions in their large Studio A space, held Broadway Revues (usually three suites spanning different eras of musical theatre) with the Victoria Symphony Orchestra at the Royal Theatre, and a musical theatre revue at the McPherson Theatre. One concern of the students, however, was that revues did not give the graduates valuable resume credits nor full company production experience. While lobbying the college for production-based programming, Company C was formed in coordination with the college’s founders and directors, Jacques Lemay and Janis Dunning, helmed by Dr. Iris MacGregor-Bannerman, and consisting of twelve alumni.

In many ways independent of the college, Company C was its own production company managed by the alumni while the college worked tirelessly to also accredit the company as a Diploma program. Upon graduation, Brendan now had invaluable company management experience, had worked with superb directors, played four vastly different characters from classical to contemporary, and held a Diploma in Performing Arts.

During the summer of 2005, Brendan booked two roles that were the exact opposite of one another. His first foray into historical interpretation and immersive interactive performance came with being cast as 1890s architect, Francis Mawson Rattenbury, at the BC Parliamentary Buildings daily from May through September. He joined a small cast of Parliamentary Players who worked alongside tour guides and performed scenes mid and post tour. A fundamental component of their work was interacting with the public out and about on the legislature grounds. He also booked the role of Frank N’ Furter in The Rocky Horror Show produced by OPAAT productions throughout August at the Duncan Showroom in the restored historic Duncan Garage building. Rocky was once again a family affair with Brendan’s mother volunteering as his hair and make-up stylist and Brendan’s sister playing Columbia.

In the spring of 2006, Brendan received on-the-job experience for four months as CCPA’s Technical and Production assistant. This included stage management work as well as also functioning as props master. Meanwhile, he booked his first principal film role in a student production called No One’s Watching. 

In No One’s Watching, Brendan played David, a talented pianist turned home-visit nurse who was caring for his dying professor and former lover. His professor’s wife, unaware of the affair, also looked to David for companionship if not intimacy while the professor, disabled with pain, continually demanded of David a dignified, though secret, exit through assisted suicide. A beautifully filmed, challenging and sensitive short film, it garnered Brendan a Best Actor award in UVic’s Sunscreen film festival that year, but the project was never mastered nor submitted in any other film festivals. 

In the summer of 2006, Brendan returned to the Parliamentary Players and the legislature filmed the actor’s monologues to compile a featurette called The Parliamentary Players: Bringing History to Life. While popular with Cruise Ship tourists visiting Victoria for a number of years, the souvenir DVDs were never reproduced and are no longer available.

Through the director of the Parliamentary Players (hired to coach the actors during a mandatory two-week history and site orientation/rehearsal period each season), Brendan was put in touch with the now-decommissioned Provincial Capital Commission to pen three Rattenbury monologues. He then performed the three monologues on camera for use as screenings during provincial lecture events. The project was the sum of two firsts for Brendan: his first paid gig as a screenwriter and his first paid gig as a principal actor. 

Brendan was also cast as naïvely-optimistic gold miner, Israel Swan, in a production of Trey Parker’s Cannibal: the Musical. An historically-inspired account of 1860s cannibalism turned spoof of Oklahoma, Cannibal was performed throughout the 2006 Victoria Fringe Festival in late August.

The following autumn, after returning to Victoria from directing Songs for a New World with Jennifer Fontaine, he was cast in a production of Angels in America as Louis Ironson. A massive undertaking, Where’s Noonan Productions was in heavy rehearsal most of August and September and staged both plays comprising Angels: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, in repertory at the Metro Studio from September through October of 2007.

He performed regularly as a troupe member in the sketch comedy extravaganza, Atomic Vaudeville, between 2005 and 2007, and involved himself in a number of other theatre projects in the community through the autumn and spring semesters. 

Brendan returned to Ottawa to perform, educate, and direct in partnership with Jennifer Fontaine and ASNY the following summer for their production of Urinetown: the Musical.

