After directing more than 45 full-length productions and juggling roles as a high school math teacher and former drama teacher, Jon Shields found himself yearning for a creative outlet that extended beyond the classroom. “For my midlife crises I had a choice between buying a Corvette or starting a theatre company,” Shields jokes. Thankfully, for Edmonton’s theatre community, he chose the latter. Earlier this year, Shields started Initium Theatre Projects, initium being a Latin word that fittingly means “optimistic beginnings.”
“There’s already a lot of independent theatre in the city,” Shields says. “But I thought, why not one more? This gives me the chance to tell the stories I care about, and to work with people who share that same passion.” When directing Sweeney Todd for Elope Musical Theatre Company in 2017, Shields recalls that about 130 people auditioned for the community/volunteer production, many with formal training but who were not full-time actors. “It seemed to me that there needs to be a venue where people can practice acting as an avocation, not just as their main job,” Shields says, which is exactly what he’s hoping to do with Initium.
The company’s debut production, Amadeus, is a co-production with the established Psychopomp Theatre, helmed by Shields’s collaborator Joel Mendenhall, and features a familiar face in the lead: local actor Randy Brososky. “We’d worked together on Sweeney Todd,” Shields recalls. “When I asked if there was a show he’d love to do, he said, ‘Amadeus is on my bucket list.’ And I said, ‘Then let’s do Amadeus.’”
This isn’t a revival of the famous play — it’s a reinvention. While Amadeus is widely known thanks to the Oscar-winning film, Shields’s stage version dives deeper into its spiritual questions. “The name ‘Amadeus’ means ‘loved by God,’” he says. “And that’s really the heart of our show. Each character wrestles with their relationship to their own version of ‘God’ — whether that’s fame, family or the divine.”
To accommodate the busy lives of his cast, many of whom work full-time jobs, Shields developed a rehearsal model that stretched over several months instead of the usual intense few weeks. This flexibility allowed for a layered, thoughtful process — especially important considering that Salieri, the narrator, is on stage for all 95 pages of the script. “It’s like directing a one-man show inside a full-scale production,” Shields explains. “We dissected every line before bringing in the ensemble.”
The show takes place in Campus Saint-Jean’s theatre, a space Shields describes as rich with potential thanks to its proscenium arch and thrust stage that sits among the audience. Shields is able to stage full re-creations of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s operas, not just hint at them. “Most productions just suggest that these are happening, but we were able to actually depict the operas and create really strong visual interest because we have such a deep stage.” Like other productions of Amadeus, Shields keeps the central question the same. “I would really like audiences to think about whether Mozart’s demise was really caused by Mozart’s relationship with his father and relationship with his God, or was Salieri really the person that drove this demise to happen? The production is supposed to leave that unanswered, but it would be interesting for audiences to answer.
For Shields, Amadeus is more than just the first production of a new company — it’s the beginning of something personal. “This is a passion project, but it’s also a foundation. Something I hope to keep doing after I retire from teaching.” And if Amadeus is any indication, Initium Theatre Projects is off to a beautifully optimistic beginning.
See the new stage production of Amadeus from May 8-15, 2025.
