About Us
Pirate Life
Pirate Life Theatre is a children’s theatre company that creates family friendly pirate-themed shows in Toronto, Ottawa, Barrie, and Hamilton. Pirate Life was founded on the idea that immersive children’s theatre on a pirate ship provides an accessible and fun first theatre experience for families and young children, building lifelong supporters of the arts.
Pirate Life was founded in 2009, in Ottawa, as Pirate Adventures. In 2014, Matt opened Pirate Life Toronto as a separate company on the Toronto Islands and, in 2017, Pirate Life began including evening programming including concerts, comedy, dance and theatre productions.
In 2019, Pirate Life acquired the Grey Ghost and the Ottawa location, bringing it a new life after a storied 10 seasons at Mooney’s Bay. In 2023, Pirate Life opened a new location in Hamilton, and in 2024 opened another location in Barrie, adding 2 more ships to our fleet.
Art & Water
Art & Water is a multidisciplinary organization presenting live performance through theatre, dance & music. We create an accessible immersive theatre production for families with young children, captivating their imaginations, inviting them to play, create and imagine with us.
We present and host a dockside concert series with emerging artists, providing them a stage to develop their audiences.
We strive to create a safe outdoor space for artistic experiences on the water, to support and empower emerging artists in their growth and encourage audiences to reconnect with art & water.
Purpose
Connection through creativity. We believe in the magic of art and its ability to inspire, fascinate and cultivate meaning in our lives.
Pirate Life endeavours to animate the waterfront and our communities through arts and culture via our children’s performances and our producing partners.
People
“The greatness of a community is most accurately measured by the compassionate actions of its members.” – Coretta Scott King.
Community is at the heart of what we do and why we do it. Our audiences, crew and partners, play an active role in bringing the magic to life.
Planet
More than ever environmental consciousness is on the rise. We’re working to reduce our carbon footprint, make a positive impact and become caretakers of the land on which we rely.
Pirate Life is taking steps to reduce its consumption and move to renewable power.
Community Involvement
We provide free and subsidized programming for community organizations, summer camps and many other incredible partners. We believe that everyone should have access to play! Since 2015, we’ve donated over 5,500 tickets and subsidised 25,000 more totalling over $475,000 in contributions to the community! Help us make a greater impact by supporting our programs today.
Free Spaces for Artists
We support other artists. Our location has proven to be a perfect venue for all sorts of artists. We’ve provided free and subsidised space to a number of groups and organisations, helping them to share their work in unique ways. Performances and productions at our venue take many shapes and forms, but no matter what we work hard to bring art to the community!
We’ve supported over 275 events and performances on the ship providing over $300,000 in free space to the artists.
Here are some examples of productions, artists, and organizations we have supported:
Pirate Life in the Media
Check out what Breakfast Television Toronto had to say about us!
Pirate Life aired on Dragons’ Den March 9th, watch it here on CBC.
Read some of our awesome reviews on Tripadvisor!
Check out all the great things blogTO had to say about our pirate adventure.
Community Partners
No person is an island, and Pirate Life would not be here without the many community partners that have helped us get to where we are and continue to support our programming.
