About Cassel

It took me a while to figure it out. Hey, I am a late bloomer. What can I say? When I was seven years old we moved from Kingston, Jamaica to Scarborough, Ontario. At nine I learned how to play hockey while also taking tap dancing lessons. At seventeen I saw the movie Fame and found my path.

The Best of Broadway was my first professional job at Canada’s Wonderland’s. There were dance scholarships with George Randolph in Toronto and Steps on Broadway in New York City. There were dance companies such as Judith Marcuse’s Repertory Dance Company of Canada, Les Ballets Jazz de Montreal, and The National Tap Dance Company of Canada. Musical theatre shows, the Shaw Festival, the Stratford Festival, man I was dancing as fast as I could.

THEN came Canadian Stage Company’s, Angels in America: Millennium Approaches and Perestroika and a Dora Award nomination. Me? The dancer? Acting? That was unexpected. Even more unexpected was the opportunity to play ‘Mr. Bojangles’ in the U.S. National Tour of Fosse and to be directed by Ann Reinking. Wow, I was on my way. Yet that’s when the passion suddenly left. One evening backstage while warming up I said to the Stage Manager, “Artie, it’s not fun anymore.” It’s like that line from A Chorus Line, when the director, Zach, asks the company, “What would you do if you couldn’t dance anymore?” For ten years, I didn’t know.

Luckily I met a wonderful man who saw in me what I couldn’t see. We moved from downtown Toronto and a position as a concierge at The Fairmont Royal York Hotel to buy my parents’ house in a town thirty minutes north of Kingston, Ontario. And that’s when the passion started to come back. But it wasn’t dancing, it was acting; in community theatre shows and semi-professional productions. During one of those shows I met a writer named Charles Robertson. I told him about a dream I had to create a show about Josiah Henson. See, back in 2004, during a very bad bout of depression, I saw a documentary about Josiah Henson that struck a chord of hope in me. Something about his story penetrated deeply and stayed with me all those years.

Charles created a show with just me alone on a bare stage,with no props and no set. Just a bucket, a cap, and a handkerchief and, ta dah, JOSIAH was born. We did the first workshop presentation for Black History Month 2019. Performing that show on and off for the past five years has proven to be an artistically and spiritually beneficial vehicle; a win-win. I was able to share the story of a little-known, yet highly relevant, historical figure AND improve my acting skills as a storyteller. I still acted in other shows, but this one…this one is special.

At sixty years of age, I finally figured out that it isn’t about amassing credits and moving on to the next show, it’s about sharing my creative individuality and telling great stories….for you. This is the time of JOSIAH. That wonderful man who saw something in me twelve years ago is going to co-produce the show with me at the Alumnae Theatre in Toronto for Black History Month 2025.

It’s taken me twenty years to tell this story and there is nothing else in this world that I would rather be doing. Gratitude overflows. It’s true. The work is the play. The play is to inspire.