Looking for something to do this weekend? I've got baseball under the lights, a chance to raid a theatre wardrobe and an aerial production taking flight at the Grand, AND we’re giving away a pair of tickets!
Here's what caught my eye this week. Let’s go!
The Loon Recommends for August 27 - September 2, 2026
Root for the London Majors this Friday
The Palace Retro Clothing Sale
ONYRA Aerial Addicts at the Grand Theatre + TICKET GIVEAWAY
An Interview with Aerial Addicts Owner Tori Kuhn
Baseball, a Good Cause and One Last Summer Night
Friday, August 28 | Labatt Park | 7:05 PM | $13.00 per ticket
There are few better ways to spend a late-summer evening in London than baseball under the lights at Labatt Park, and this Friday’s final regular-season home game gives you a couple of extra reasons to go.
The London Majors take on the Brantford Red Sox for Purple in the Park, an evening supporting the London Abused Women’s Centre (LAWC). Majors players will take the field wearing special LAWC co-branded jerseys, which will be signed and auctioned off after the game, with proceeds going directly to the organization.
There’s a green bonus, too. Buy your ticket through the London Environmental Network’s Green Game fundraiser and half of the ticket price will go back to support LEN’s local environmental programming.
So you get one last summer night at Labatt Park, some good old-fashioned baseball, a chance to root for the home team, and the opportunity to support two organizations doing important work in our community.
Sounds like a good Friday night to me!
Raid the Palace Theatre’s Wardrobe
Saturday, August 29 | The Annex, 523 South St. | 9:00 AM - 12:00 PM | FREE
If you’ve ever watched a show at the The Palace Theatre and thought, I wonder where they find the costumes for all of their productions?, this is your chance to take some of them home.
The Palace’s wardrobe is bursting at the seams, and with several costume-heavy productions coming up, they need to make some room.
On Saturday, August 29, the Palace is opening up its wardrobe for a 3-hour sale featuring costumes, vintage and contemporary clothing, and accessories pulled from their collections. There will be adult, youth and children’s sizes available.
The Palace’s Wardrobe Mavens have combed through the collection to choose what goes on the sale racks, so I suspect there could be some wonderfully unexpected finds.
Whether you’re looking for something vintage, putting together a Halloween costume, hunting for your next fabulous outfit or simply want the fun of rummaging through a theatre wardrobe, this pop-up sale is for you!
Even better, your purchases help support one of London’s longstanding community theatre organizations.
More info on the Palace Theatre Arts Commons Wardrobe Sale
(all I could find was a Facebook event page)
Editor’s note: This event is NOT at the Palace. It’s at 523 South St., between William St. and Maitland St.
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ONYRA Takes Flight at the Grand Theatre + Ticket Giveaway!
August 29 & 30 | Auburn Stage at the Grand Theatre | 2PM and 6PM shows | $41 per ticket
If your idea of a night at the theatre involves watching incredible athletes flying through the air, then ONYRA should be on your list, just check out this video below!
This weekend, St. Thomas-based Aerial Addicts takes over the Grand Theatre’s Auburn Stage with a cirque-inspired production blending aerial arts, dance, acrobatics, storytelling and theatre.
The result promises to be less of an aerial showcase and more of a fully realized theatrical experience — surreal, atmospheric and built around a story that quite literally unfolds above the stage.
What makes this show worth checking out is the leap from a small independent regional studio to one of London’s best stages.
The company’s athletes and coaches have spent months creating ONYRA. There are three performances over the weekend, and it looks like a great way to close out August.
AND, we have tickets to give away! Aerial Addicts has generously provided two FREE tickets to ONYRA for one lucky Loon subscriber.
Want to go? Just let me know in the comments. I’ll draw a name on Thursday, August 27 at 7PM, and the winner will be able to choose which performance they’d like to attend.
ONYRA shows at the Grand Theatre
Saturday, August 29, 2026, 2PM & 6PM
Sunday, August 30, 2026, 2PM
From the Studio to the Grand - An Interview with Tori Kuhn
Eight years after launching Aerial Addicts, owner Tori Kuhn is taking her young performers to the Auburn Stage at the Grand Theatre this weekend.
I got a chance to ask Tori some questions about the show and her St. Thomas studio.
1) For people who have never experienced aerial arts before, how would you describe ONYRA, and what do you hope they feel when they leave the theatre?
Onyra is probably a little different from what people picture when they hear “show, production, etc.” It cannot be described as a recital, play or showcase. It truly is a full theatrical production that uses aerial arts, dance, acrobatics, music and movement to create an entirely new world.
The whole show lives somewhere between dreaming and waking. It is intentionally a little strange and abstract — almost like trying to explain a dream after you’ve woken up. There are moments that are beautiful, moments that are darker or unsettling, and moments that I hope just make people stop and think, how are they doing that?
More than anything, I want people to feel something. They don’t necessarily have to leave understanding every moment or explain exactly what ONYRA was about. I actually like that they might interpret parts of it differently.
I want them to leave feeling like they experienced something rather than just watched a performance — something imaginative, unexpected and hopefully something they remember.
2) Aerial Addicts began as a small studio in 2018, and now you’re bringing a full theatrical production to the Grand Theatre. What does this milestone mean to you personally?
