The New Burbage Theatre Festival of Slings & Arrows is obviously modeled on Canada's renowned Stratford Shakespearean Festival right down to the swans that float gracefully through the river passing through town. Like the company it's based on, the New Burbage is struggling to maintain its artistic integrity while remaining financially viable. As is often the case in real life, artistry is coming out on the losing end. Too many of the artistic staff, including the artistic director Oliver Wells (Stephen Ouimette), are merely going through the motions without any real passion for the job anymore.

In contrast we are offered a glimpse of the life on the low end of the theatrical totem pole in the shape of the Festival's prodigal son Geoffrey Tennant (Paul Gross) as he struggles to keep his small alternate theatre alive by passing bad checks. Seven years ago Geoffrey had suffered a nervous breakdown on stage during a production of Hamlet at the Festival and had fled, vowing never to return. But fate has other plans in store for him. When Oliver Wells is run over and killed, after passing out in a road drunk, by a delivery truck, Geoffrey allows himself to be persuaded to become interim artistic director. By the end of the first season he finds himself appointed full artistic director.

Each of the three season's six episodes focus on Geoffrey's efforts to direct one of three major works of Shakespeare; Hamlet, Macbeth, and King Lear. Each season the conflict between money and art grows, and the struggle for control of the festival between Geoffrey and the General Manager, Richard Smith-Jones (Mark McKinney) intensifies. Although he appears to get the point about the power of art periodically, Smith-Jones continually allows himself to be seduced by the lure of power, and the power of the buck until he is finally "too steeped in blood" to turn back.

The other major sub-plot that runs throughout the three seasons is the "star crossed" relationship between Geoffrey and the festival's leading lady Ellen Fenshaw (Martha Burns). They had first come together during Geoffrey's first stint at the Festival when they were both actors working under Oliver Wells' direction. She had been Ophelia to his Hamlet and they had been madly in love. But when she slept with gay Oliver, Geoffrey, torn apart by what he saw as his betrayal at the hands of the two people he loved and trusted the most, suffered his infamous onstage breakdown.