- Table View
- List View
I Have AIDS!
by Sky GilbertFollowing Prodon through the five stages of acceptance—Denial, Partying, Loss of Control, Religious Conversion, and Acceptance—the play pops in and out of monologues with Prodon and into scenes with Lady Booty, an outrageous drag queen, Ron, a man who has made AIDS his personal religion, and the ever supportive Vidor, each giving their own advice on how to take the news.A black comedy like no other, I Have AIDS! is a play about gay men who are neither tragic nor sad, and we are led to laugh with them, not at them.
Identifying Mavor Moore: A Historical and Literary Study
by Allan BossThe enigmatic, obscured figure behind many of the most important moments in building Canada's theatrical and cultural landscape has largely been ignored by history. In this groundbreaking study of his work, Allan Boss re-locates Moore in Canada's cultural history. Moore may be a jack of all trades, but Boss exposes a historical record that seems to conceal Moore's work, challenging the conventions of recorded theatre history in Canada. Painting a picture of Moore's identity and legacy through his theatrical and artistic work and through an assortment of his literary contributions to the theatre, Boss creates an astounding account of a cultural giant who's been lost to history.
If We Were Birds
by Erin ShieldsIf We Were Birds is a shocking, uncompromising examination of the horrors of war, giving voice to a woman long ago forced into silence, and placing a spotlight on millions of female victims who have been silenced through violence. A deeply affecting and thought-provoking re-imagining of Ovid's masterpiece "Tereus, Procne, and Philomela," Erin Shields's award-winning play is an unflinching commentary on contemporary war and its aftermath delivered through the lens of Greek tragedy.
In Spirit
by Tara BeaganTwelve-year-old Molly was riding her new bicycle on a deserted road when a man in a truck pulled up next to her, saying he was lost. He asked if she could get in and help him back to the highway, and said he could bring her back to her bike after. Molly declined, out of interest for her own safety. The next things Molly remembers are dirt, branches, trees, pain, and darkness. Molly is now a spirit. Mustering up some courage, she pieces together her short life for herself and her family while she reassembles her bicycle—the same one that was found thrown into the trees on the side of the road. Juxtaposed with flashes of news, sounds, and videos, Molly’s chilling tale becomes more and more vivid, challenging humanity not to forget her presence and importance.
Indian Arm
by Hiro KanagawaRita and Alfred Allmers live in an isolated family cabin on native leasehold land overlooking Indian Arm, a still untamed glacial fjord just north of Vancouver, BC. With Alfred—a formerly promising novelist—now struggling with his latest work, Rita has been tasked with caring for their adopted son Wolfie, a sensitive First Nations teen who has been designated as “special needs” for much of his life. Rita’s resentments and frustrations are further embittered by her younger half-sister, Asta, a constant reminder of the innocence, idealism, and sexual allure Rita once had and yearns for again. The fragile impasse of their lives is torn asunder by the appearance of Janice, the surviving member of the Indigenous family who leased the land to Rita and Asta’s reclusive and mysterious father over fifty years ago. With the lease now expired, they are all engulfed by the secrets and contradictions of their lives and of the land itself—in both the past and the present—and their stories are drawn inexorably toward an unspeakable tragedy.