It’s honestly very surreal.
When I started Aerial Addicts in 2018, it was very small and I was very young. I definitely wasn’t thinking that one day I would be rigging a full-scale aerial production inside my very own studio space, let alone inside the Grand Theatre.
Onyra is especially meaningful to me because it represents the direction I have always wanted to take our Performance Team. I love the athletic side of aerial, but I’ve never wanted what we do to only be about competitions. I’ve always been really drawn to the creative, storytelling, immersive side of aerial.
I think I’m probably still too in the middle of producing Onyra to fully process what it means to be bringing it to the Grand Theatre.
There are a lot of spreadsheets, meetings, phone calls, rehearsals, staging, costuming, makeup testing, rigging and equipment checks to perfect before you get to the sentimental part! But seeing our athletes on that stage is going to be a really special moment for me.
3) You’ve described ONYRA as combining aerial arts, dance, acrobatics, storytelling and theatre. How did the idea for the show begin, and how did you turn those different disciplines into one cohesive story?
The idea actually started during a brainstorming session with my Elite Company while we were trying to decide on the theme for our annual production.
Everyone had really different and amazing ideas, and we just couldn’t agree on one. At some point, it was jokingly said what if we just combine all of them, and somehow that joke became ONYRA.
We started looking at how all of these completely different concepts could exist in the same world, and the idea of a dream made it possible. Dreams can be beautiful, strange, dark, chaotic and completely disconnected from one moment to the next, but somehow they still make sense while you’re in them. That gave us a way to take all of these different ideas and turn them into one larger story.
Our goal is for the story to never stop so somebody can perform an aerial routine. The apparatus, movement, formations and transitions all have a purpose within the story.
Sometimes the aerialists are characters, sometimes they’re part of the environment, and sometimes the way they’re moving is what communicates the emotion or feeling of that part of the dream.
We don’t want it to feel like a collection of separate routines. We want the audience to feel like they’ve stepped into this dream with us and are being carried from one part of it into the next.
4) I understand that a couple of your students have choreographed this show with you. How did this process work and how long has your troupe been developing and rehearsing ONYRA?
One of my favourite things about ONYRA has been that it hasn’t just been me standing at the front of the studio dictating every piece.
Our Elite Company specifically took on choreographing their own pieces for the show, and beyond the formal choreography, the athletes have contributed a lot to the overall production of the show too. A lot of them took to certain themes instantly and with my guidance, built their portion of the dream from the music all the way to the makeup.
Especially with aerial, choreography has to be collaborative because every athlete moves a little differently and has different strengths. Sometimes an athlete will try something in rehearsal that wasn’t at all what I originally pictured, but it’s better — so we keep it.
We first created and performed a version of the show in December 2025. Almost immediately after that we began talking about what it could become on a bigger stage, and planning for the Grand Theatre was underway early in 2026.
This summer has been the really intensive re-development period. The Performance Team has been training and rehearsing throughout the summer. We just finished a full intensive week dedicated to the production, and now we’re into our final rehearsals.
5) How many students are in ONYRA, what is the age range and what has been the biggest challenge?
There are 18 athletes performing in ONYRA, ranging from 10-19 years old.
One of the biggest challenges has simply been the scale of it.
Aerial productions have an extra layer that a traditional dance or theatre production doesn’t necessarily have because everything we choreograph also has to work within the physical limitations of the rigging system.
At times we have multiple aerialists in the air at the same time, large apparatuses, and floor work, so there has been a huge amount of work behind the scenes making sure what we’ve imagined artistically can also be executed safely in the theatre space.
And then there is the challenge of taking 18 young, individual athletes and making them operate like one professional company. In a show like ONYRA, you can’t only know your routine or part in the routine.
You have to know where everyone else is, when you’re entering, what is being moved when, what scene is coming next and how your role fits into the entire production.
These athletes are not just performing aerial routines anymore — they’re learning how to be part of a full-scale production.
6) What does your typical student look like at Aerial Addicts and how many students do you have at the school? Are people sometimes surprised by how accessible it can be to beginners?
There really isn’t one “typical” aerial student, which I think surprises people.
We have kids who come in already doing gymnastics or dance and are immediately comfortable being in the air, but we also have students who have never done anything remotely like aerial before.
That’s probably the biggest misconception. People see aerial and think, I could never do that because I don’t have the upper-body strength or flexibility. But you gain those things as you progress. We don’t expect somebody to walk into their first class and climb to the ceiling or do the splits.
I think that’s one of the things I love most about aerial. There is always a skill, big or small, waiting to be achieved.
Someone can walk into their first class convinced they’re not capable of anything and leave having done something they genuinely didn’t think they could do.
At Aerial Addicts we now have approximately 100 students across our recreational, Pre-Performance and Performance Team programs, which is pretty wild to think about considering where we started in 2018.
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A lovely note from our ticket winner Melanie after seeing the show:
"Thank you again Diana. I really enjoyed this unique, creative and wonderful production this afternoon. A great respite minute from all the noisy, challenging and horrible things that are happening in our world. A breath of fresh air and positivity that shows what the human species is capable of."
A note that Melanie wrote a Substack note putting her name into the hat for the tickets and is the lucky winner of 2 tickets to see ONYRA! Congrats to her!