Espoir Segbeaya sold her furniture in Montreal and moved everything she owns into a closet in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where the Shaw Festival now houses its actors in apartments it owns instead of ones it rents.
Segbeaya and Dillan Chiblow live in the Artists’ Village, the 42,000-square-foot campus the festival opened to the public on Friday, located inside the former Upper Canada Lodge long-term care home.
The Shaw pays roughly $800,000 a year against market value to hold about 100 artist beds in rented apartments across town. The village’s 26 units are meant to absorb part of that cost.
Both actors moved in when the residences opened in February. The apartments have been nearly full since April.
“I came here with everything I own from Montreal because I’m not subletting,” said Segbeaya. “It fits really well.”
Chiblow, who is Ojibwe and from Garden River First Nation near Sault Ste. Marie, made the same move for the season.
The two are members of Shaw’s Baillie cohort, four working actors who meet weekly with associate artistic director Kimberley Rampersad to take George Bernard Shaw’s plays apart line by line while performing in the 2026 season.
Segbeaya said the rest of the company is too booked to do the same.
“Not even the actors here, they’re so busy that they don’t get a chance to just go back to the text,” she said. “And the way that they’re doing it, it’s really special.”
Chiblow said he knows of no other company that gives working actors that much study time.
“I don’t think it happens anywhere,” he said.
Shaw performers with 30 years of credits still book time with the same coaches to keep difficult text under control. Both actors said watching that has taught them as much as the sessions with Rampersad.
“It’s also really admirable as an actor to watch established people also go to the coaches,” said Chiblow.
Segbeaya said no one at Shaw treats the work as finished. “Everyone’s working hard all across the board,” she said. “There is no, ‘I’m good and I’m too good now.'”
Chiblow said residents working opposite schedules will often meet in the courtyard between the buildings.
“When Espoir had her show premiere, we all had a bit of a BBQ out there and everyone came out,” said Chiblow.
He said the arrangement works because everyone in the building understands what the others are carrying.
“It’s going to be weird not to be here with this community.”