He was then cast as Gilbert Blythe in the Ottawa-Premiere of Anne & Gilbert: the Musical produced that October at the Centrepoint Theatre. (There was a significant ASNY representation with Jennifer Fontaine as Diana and Bronwyn Steinberg as Anne). 

In 2009, Brendan relocated to Rockland, Ontario for a year and he and Jennifer directed Seussical: the Musical with ASNY. He was then cast as Satan in Gordon Carruth’s Gabriel: the Musical at the Centrepointe Theatre. 

Later in the year he returned to the west coast, began training intensively with the Cucumber Satellite Theatre & Film Society, and he booked a principal role in the Canadian Premiere of Love Kills: the Musical produced by Theatre Inconnu. 

The four-person cast of Love Kills was backed by a three-piece rock band, The Party on High Street, and their month-long autumn run at the Fernwood Studio saw large audiences and strong reviews: “Vocally and physically, Bailey has an attractively morose Jim Morrison presence that suits his turn as Starkweather,” “Both she (Marina Legace) and Bailey shone,” “A compelling and entertaining production.” The cast, The Party on High Street, and the crew also produced an archival studio recording for the playwright and composer, Kyle Jarrow. 

In late December of 2010, Brendan auditioned for Newman & Wright Productions for the 2011 Theatre Royal season in Barkerville Historic Town. After a two-hour audition and interview, Brendan was awarded the principal male position in a four-person cast formed of two strong female vocalists, himself, and an accompanist. 

Brendan spent the spring training at Cucumber Satellite and preparing for the upcoming five-month musical theatre contract.

Two weeks after concluding the showcase performances at Cucumber Satellite, Brendan packed his old Toyota Hilux canopy to the brim, tied his bike to the top, and drove the Fraser Canyon solo up into the Cariboo mountains. 

 The Newman & Wright cast and crew were housed in a park-owned panabode (a pre-formed, two-bathroom, four-bedroom cabin) located on a rural street about 7km from the historic site. The panabode was a special place. Generations of historical interpreters and musical theatre performers had been housed there over a twenty-year span, as well as employees’ families since the 1970s before. Brendan felt settled and at home in “the Pan” in a way he hadn’t felt for a number of years. All of the N&W contractors became fast friends and strong colleagues on stage. Unfortunately, one cast member took ill mid-way through the rehearsal and performance process. For a month, eleven different iterations of the season’s historical variety show, with circulating replacement cast members, were staged until their convalescing cast member was able to return. An historical drama, Bernadette’s Gold Rush Escape (for which Brendan’s turn as a moralistic Southern packer forced to make a devastating decision was noted as “a lesser actor couldn’t have pulled it off”), and a weekend evening British Music Hall revue, were also staged in repertory to comprise fourteen performances a week (as well as boardwalk preview performances) with one dark day on Thursdays. Alongside his peers, Brendan performed approximately 230 shows on the Theatre Royal stage over the course of the season. It was enormously challenging work, requiring disciplined rest and preparation, but it was bliss for an actor and musical theatre performer: every technical muscle being worked and challenged on a -literal- daily basis. He fell in love with Barkerville, the Theatre Royal, the Cariboo country, and the nearby town of Wells.

Brendan also joined the performance cast of The Sunset Cabaret held at the Sunset Theatre for the August and September fundraiser performances. He introduced what has since become a regular act of his (an intimate poetry reading during which he wears only a goldpan) called Goldpan Poetry.

