In 1991, five friends – Benj Gallander, Greg Holmgren, Carol Pauker, Rob Sherwood and Ben Stadelmann – came together to put on the first SummerWorks Festival. The decision to mount a new fringe-style festival was a response to what was seen as a growing, under-represented small theatre community.

From the success of the first year, it was apparent that there was a definite need in the community for this type of festival. Since 1991, SummerWorks has continued to explore and respond to the needs and wants of our audience and theatre community. Each year there were improvements and revisions, instigated by the Producers, often inspired by feedback from the artists participating in the Festival.

From 2000-2004, under the direction of Franco Boni, the Festival made significant changes in order to further distinguish itself as a unique and integral part of the Toronto theatre community. The most significant change was the gradual transition from a lottery system to a fully juried Festival.

These changes were instrumental in raising the calibre of work, positioning SummerWorks as Canada’s premier festival of cutting-edge, exciting, professional theatre. It is the breeding ground for dynamic theatre productions of the future and the hub for Toronto’s most dynamic, dedicated performance professionals.

In 2005, the Festival came under the leadership of Artistic Producers Keira Loughran & Kimahli Powell. Their focus was to continue to build support for the artistic excellence the Festival had come to be known for and to serve as a meeting ground of Canada’s most exciting and engaging emerging and established artists with the launch of the SummerWorks Canadian Pavilion in 2006. In 2007, Loughran took on full responsibility for the Festival as sole Artistic Producer.

In January 2008, Michael Rubenfeld became the Artistic Producer of the Festival, bringing with him his great love for music, and his desire to find new ways of exploring theatre as a communal experience. During his eight-year tenure, SummerWorks transitioned from a theatre to a multi-arts festival, emerging as a home for all forms of contemporary performance, boundary-bending pieces and challenging works. Beginning with the initiation of the Music Series, Rubenfeld also established the Live Art Series, Dance Series, Performance Gallery, Performance Bar, SummerWalks and co-created the SummerWorks Leadership Intensive Program (S.L.I.P.) with Jordi Mand, creating a home for emerging arts practitioners to delve into the business of the arts.

In 2015, Rubenfeld also initiated Progress, an International Festival of Performance and Ideas. Operating under the umbrella of a unique collaborative curatorial model, a rotating group of Toronto-based arts organizations present groundbreaking work from around the world that responds to considerations of what “progress” can mean to Canada’s performance ecology. The Festival was presented each February in partnership with The Theatre Centre, for five editions.

In April 2016, Laura Nanni was appointed as Artistic and Managing Director, continuing to build community and creating an inclusive home for diverse and ground-breaking contemporary performance. During her tenure, Nanni increased the organization’s accessibility practices and re-defined SummerWorks’ programming structure to reflect Canada’s ever-changing performance ecology. Key to this was the introduction of Public Works, a festival programming stream focused on works in public space, and the role of the public in the creation and presentation of contemporary performance. Nanni also initiated the SummerWorks Lab, a place for exploration, experimentation, and process, where projects at crucial stages of development are shared with the Festival audience.

Another key shift, beginning with the 2018 Festival, was the waiving of all artist participation fees, followed by a move to a guaranteed artist fee model in 2020, as part of SummerWorks’ deep commitment to removing barriers to participation for artists.

In March 2023, SummerWorks expanded its organizational capacity, boldly moving into a new co-leadership model, with the appointment of Michael Caldwell as Artistic Director and Morgan Norwich as Managing Director.

In 2024, SummerWorks officially launched two key initiatives: Summer Break, a curated day of free programming within the Festival, focused on rest and reflection, as a way to address personal and collective mental health and physical well-being in our diverse communities; and the SummerWorks International Development Strategy, which fosters long-term and sustainable engagement with diverse international artists and companies from specific countries or geographic regions.