The Stratford Festival is shaking off the cobwebs from a winter of rehearsals as they get set to kick off the 2013 season.
Publicity director Ann Swerdfager says "It’s opening night here in stratford and we're so excited."
Romeo and Juliet will take centre stage Monday night as celebrities like of Cynthia Dale, Brian Dennehy and Colm Feore walk the red carpet in Stratford.
Over 400,000 patrons will walk through the doors this summer and most of them end up on Stratford's main street as well.
Erla Boyer, owner of Gallery Indigena says "Of course all of us are really excited about opening night, I mean it is THE Stratford Festival and the businesses are all happy to see all of the tourists coming especially from the United States and across Canada."
The festival is looking for a bounce back year in 2013 after they had their lowest attendance in over 15 years last summer and head into this year with a $3.4 million deficit.
Swerdfager says "We're substantially further ahead in terms of ticket sales and revenue this year than we were last year at this time. So we're working hard to make up for any loss that we experienced last year."
One of the ways the festival is trying to bring in more people is by actually driving them here themselves. The festival launched twice daily bus service from Toronto this year.
Fia Petersson and her parents didn't come by bus, they flew all the way from Sweden and included the festival as one of their stops as they criss-cross Canada.
"It's a really nice town. It’s so quaint and all the flowers and the canal and everything and a beautiful theatre, wonderful. We’ll see if we get a chance to go in to see what it looks like inside too."
The Swedish market may be limited, but Stratford will settle for visitors from anywhere as they try and return to profitability.