Indict the Author of Affection: Affectation and Catachresis in Hamlet
by Bradley W. BuchananMany scholars have touched tangentially on the topic of affectation in Hamlet, but none have yet offered an adequate rhetorical analysis of Shakespeare’s treatment of the concept. Making the claim that affectation is an anomalous affective malady that afflicts nearly everyone in the play, Bradley Buchanan explores the many manifestations of affectation at the court of Elsinore in light of classical rhetorical theory, as well as in the broader context of early modern intellectual culture. Buchanan shows that the special twist in Shakespeare’s depictions of affectation lies in the catachrestic abuse of the older English word “affection” by Hamlet himself (among other characters) to signify the new, foreign concept of affectation. This disturbing conflation of two opposing conditions encapsulates Hamlet’s much-discussed problem: he cannot tell the difference between genuine affection and deceptive affectation. Drawing on a growing field of scholarship engaged in the study of rhetoric in early modern English texts, Indict the Author of Affection explores how Shakespeare’s extensive and self-conscious use of catachresis involves not only far-fetched metaphors but subversive new meanings that can infect familiar words, dramatizing his characters’ psychological conflicts and producing a rich but treacherous instability in language itself.Indict the Author of Affection brings to Hamlet a groundbreaking analysis engaged with the complex, wide-ranging, and contentious discourse concerning affectation as a rhetorical, moral, and aesthetic issue.
Infinity
by Hannah Moscovitch Njo Kong KieSarah Jean is a mathematics prodigy who finds safety in numbers, in the reliability of their defined nature. Her affinity for unhealthy relationships, however, remains a complete mystery. Her flings turn into year-long relationships against her better judgment and her confusing emotional patterns are only now coming to light. It’s time for Sarah Jean to make sense of her past in terms she understands and to discover there is more to time than just its inevitable passing. Elliot is a theoretical physicist who spends most of his time thinking about time and how to unify all physics. So when he meets Carmen, a violinist, the two bond over talks about music and theory. Talks that lead them into bed and into a marriage that should and shouldn’t be. As their relationship teeters through time, work and family become a balancing act, and theories are thrown to the stars, revealing truths they’re not ready to face.
Inspiration Point
by John Garfield BarlowPoised between hope and despair, each man faces how best to move beyond the past and adapt to a future in which cultural legacy seems destined to diminish. Symbolic and politically charged, Inspiration Point speaks about life on a small Maritime reservation and the constant struggle for cultural survival.
Interdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada
by Jessica WatkinInterdependent Magic: Disability Performance in Canada is a collection of plays and interviews by, for, and about Disabled theatre artists that invites readers into the magical worlds of Disability arts culture. The book features four plays as well as an interview with artist Niall McNeil. In Smudge by Alex Bulmer, a woman details her journey toward Blindness, mourning what she loses and discovering what her other senses provide. Access Me by Boys in Chairs Collective is a celebration of sex and Disability, providing an all-access safe space to spin around. Antarctica by Syrus Marcus Ware imagines a world where racialized people have survived multiple catastrophes and must begin terraforming a new colony. And in Deafy by Chris Dodd, a Deaf public speaker takes the audience on an unexpected journey of discovering what it really means to belong.
The Invention of Romance
by Conni MassingThirtysomething Kate has devoted much of her adult life to her career as a museum curator. She’s just been tasked with mounting an exhibit about the history of romance and love despite her own string of romantically unsuccessful relationships. Intent on better curating the show, Kate investigates love in books and on hilariously disastrous dates. As her love life enters a comical death spiral, her long-widowed mother rekindles an old romance with a man she co-starred with in a play sixty years ago. Finding the partial script of her mother’s play, yellow with age and dog-eared, Kate sets out to complete its missing ending.
Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) & Antigone: 方
by Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)From the author of trace comes two adaptations that transport mythological stories from Ancient Greece to modern-day civilizations. Led by people of colour, these darkly comedic plays depict recognizable plights for justice. Iphigenia and the Furies (On Taurian Land) highlights the repetition of hate and colonialism that occur in ancient myths through a mischievous lens. Since Iphigenia was rescued from the sacrificial altar, she has served as a high priestess to the goddess Artemis on Tauros, where she in turn is to sacrifice any foreigners who try to enter. When she discovers that an exiled prisoner is her brother, they together plot their escape, but are soon confronted by a force beyond their control. Antigone: 方is set against the backdrop of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement and Tiananmen Square Massacre protests. When citizens challenge a state’s traditional doctrine, the ruling family is divided between their own interests and those of its citizens. After brothers Neikes and Teo kill each other in the protests, their sister Antigone defies her father’s orders to retrieve Neikes’s body, causing the government—and what’s left of their family—to reach a reckoning.