In October of that year, Love Kills was remounted by the Phoenix Theatres as part of a Spotlight Series for UVic theatre department alumni. While Brendan wasn’t technically an alumnus, it was of no matter, most of the cast and crew were. Reviews were strong. The Times Colonist gave the production a 4 Star Review and noted in a very positive, albeit subjective, critique: “Brendan Bailey portrays Starkweather as a cross between a swaggering young Elvis and a panther. Dressed in a white T-shirt and Levi’s, his Starkweather oozes pouty sexuality – something that seems horrifying, given the unholy journey he undertakes. In this incarnation, the cast speaks with Southern accents. Bailey overdoes his, giving Starkweather a marble-mouthed delivery that – combined with his heightened performance – sometimes makes the character more of a symbol than a human being. Nonetheless, Bailey has good scenes. The best, by far, is his confession to the sheriff. This superbly directed sequence becomes a ghastly dance, with Bailey swivelling his hips as he enthusiastically describes murder after murder, accompanied by pistol-like drum shots and blasts of light. The confession comes off as a terrible, twisted declaration of love.” Another reviewer noted that “Bailey compelled the audience with his strong vocals and dedication to Charlie’s perverse nature.”

Brendan continued training at Cucumber Satellite, landed an agent with Showbiz Talent Agency, and found himself continuing to learn the ins and outs of large scale film behind the scenes through background work on projects such as Fringe, Supernatural, The Selection, and Arrow. 

He then returned to the Theatre Royal in Barkerville for a second season where he helped develop much of the season’s 1860s variety show as part of the collective, wrote a serial for the 1930s radio show (replacing British Music Hall), and he played James Anderson in the musical drama: Westering Man: James Anderson’s Journey; a role for which he was described as an “acting tour de force.” Written by historian and playwright, Richard Wright, Westering Man was invited to, and did, tour to UNBC for a special performance and lecture for the history department – the emphasis being on the importance and influence of historical interpretation in humanizing the past. Again, the Theatre Royal cast had performed 14 shows a week with the three productions in repertory, for (again) approximately 230 performances during the season. This comprised about 30 school season variety show performances, 84 variety show performance, 66 drama performances, 18 weekend evening show performances, and 28 shoulder season highlights variety show performances. Not to forego the 90+ free and promotional pre-show boardwalk performances also held throughout the season. 

During that season, a German and Canadian co-production called GOLD chose Barkerville as a key filming location to represent the townsite of Hazelton. The gritty, desolate, and carefully-paced 1890s subversive Western was directed by Thomas Arslan and featured a top-tier German cast. Newman & Wright Productions were hired to facilitate the Canadian casting process and Brendan supported in administration. He also auditioned.

Meanwhile, independent filmmakers, ATKA Productions, cast him in a supporting role in a short film exploring the trauma of a tragic accident. Playing a gas station attendant who encounters the victim’s sister upon their return to the site of loss, he finds himself riddled with guilt and trying to explain and apologize during the short time it takes for her gas tank to fill. The young filmmakers were so impressed with Brendan’s work that they gave him principal billing on the project even though he only appeared during one scene. The film, OVER, had an amateur arthouse appeal and featured a complicated narrative that confused some viewers. However, it was an Official Selection in the 2014 Festival Regards sur le Cinema du Monde held in France where it was nominated for both Audience Choice and Audience Jury awards.

Brendan then learned that he had been cast in GOLD as a Hudson’s Bay Company employee with a juicy, foreboding and rather ominous monologue. Other Barkerville interpreters fleshed-out the few English-speaking roles in the film while others yet supported in background roles. 

Filming took place on a crisp, sunny, September morning. As rehearsals began, it became apparent that Brendan had not been provided with any of the several script revisions; his dialogue with Marko Mandic wasn’t syncing and the two actors tried to figure out what was wrong. When Brendan presented the sides he had been working from, Arslan provided him with the shooting script and Brendan learned the edits in about five minutes before they went back to camera. Unfortunately, the tone of the monologue that he’d been provided with and had worked intensely on had changed considerably, having been mostly cut and also having become significantly more benevolent (or, as Brendan’s agent referred to it: ‘Canadian’).  

GOLD, an independent feature, would become an Official Selection at the 63rd Berlinale Film Festival in 2013. While the talent of the Canadian cast varied considerably, ultimately compromising the tone of the finished product, GOLD remains a visually beautiful journey through BC’s vast wilderness and historic sites, boasts wonderful performances from the German cast, and remains a stark reminder of the dangers of ignorance in the wild.

