Musical about genetic discovery conceived as way to process 'life-changing' family secret

After Noam Tomaschoff's parents revealed to him that his dad — the man who raised him from birth — was not his biological father, his gut instinct wasn't to keep harbouring the secret they had kept for 31 years: It was to share it, and share it widely.

"My brain automatically told me, like, you need to make something out of this," he said of his reaction in the summer of 2022.

That intuition led the writer-actor to process the news through penning a one-man musical with his two childhood friends based on his real-life extraordinary genetic discovery.

Another aspect of the personal bombshell was the fact that the only child actually had more than 35 half-siblings.

"I've met people who have had similar experiences and when they don't have an outlet, whatever it may be, to wrangle it and make sense of it and own it, it can remain a big obstacle, something you never get past," he said.

"I think it was my way of getting through it." After successful runs at the Toronto and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, a showcase in New York, and performances in other Canadian cities, "Our Little Secret: A True New Musical" is heading to the Off-Mirvish stage, giving the Toronto-born performer a special homecoming.

"It's everything.

It's like the Olympics," he said of the show hitting the CAA Theatre for a nearly three-week run, beginning Nov.

3.

For Tomaschoff, the last four years have been a whirlwind.

He had a typical childhood and said he never had any reason to suspect his parents were keeping anything — let alone an identity-shaking secret — from him.

But as detailed in a lengthy 2023 Toronto Life feature, when he was 31, a woman he was dating, who is now his fiancée, told him about direct-to-consumer genetic test kits.

On a whim, he ordered one.

When he told his mom about the impending DNA test, the series of life-shifting events unfolded.