Is My Microphone On?
by Jordan TannahillIn another life I was a small bubble of foam on a wave coming to shore, and the wave broke, and I burst, and that was it. Before that I was a small stream, for centuries. And in another life I was a mortal girl. Which is this life. After thousands of years, I have a mouth. So if you don’t mind, Mom, Dad, I’m going to speak. I’m going to shout. When I become a human I’m going to use some words. Can you still hear me? Is my microphone on?Young people have inherited a burning world. In this urgent and lyrical play, they reckon with the generations who have come before them, questioning the choices that have been made, and the ones that they will yet be forced to make. Is My Microphone On? is a play in the form of a protest song, in which a chorus of young performers hold the audience to account, and invite them to experience the world together anew.
It Is Solved By Walking
by Catherine BanksWhen Margaret learns of the death of her former husband, she recalls their earliest days together as Ph.D. candidates, beginning a journey through her past. Told through the sensations of Wallace Stevens's poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird," the subject of her uncompleted thesis, Margaret evokes beautiful, ordinary and painful sexual memories from before, after and during their marriage. Stevens, a guiding voice in her head for twenty-five years, cajoles Margaret into unearthing the reasons she never became the poet, scholar, wife or mother she thought she would be. Bold and poetic, It is Solved by Walking is an intimate portrait of a writer making her way back to poetry one step at a time.
It's All Tru
by Sky Gilbert“There used to be people dying and they didn’t know why and there was nothing anyone could do, but most of all—no one cared whether we lived or whether we died.” Love, sex, and pharmaceuticals are put to the test when a gay couple’s open relationship is threatened with dangerous consequences. Kurt, a silver fox dance instructor, and his young fiancé, Travis, have an arrangement: when one’s away, they’re allowed to stray . . . as long as they’re safe. One night, over a dinner conversation about wedding invitations, Travis admits that he had a fling with a man named Gideon whom he believes removed the condom during sex. He also reveals that he didn’t start taking the HIV preventative medication PrEP (Truvada)—as promised—putting himself and Kurt in danger of contracting HIV. When Gideon appears on their doorstep in the middle of the night, the threat against Kurt and Travis’s relationship is an alarming force to be reckoned with.
Jasper Station
by Norm FosterSix travellers wait in a train station in Jasper, Alberta, hoping to fulfill their dreams at the other end of the line.
Jenny's House of Joy
by Norm FosterWhen a tireless young runaway comes begging for a job, the girls at Jenny's house might just have to leave their lingerie behind. A delightful new comedy about the oldest profession.
Jonas and Barry in the Home
by Norm Foster“When life comes knocking you don’t want it to find you on the couch in a soiled bathrobe.” Norm Foster’s quick wit is strong in this lighthearted buddy comedy about living life to its fullest. Barry is annoyed that he’s already living in a seniors’ home at sixty-seven, but it’s worth it to live near his daughter, Rosie. Rosie, who works at the home, brought him in so he wouldn’t be alone in case he has a heart attack like his father, brother, and uncle did before they were sixty-five. So Barry spends his time shuffling around in his slippers, taking naps, and having dinner with Rosie, and that’s good enough for him. But Barry doesn’t get to revel in the quiet for long. Enter the loquacious and flirtatious Jonas, who wrote one hit song thirty-seven years ago. Jonas likes to indulge in the finer things in life, like decadent dates and nice clothes, and he sees Barry the curmudgeon as a fixer-upper. As they bicker and bond over women, sports, and family values, Jonas and Barry must learn to open up and face how to keep living their lives.
