Walterdale is a first rate community theatre, which means every show is put on stage by unpaid volunteers who do it for the love of theatre.

I looked at Walterdale's online archive and note they cast an Asian-Canadian actor in the first-rate French farce Boeing Boeing last season, and produced the racially-themed "Six Degrees of Separation" the year before. (They also premiere a show of original one-act plays every season.)

Producing an Othello with a woman in the title role is, in my opinion, a defensible artistic decision.  In no way did the lead actor deserve even one "menacing message from a stranger that made her feel vulnerable."

Walterdale Theatre didn't deserve this put-down from Kelly Nestruck, either.