Rosebud Theatre hosts world debut of new Canadian musical

By John Watson Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

Dream, A New Canadian Musical, was hosted for its world premiere at Rosebud Theatre and School of the Arts, with opening night being June 6.

Written by Terry Bachynski, he originally began work on the project during the COVID-19 pandemic. Dream tells the story of his father, whose early life was that of a troubled youth – a street rat and an urchin, which eventually saw him finding a place to call home, and a loving marriage. 

“It was a lovely (opening) weekend, there was lots to explore. It is a new production, and in some ways is untested in this size of development in staging, and lots changed in the last week, and it was kind of a white-knuckle ride,” said Aaron Krogman, acting company member, and education director at Rosebud. “It works. It is a new show so there are sometimes a little bit of unknowns around that, but we are finding the nuance in the show and what the audiences are tracking with, and there is a lot of comedy in it, and a lot of big moments that people are connecting with.”

Krogman explained Bachynski had originally written a song, “Life Can Be Magic,” about his father in a songwriter circle, which came to be decidedly not enough of an outlet to convey the entire story. He instead began writing the musical to explore a more detailed retelling. 

The development process began with a group of actors, Krogman included, coming together throughout the COVID-19 pandemic to conduct table reads of the drafted script. 

“We were masked and distanced, and then six months would go by, and we would do another draft, or a year would go by and another read would happen, and we just kept upping the ante with more musicians, more music, more audience to get a feel for what we were working on,” said Krogman. “Then we did it for a weekend, and then we did it for an extended number of days, and then last year we did a staged concert reading of it. We did four performances, we rehearsed it for a week, and that gave us the green light to do a production with it.”

He added since the initial table read, the production has been changed significantly as characters were discarded, songs were added, and the story became adapted. 

The list of characters has been reduced from the original 35, down to 23, and the size of the cast came down from nearly 20, saw as few as six in Version 17, and has now settled at 10 for the ongoing performances. 

Among other changes, Bachynski annotated several songs which had been written for the show that were eventually discarded, and entire scenes have been removed to drop the show from being over 2.5 hours, to an under two-hour run time. The current iteration of the show being presented at Rosebud is being regarded as “Version No. 23.”

For Bachynski, Dream marks the first musical stage production he has written. More broadly as an artist, he has developed a portfolio as a painter and a songwriter.

Krogman joked that Bachynski was effectively making up his process as he went along creating Dream. 

“He has really been taking all kinds of feedback from our team and the community. I think the play has a humility to it. I play Terry essentially as the songwriter, introducing the story to the audience, and so it has a real sense of Terry himself in his unpolished show,” he said. “There is something about the tone of the music … the play starts in 1947 and there is that feel of music, it is sort of ‘50’s and different genres all the way through, but it really feels like the right way to do it.”

Dream, A New Canadian Musical will be showcased at Rosebud Theatre and School of the Arts until Aug. 30, as part of their 2025 “A Season of Belonging” production set.