The Josephine Knot
by Meg Braem Amiel GladstoneAfter Samantha’s baba dies, her fractured family is summoned to pick through the house full of belongings and trash, leaving taped notes on whatever they want to take. Between old napkins, a closet full of ketchup packets, and a freezer full of rotting meat are gems like a grandfather clock and plastic deer statuettes that hold more sentiment. While her father David sifts through his own memories, all Samantha wants is to find a simple object that could represent her place in the family. When other family members arrive, tug of wars and passive-aggressive conversations commence. In a house full of junk and sadness, it comes down to Samantha and David to find a new way to fit together.
The Jungle
by Anthony MacMahon Thomas McKechnieInspired by Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle.This play paints a stark and realistic portrait of what it’s like to live in cities such as Toronto currently, especially as a young person battling late-stage capitalism.First produced by Tarragon Theatre, Toronto, in October 2019
Kill Me Now
by Brad FraserWhen Joey enters puberty, his father Jake finds himself in a morally ambiguous position. Joey is severely disabled, but he still has the same sexual desires as any seventeen-year-old boy, only he can’t do anything to relieve the tension. Jake is a widower whose life is devoted to his son, but when he suddenly develops a serious medical condition, he becomes the one to rely on the people around him, including his sister Twyla, his friend Robyn, and Joey’s best friend Rowdy. As Jake’s condition worsens, an ethical dilemma troubles the household as everyone is forced to consider the possibility of saying goodbye.
Kilt Pins
by Catherine HernandezIn a Catholic high school in Scarborough, Ontario, amidst low-income housing, difficult race relations, and poverty, a young woman struggles to find her sexual identity. In this sincere portrayal of high-school kids pitting the voice of God and thousands of years of scripture against the voice of their own bodies, Kilt Pins cheekily asks "Is your kilt pin up or down?"
Kim's Convenience
by Ins ChoiA brand new edition of the smash-hit play, now a wildly popular CBC TV series. Mr. Kim is a first-generation Korean immigrant and the proud owner of Kim’s Convenience, a variety store located in the heart of downtown Toronto’s Regent Park neighbourhood. As the neighbourhood quickly gentrifies, Mr. Kim is offered a generous sum of money to sell — enough to allow him and his wife to finally retire. But Kim’s Convenience is more than just his livelihood — it is his legacy. As Mr. Kim tries desperately, and hilariously, to convince his daughter Janet, a budding photographer, to take over the store, his wife sneaks out to meet their estranged son Jung, who has not seen or spoken to his father in sixteen years and who has now become a father himself. Wholly original, hysterically funny, and deeply moving, Kim’s Convenience tells the story of one Korean family struggling to face the future amidst the bitter memories of their past.
Kindness
by Dennis FoonHeartwarming and humorous, Kindness sensitively captures the reality of children's feelings as they navigate the small and large events in their world. From Hurricane Katrina to everyday encounters in the school hallway, the play offers an unforgettable lesson in compassion.
Kiss the Moon, Kiss the Sun
by Norm FosterA thirty-five-year-old man with the mental capacity of a seven-year-old, meets a pregnant young woman in crisis, and the two form a lasting friendship. A story about people finding the nerve to take responsibility, and about persevering against the odds. One of Norm Foster's most touching plays, about a man who must learn to let go to move on.
Lac/Athabasca
by Len FalkensteinStories are carried like cargo on trains from the Rocky Mountains to the East Coast in this cautionary tale of what happens when we’re haunted by the hunger for the ever-greater development and exploitation of natural resources. A nineteenth-century fur trader and his Métis guide are harrowingly pursued by an unseen monster on the Athabasca River. Two freshwater biologists in present-day Fort McMurray investigate pollution downstream from the oil sands, until one becomes obsessed with his discovery of a centuries-old skeleton. A young man comes to work in the Alberta oil sands, but is driven home after discovering the body of a missing co-worker. The residents of a small town unite in grief after an entirely preventable disaster. Stories intersect and echo, connecting the dots between voraciousness and victimhood, beasts without and beasts within, and ravaged landscapes and ruined souls.