East Van Panto star Steffanie Davis makes the switch from heroine to villain in Robin Hood
Triple-threat performer’s role of bad-guy Tony the Pony is part of a career that’s taking off—and busting body-image stereotypes
Steffanie Davis, with Jason Sakaki and Munish Sharma, in East Van Panto: Robin Hood. Photo by Emily Cooper
The Cultch presents Theatre Replacement’s East Van Panto: Robin Hood at the York Theatre from November 20 to January 5
MOST MUSICAL-THEATRE performers dream of standing ovations and cheers. But when Stir catches busy stage actor Steffanie Davis amid rehearsals for this year’s East Van Panto: Robin Hood, she has something else in mind.
“I can’t wait to be booed!” she enthuses. “How much fun is it to have permission as an audience member to get to boo someone—and it's encouraged!”
Davis has done a major about-turn from last year, which marked her first—and long-coveted—role in the Panto. She played the ingenue-princess Belle in the sendup of Beauty in the Beast, shaking the York theatre rafters singing songs inspired by heavy hitters like Adele.
For this year’s trip to Sherwood Forest, Davis is going bad—and equine—taking on the role of the villain Tony the Pony, henchhorse to the Sheriff, who wants to privatize parks and charge for use of the local library. In a show that’s full of animal characters, Davis has been developing her horsey ways.
“Instead of having a gigantic mane, I have a kind of Ariana Grande-style gigantic ponytail. I've got the hooves,” she explains. “And I've got a riding crop: we're ready to mean business and get the neighbourhood under control.”
It’s not the first time Davis has played a bad guy onstage: she was a favourite in the 2022 Theatre Under the Stars production of We Will Rock You as the dastardly, red-beehived Killer Queen.
“I actually find the villains to be a little bit more accessible,” admits Davis. “Not that I’m a villain in my regular day-to-day! But I just love leaning into the dark comedy of it all. I found last year to be a little bit more challenging, because it was new territory for me to be an ingenue.”
Still, good guy or bad, Davis can barely contain her enthusiasm at again being able to live out her Panto dream in the Theatre Replacement production. The Richmond-born actor had lived and worked in a restaurant for years by the Drive, and made Panto-going part of her yearly tradition.
“I’d always wanted to do one, and it was always, like, How do I get in there?” she relates. “So when I finally got my email invitation to audition for the Panto last year, I think I cried, actually. Because it’s just one of those shows that’s so unique and special—the community and families that you see, and I wanted to be a part of that.
“Last year exceeded my expectations,” she adds. “Theatre Replacement: I can't say enough good things about that company. Everyone involved is just so wonderful and supportive and welcoming, and everybody just cares about everybody so much—it was like we became quite a little family last year. It was quite a milestone for me.”
Running over almost seven weeks, the East Van Panto is a musical marathon. But for Davis, stamina is not a problem.
“I think the Panto is one of those shows where I could have probably done it for another two months,” she reflects on last year. “It was the joy that we had on stage, and the energy that we were feeding off of from the audience was so high. I could have done that show forever and ever, in terms of Beauty and the Beast. And I think it’s going to be another one of those years, just because there’s nothing quite like it.
“The freedom of getting to play within the Panto is also different from a musical where everything is rehearsed,” she adds. “At the Panto, we’re feeding off of the audience as another character in the show. And so things just got absolutely silly by the end of the run last year.”
A lot of the silliness in this year’s Panto comes from the script, written by a duo that Davis has gotten to know well over the last year or two. Christine Quintana and Jivesh Parasram created both Beauty and the Beast and this year’s Robin Hood—but they were also a part of a show that proved to be another breakout for Davis. Quintana’s Someone Like You was a hit at the Arts Club last year, with Parasram directing and Davis starring in the female-powered, contemporary reimagining of Cyrano de Bergerac.
By now, during Panto rehearsals, Davis can almost tell intuitively who penned which ideas.
