Odyssey Theatre – Zonta Club of Ottawa, Canada

Preview Night Fundraiser  July 30th, 2025

Join us on Wednesday July 30th, 2025, at 8pm for a special preview performance of Odyssey’s Theatre Under the Stars in Strathcona Park. For more than 95 years the Zonta Club of Ottawa, Canada has helped women and girls locally, nationally, and internationally through its work. The club has given out $177,000 in awards and this year proceeds will support our 2025 education awards for women and girls.

For its 39th season, Odyssey Theatre is proud to present the premier of ‘The Girl With No Hands’, a darkly comic fantasy written and directed by Laurie Steven.

When reality unravels, her dreams are her magic.

With the walls of her life closing in, a troubled young woman is offered one final escape. Lured into a crumbling fantasy world, she becomes the reluctant heroine of a story with a mind of its own. She is hailed as a long-awaited saviour by a trio of bumbling outcasts, courted by a desperate King, entangled in the romantic schemes of an eccentric spirit, and hunted by a Devil hell-bent on destroying her. But when true love does not deliver a happy ending, she must take charge of her own story.

The play is inspired by the Brothers Grimm folktale “The Handless Maiden” which has long stood as a symbol of the feminine heroic journey—one of resilience, transformation, and reclaiming inner strength. Our heroine’s struggle to believe in her worth, her dreams, and her voice speaks to anyone who has had to fight to take ownership of their story.

Odyssey’s creative team will conjure up this crumbling fantasy world with stunning original masks, elaborate sets and costumes, enchanting music, and over thirty vivid characters. It all promises to be an entertaining and captivating evening of summer theatre along the banks of the Rideau River in one of Ottawa’s most beautiful parks.

Odyssey Theatre & Zonta Club of Ottawa, Canada

Laurie Steven, a 1992 ZCO CA bursary winner, established the innovative Odyssey Theatre, another local professional theatre company.

Empowering Women: Zonta Club of Ottawa 1929 – 2019

Fundraising
Plays staged by Ottawa’s innovative and invigorating outdoor theatre company 
Odyssey Theatre have provided a valuable source of funding since the mid-nineties. 
The club purchases tickets from Odyssey for a preview performance in July, then 
sells them at an augmented price, assigning the net proceeds to Zonta Ottawa’s 
bursary program. Before a performance, many audience members use the occasion to 
picnic in scenic and historic Strathcona Park, where the company’s temporary stage 
is located.

A Theatre Like No Other!