You Should Have Stayed Home Too

Tommy Taylor spent a decade on overnight shifts in Toronto and Hamilton shelters, drop-ins, encampments, and overdose prevention sites — then the pandemic hit. *You Should Have Stayed Home Too* is the documentary performance built from those years: a system under collapse, lives lost, and the people who kept showing up anyway.

The form

This isn’t a conventional scripted play. Taylor blends first-person testimony with live folk music and projected imagery. Running through the piece is the story of his late aunt Vikky Taylor — a personal thread that keeps the politics from floating into abstraction.

Why it matters here

Crow’s Theatre in Leslieville has become one of the city’s most reliable rooms for work that sits between journalism and theatre. If you’ve followed Toronto’s housing and overdose crises only through headlines, this is the version told from inside the overnight shift.

Tickets and venue

Crow’s Theatre, 345 Carlaw Avenue. Check crowstheatre.com for the full performance calendar and ticket prices — Destination Toronto currently lists mid-October performances, and the run may expand. Leslieville is on the 501 Queen and nearby streetcar routes; arrive early for the lobby bar.