"One thought can change the world." That line is the tagline for a musical very few people have seen yet. It runs next week as a stand-and-sing workshop in the Studio Theatre at 1430 Trafalgar Road.
The show is Bad Hats Theatre's The Chrysalids, adapted from John Wyndham's dystopian tale. It shares a bill with a second new musical, Trembler's Waltz, at First Drafts, Tuesday, October 13 through Saturday, October 17, 2026. Sheridan describes the format as 45-minute excerpts of two never-before-seen scripts "in their earliest stages of development."
The 45-minute length matters. It is the same format, in the same building, that started a musical that later reached Broadway. That gives College Park something most neighborhoods don't have: a small, reserved-seat room where new musical theatre gets its first public hearing, a short drive or walk from home.
The Building Has Done This Before
Sheridan's own account of Come From Away reads like a timeline for what First Drafts is doing now. Producer Michael Rubinoff launched the Canadian Music Theatre Project at Sheridan in 2011. He asked writers Irene Sankoff and David Hein to write a musical about Gander, Newfoundland, and the five surrounding towns that took in 7,000 stranded passengers on 9/11.
In 2012, students in Sheridan's Music Theatre Performance program brought that script to life in a 45-minute staged reading. The show came back to Theatre Sheridan in 2013 for a two-week run as a full two-act production, with Sheridan students in the original roles. Development then continued outside the college. Productions in San Diego, Seattle, Washington and Toronto's Royal Alexandra Theatre led to a Broadway debut in March 2017.
That spring it earned seven Tony Award nominations, including Best Musical. Sheridan had a producing credit on the show and said it believed it was the first post-secondary institution in Tony history with a Best Musical nomination.
In that same 2017 release, Rubinoff explained why the incubator worked. The process gave creative teams time to "test, hear and refine their material over a longer period of time, away from critics, so that meaningful development can happen."
The audience at a First Drafts presentation is part of that process. The people in those seats are the first room a new score is tested on, before any critic hears it.
The Incubator Changed Its Name, Not Its Address
The Canadian Music Theatre Project as a named program no longer exists. According to Sheridan's history of the CMTP, it was founded in 2011 as Canada's first dedicated incubator for new musical theatre. It developed more than 28 projects in its first ten years, and several reached professional premieres. Sheridan retired it in its original format in 2021.
The same page says the work continues through the Music Theatre Performance program and initiatives such as First Drafts. It adds that the Theatre Sheridan stage "will continue to be home to original musicals in various stages of development."
So the 2026 version of the Come From Away pipeline is the first week of this season. It also sits alongside a second program. Sheridan's season page lists a Musical Development Project, which shows new musicals "in their final stages of development before they become the next big hit." First Drafts covers the earliest stage and the Musical Development Project covers the last. Both are stand-and-sing presentations.
What Is on the Stand Next Week
Both shows on the October bill are at the stage where a script still has room to change.
Bad Hats Theatre's The Chrysalids. The book is by Gregory Prest, with music and lyrics by Landon Doak. Matt Pilipiak directs and serves as dramaturg, with Fiona Sauder as associate director and Jonathan Corkal-Astorga as music director. Wyndham's story follows a group of telepathic teenagers hiding in plain sight in a society where perfection is law and difference means exile.
Trembler's Waltz. The show was created by Trevor Copp and Aaron Jensen. Jensen wrote the music and lyrics and Copp choreographed it. Sabryn Rock directs, and Donna Garner is music director. Its central character, Laurel, is a student on the edge of exhaustion. Her present starts to blur with the Dance Plague of 1518, which the show calls one of history's most enthralling unexplained phenomena. The show's question is "What if stress was contagious?"
The room is part of the experience. The Studio Theatre is a black box with flexible seating for 72 people, and all seats are reserved. A workshop in a room that size means the performers stand close to the audience, scripts are in hand, and there's no set to hide behind. The material carries the evening.
How the Rest of the Season Fits
After First Drafts, the season moves to finished productions of known titles. Sheridan describes its Full-Scale Musicals as collaborations between Technical Production students and fourth-year Music Theatre students, working with industry professionals. Two shows in the winter are co-presented with outside companies. One of them brings Bad Hats Theatre back to the Studio Theatre for a second time this season.
| Show | Venue | Dates | Creative notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| First Drafts | Studio Theatre | October 13–17, 2026 | Two new musicals, stand-and-sing workshop |
| Company | Studio Theatre | December 5–18, 2026 | Stephen Sondheim and George Furth, directed by Kate Hennig |
| The Addams Family | Macdonald Heaslip Hall | December 9–18, 2026 | Brickman, Elice and Lippa, directed by Thomas Alderson |
| The Adventures of Roderick Random | Studio Theatre | Opens January 30, 2027 | With the Shaw Festival, by Jay Turvey and Paul Sportelli |
| The Nutcracker | Studio Theatre | Opens January 30, 2027 | With Bad Hats Theatre |
| The Prom | Studio Theatre | March 27–April 10, 2027 | Beguelin, Martin and Sklar, directed by Thom Allison |
| Shrek the Musical | Macdonald Heaslip Hall | March 31–April 10, 2027 | Lindsay-Abaire and Tesori, directed by Julie Tomaino |
Sheridan's pages list different closing dates for the January shows. The Nutcracker page says February 4, 2027, while the ticket catalog says February 3. Check the ticketing page for exact dates before booking.
December is the busiest stretch on the calendar. Company and The Addams Family overlap from December 9 to 18, with one in the black box and the other in Macdonald Heaslip Hall, which has reserved row seating on two levels. On some nights in mid-December, both of the campus's main venues will have a musical running at the same time, just off Trafalgar Road.
What a First Look Costs
Theatre Sheridan's box office page lists these prices, including fees:
- Adult, 18 to 64: $36.50
- Senior 65+, youth 3 to 17, and non-Sheridan students: $31.50
- Sheridan alumni: $26.50
- Groups of seven or more: 10% off adult pricing
Subscriptions only apply to the four Full-Scale Musicals: Company, The Addams Family, The Prom and Shrek the Musical. A Silver subscription gives 10% off for two or three of them, and a Gold subscription gives 15% off for all four. The box office at 1430 Trafalgar Road is normally open Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. On show days, it opens one hour before the performance. The pages we reviewed don't list curtain times, so check the time on the ticketing page when you buy.
Parking needs a quick check before you go. Theatre Sheridan's visit page lists a flat $7 evening rate after 3 p.m., Monday to Friday. It names Parking Lot 2 as the closest lot "unless otherwise communicated" and suggests the HONK app or a prepaid pass to skip the kiosk line. The college's general visitor-parking page lists different terms: a $6 evening maximum and a set of visitor lots that doesn't include Lot 2. Sheridan sends a campus map on the day of the show, and that map is the most reliable guide for that night.
At the posted adult price of $36.50 with fees, a First Drafts ticket buys 45 minutes each with two scores still being worked on, in the same building where a 2012 reading grew into a Best Musical nominee five years later.
At The Pace Team, we think of places like the Studio Theatre as part of what makes College Park home, just as much as the streets around it. If you're thinking about a move and want to talk through what nearby places like this mean for your neighborhood, Book a Private Consultation and we'll share what we know.