“There are certain things in the show where I'm like, ‘Jiv definitely wrote this’— like the skunk king character from last year, who may or may not be mentioned at some point in this year’s,” Davis says. “And last year, Belle felt super-close to Christine in terms of her as a character. This year, I can see them both throughout the whole show, and it’s just really wonderful the way they collaborate and build off of each other’s humour and insane ideas. So it’s been really wonderful to see this next fairy tale developed with their brains. And I think audiences are going to be just as surprised and delighted as they were last year.”
Steffanie Davis.
The themes of commercializing green spaces and governments going corporate will resonate big-time with Vancouverites, Davis says. Last December, Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim announced a surprise plan to formally get rid of this city’s elected parks board, a move that provoked fears developers would carve up our world-class greenspaces.
“The show is very political this year,” Davis allows. “Christine and Jiv are just leaning into it, and especially with so many different elections happening around the world, but also in our own city and in our province and soon federally for Canada, I think it’s the right time to be vocal and to be really, really honest about these things. It feels like the right time to be loudly pointing out things that are happening in our own town.”
Davis is used to being vocal in her own right. She’s been an advocate for better body representation on stage and screen, and breaking the stigma of large bodies. She has written cabarets based on her experiences and was one of 10 Canadian artists chosen to take part in the inaugural “Leading Players Project” with Toronto’s EveryBODY on Stage, which aims to break down stigma and fat-phobia in the arts. The artist traces a change in her own and others’ mindsets in part back to her first big break as Killer Queen.
“Creative people making decisions in theatre around casting have slowly, over the past few years, just opened their minds to other kinds of people and bodies being represented on stage, specifically as a plus-size person,” she says. “I struggled figuring out where I would fit or belong in certain shows over the years, and it wasn’t until a few years ago when I just started saying, ‘You know, actually it does not matter. I can play anything. I don’t have to wait around for these things. I can just actually ask to be seen for certain roles, or I can play a character that’s not traditionally played by someone who lives in a larger body—like booking the Killer Queen.’ And then, right after that, I did Cabaret with Raincity Theatre where I played a Kit Kat girl—and Kit Kat girls are also historically cast as a certain body type, certainly.”
Playing the princess Belle at last year’s Panto was an important step forward, as well.
“Even though it’s an East Van Panto princess, that was still a big deal for me, because there’s still not a fat Disney princess out there in the Disney canon,” she says. “And playing a princess was never on my bingo card before. Certainly not Belle. I thought, you know, whenever Beauty and the Beast came in my future, I’d probably play Mrs. Potts, because that’s what I was trained to believe I could play in terms of that story. But yeah, getting the opportunity to play a princess last year, even if the princess was an edgy East Van princess—that was something that I didn’t foresee in my future.”
While Davis won’t be playing a heroine this time out, she—and the rest of the cast—will be busting moves, choreographed by Amanda Testini, to Veda Hille’s energized score. And as someone who has danced her whole life, Davis sees that as progress, too.
“Up until a couple years ago, I wasn’t really given as many opportunities to dance as much, because if you’re dancing on stage, especially in a musical, you likely have to blend body-shape or size wise into the ensemble of the show,” she says. “But in the Panto, it’s ‘Every body is a good body.’ And Amanda is so good at taking people’s skills, wherever they’re at with movement, and making everybody feel awesome on stage.”
And so this triple-threat talent continues to blaze her own path on local stages—and, right after her long Panto run, on tour with Someone Like You.
But for now, she’s looking forward to spending time inside the holiday tradition she enjoyed from the outside, as a longtime Drive resident, for years.
And, when you really think about it, the Panto embraces the same kind of inclusive spirit that Davis is all about.
“It’s somewhere where anybody can go at the time of year that can sometimes feel lonely for certain people. It’s the place to go when you want to feel community and you want to feel joy, but you don’t have to feel like you need to be part of a certain religion or anything to be there,” she explains. “So I love the Panto for that reason—and that’s why I loved it for that reason as an audience member. And now I get to pour that joy out to my neighborhood for seven or eight weeks. It’s really special—even though this time I guess I gotta scare them a bit.” 
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