Questing Through Life @ The Toronto Fringe Festival is a youth-led theatre project by Dodo Tree Productions, a newly founded Toronto collective creating space for young artists in professional theatre. This summer, we are bringing our original play Questing Through Life to the Toronto Fringe Festival—Ontario’s largest theatre festival—at Soulpepper theatre for 7 performances. As one of the few shows in the Fringe Teen category (out of 120+ productions), our work is both written by and created for young people, led by a 17-year-old playwright and director with a predominantly under-19 cast with many making their professional debut—something rarely seen at the professional level.

Our project addresses a key gap in the industry: talented young artists often lack access to mentorship, experience, and professional connections to be able to perform in professional theatre productions. We support emerging performers in breaking into the industry and building relationships through the festival. Our seven-person ensemble and I collaborate to bring this project to life, not only through performance but also by engaging in production, and marketing, building real, hands-on experience.

Questing Through Life is where things gets even more awesome. The play blends coming-of-age storytelling with Dungeons & Dragons, bringing tabletop roleplaying into scripted theatre. Four friends find their DnD campaign bleeding into real life, gaining the power to shape their reality—until control, identity, and consequence catch up with them. The show moves between grounded realism and melodramatic fantasy, featuring puppetry, interactive elements like dice-rolling, and a merging of two worlds on stage. It’s a story about growing up, and what happens when imagination stops being “just a game."

This project is both experimental and deeply human. It introduces DnD to new audiences, expands what theatre can look like, and gives young artists a real platform to create at a professional level.