In 2013, Cucumber Satellite evolved into the Railtown Actors Studio. Brendan made the difficult decision not to return to Barkerville and instead focused on establishing himself as an actor in Vancouver. He secured representation with Muse Artist Management and participated in casting workshops, on camera classes, stage fight workshops, acted in small independent films such as SHED, and performed in showcases. He continued training through Railtown Actors Studio.

The following year, Muse Artist Management merged with Lucas Talent, one of Vancouver’s premier agencies. Brendan was cast in a challenging principal role in a gritty, noir-influenced student film. He played a man whose past comes back to haunt him as he is manipulated by an old friend and sexual interest into committing a crime of passion.

Meanwhile, while continuing to train as an ensemble member at Railtown Actors Studio, Brendan was also awarded the position of General Manager at a restaurant he had been working at in numerous positions for 16 months prior. He found himself balancing management and business operation with training, rehearsals, auditions, and gigs. Twice he was offered potential positions in Barkerville, but he was he unable to abandon the commitments he’d made, though he did miss Wells and the historic site desperately.

In 2015, Brendan landed a role as a Jimmie Johnson fan in a US national NASCAR commercial, was asked on set if he could drive stick (he could) and wound-up shooting while driving a vintage ’78 Camaro.

He continued training, managing, rehearsing, and gigging, and was once again informed in the spring that a position awaited in Barkerville for a short window if he wished to take it. He did wish to take it, desperately, but he couldn’t justify leaving a management career, film momentum, his agent, and a hard-earned apartment for five months just to have to start all over again at the bottom in a highly competitive city and industry in the autumn.

However, when a significant life event occurred and Brendan was left unsupported by the restaurant’s head offices, his perspective shifted. He had been frequenting a particular second-hand bookstore on his daily commute for nearly a year by that time and had amassed an extensive collection of literature focused on the Cariboo Gold Rush and Barkerville. His heart knew where he needed to be, even if he hadn’t been ready to admit it.

Serendipitously, a small, independent dance company based in Wells, BC, reached out to him in the autumn regarding a spring tour of a children’s ballet and puppetry show; he’d been highly recommended. Not considering himself much of a dancer, though perhaps a strong mover, he communicated this out of concern for possibly not being able to meet the job performance requirements. He still received an employment contract and accepted the offer to join the cast of The Jabberwocky: An Adventure Ballet for ZarYevka Ballet. He then tendered his resignation at the restaurant for the following spring, and began getting back into the physical condition required for high-octane performance and dance. 

Brendan returned to Wells in March of 2016 for a three-week intensive rehearsal period followed by a three-week, province-spanning, 22-performance school tour (usually two shows a day, five days a week). The 42-minute ballet required Brendan to play four different characters, employ mask work and various puppetry skills, dance pas de deux, and to learn challenging partner lifts. Already in his early thirties, each performance (including load-in, set-up, and strike) felt like completing an intense endurance Crossfit routine in all the right ways. While exhausting, it was also invigorating. He hadn’t been in such good physical condition since he had last worked for Newman & Wright Productions, despite always having maintained a regimented fitness regime. Casual exercise was very different from performance application.  

He then returned to Barkerville as a member of the street-theatre cast portraying an historic Cornish miner named Richard Goldsworthy in daily-life interpretation. He learned the comprehensive town tour, how to play a four-string cigar-box guitar, how to set historic type, demonstrated gold panning throughout the day, and returned to the art of historical interpretation.

During the Autumn Moon Chinese Festival held in August (already autumn in the Cariboo mountains), Brendan studied, choreographed, taught, and performed a traditionally-styled Lion Dance for two to much acclaim and to the approval of a visiting Chinese delegation. 

He also learned the role of Han Solo in the Geekenders’ touring production of the lovingly satirical burlesque Star Wars: A Nude Hope for two performances. During the September shoulder-season, Brendan replaced the actor who had been portraying Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie and learned a one-man show and trial re-enactment for the early justice contract. It was the last truly normal season for Barkerville Historic Town & Park (to date) during which the site saw over 65,000 visitors and wasn’t impacted by flood, fire, or pandemic events in the province.

Brendan then returned to Vancouver for a lower mainland tour of The Jabberwocky through a collaboration between ArtStarts and ZarYevka Ballet which comprised another 22 performances over the course of November. Afterward, he completed his last holiday performance season with the Christmas Revelers in December.

Then, he moved out of the city and to the interior in the spring. Between March and May, Brendan again toured The Jabberwocky provincially with ZarYevka for an additional 15 performances. They also learned an entirely new ballet, Fish & Bird, of which they conducted a mini school tour in between Jabberwocky dates and culminating in a mid-May performance at the Sunset Theatre in Wells.

Over the course of the spring, Brendan also faced-down what had been a nearly decade-long bout of writer’s block and penned a conceptual draft of a very personal play called Anatomy of Love. He then returned to Barkerville as Richard Goldsworthy, added more performance discourses to his repertory, and researched and scripted The Cariboo Literary Institute Discourse (a look at history through poetry). This discourse was reviewed by a visitor on Tripadvisor as being one of the site’s top 7 programs to seek out: “If you are very lucky – The Poetry Reading by Cornish Miner Mr. Goldsworthy – this was very moving.” Another reviewer noted of his tour (of which Brendan was one of three primary interpreters who each had their own customized version of the tour and rotated pending shift schedule; Brendan performing his tour 3-5 times a week): “The fellow who narrates the history of Barkerville and takes you for a walking tour was very good; in fact, he was the most interesting thing there.” It was an extreme wildfire season in BC, though, and Barkerville’s tourism numbers receded rapidly. The campgrounds became refuge stations for evacuees, and though life went on like normal for performance programming in Barkerville, visitation was minimal. Brendan spent most of July that year exclusively interpreting the printing press to cover another actor, and then he took on the role of Mr. Mundell in the schoolhouse for September. That winter, Anatomy of Love received a workshop reading of its exploratory script, and then Brendan took that feedback, went back to the drawing board, and completely rewrote the play over the coming year. A number of Sunset Cabarets were held, one a month, and Brendan continued to write and perform his Goldpan Poetry act.

In 2018, Brendan continued as Richard Goldsworthy in the site, began learning the historic trade of blacksmithing as well as typesetting, and he continued to lead tours, host, and perform throughout the summer.

Once again, site visitation was significantly impacted by wildfire and flooding events, though not as extremely as it had been the previous year. Brendan replaced a performer for Newman & Wright’s final 20 performances of Mrs. McGinley’s Gold Rush Variety Show throughout the September shoulder season. That winter, the newly rewritten Anatomy of Love script received two workshop readings at the Sunset Theatre as part of the Exploration Series to very positive response.

Another independent film project selected Barkerville as a location for filming in early 2019 for its versatile historic setting, natural wilderness, and intense snow load. This film, like GOLD 7 years prior, also intended to repurpose Barkerville as a late 19th/early 20th Century Hazelton. Brendan was invited to meet the directors. He assumed that he was walking into an interview to discuss supporting the film as a locally-based assistant as this type of arrangement was commonplace for Barkerville contractors. A few hours before the interview, however, he decided that he’d better treat the shooting script he’d received as audition sides – just in case. As fate would have it, it wasn’t an interview. It was actually an audition, afterall. He then read for nearly every role in the screenplay and later learned that he had been cast as the lead (a perceived protagonist turned antagonist). The film required dogsled training, a stunt that included crashing through ice into a freezing river, firearm handling, and filming in extreme temperatures. He was also the printing press operator for the opening credit scene.

For two weeks in February of 2019, Shadow Trap was shot on location in Barkerville and in the surrounding mountains. A Common Sense Media production in coordination with Bell Media, the short film was based on the historic 13-year manhunt for an Indigenous trapper and respected businessman, Simon Gunanoot, who had been accused of two murders (he would later be acquitted). Shadow Trap also marked the first time that the Gunanoot family had endorsed a film project about their great-grandfather due to the compassionate handling of the source material and respectful oversight they were provided. Shadow Trap was an Official Selection in the 2019 Vancouver International Film Festival and was made available to stream on the Canadian platform, Crave, from May of 2020 until September of 2021 (www.shadowtrap.ca)

The summer season during 2019 was unknowingly Barkerville’s last season of normal operation with numerous performing contracts operating in sync. Brendan continued to portray Richard Goldsworthy and programming proceeded as per previous years.

The street contract filmed a number of their scenes for Barkerville’s Rich in History educational website (in particular, the Confederation Debate and the Pickwick Club Meeting). He spent the September shoulder season interpreting the press house and developing cards and various stationary sundries. Sensing change in the site, he and his partner (now wife) formed their own production company, Noble Players Theatrics, in order to be prepared should bidding opportunities for performance programming contracts arise.

During the spring of 2020, Brendan once again partook in the Sunset Theatre’s Exploration Series and completed a new play which had been in development purgatory for nearly a decade: Sawney’s Legacy (a solo biography play about his character, James Anderson). Brendan then returned to playing Mr. Anderson under a new Theatre Royal contract for a Virtual Show alongside past peers and new cast members. The three-week rehearsal period was followed by three weeks of streamed performances, mostly for education programming. The remainder of the season was spent implementing a distanced pandemic programming model. Brendan spent three days a week blacksmithing and one day a week interpreting the historic library.

In 2021, he was cast in a small supporting role as a snowmobile instructor in a Christmas romance called A Great North Christmas (having driven ski-dos but not snowmobiles, the Baileys took a preparatory trip to visit family where they taught Brendan the ins and outs of both the mechanics and the operation of their snowmobiles). Filming took place in early March. Brendan then returned to the park as James Anderson in late May and worked mostly in the interpretive printing office three and four days a week as staffing hours had been reduced to part-time. 2021 was another significant wildfire season and Brendan spent the latter three or four days of his work weeks patrolling as a Fire Warden for BCWS. Sawney’s Legacy also received two staged readings at the Sunset Theatre.

In 2022, Barkerville introduced a rotational model for all of the performance programming and, as Anderson, Brendan once again continued all of his previous street contract performance obligations, performed on stage five days a week in the afternoons in The Value of Gold, and joined the Cornish Waterwheel Comedic Show and Demonstration as both the high and low status characters. Outside of performance in the site, he rehearsed Sawney’s Legacy intensively. Coming out of the pandemic, Noble Players Theatrics finally produced their first show as a (soon-to-be) husband and wife team. Sawney’s Legacy debuted in the Sunset Theatre Speakeasy Festival held over the August long weekend, and then it toured to the Victoria Fringe Festival for a late August, early September run at the Baumann Centre. 

It was Brendan’s second Fringe as a performer, and Emily and Brendan’s first Fringe as producing artists with their own company.

2023 marked Brendan’s tenth season in Barkerville Historic Town & Park as an historical interpreter and stage performer, and his twelfth season overall as an historical interpreter. With the site’s continuing rotational performance model, Brendan could found five days a week performing and hosting (occasionally leading tours) along Barkerville’s streets, on the Theatre Stage in Here’s to the Fools, and in the decades-renowned ‘Waterwheel Show.‘

Meanwhile, Sawney’s Legacy continued to be produced by Noble Players Theatrics with select performances at the Sunset Theatre throughout the summer months.

An ACTRA member, Brendan still appears in film, but more sparingly given his rural location and numerous community and performance commitments.