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Of Human Bondage
by Vern Thiessen Heidi Janz Tracy BealerWhen Philip meets Mildred, a disarming tea-shop waitress, he finds his yearning for art and experience consumed by his intense attraction to her. Mildred, for all her teasing, isn’t all that interested in Philip, but rather in flattery, possessions, and security. Yet Philip, in a powerful haze of passion and pride, obsessively pursues Mildred despite the anguish and emotional carnage that repels and binds them at all costs. Of Human Bondage is a grand story of lust, unrequited love, and the pursuit of beauty.
Of the Fields, Lately
by David FrenchA son returns after an absence of two years to find both his mother and family friend Wiff trying to sustain his father, Jacob. A heart attack has forced Jacob out of work, and he can't reconcile himself to his frightening situation. The characters all discover something about themselves under this pressure of imminent death. Of the Fields, Lately won the Chalmers Award in 1973.
Office Hours
by Norm FosterIt's a Friday afternoon in the big city and, in six different offices, six different stories are unfolding at the same time. However, they are all connected somehow, from the figure skater on the ledge, to the novelist in the closet. A madcap race towards quitting time.
Oil and Water
by Robert ChafeIn 1942 the USS Truxtun, a ship carrying over a hundred sailors, ran aground on the Burin Peninsula in Newfoundland, killing most of its men. Oil and Water is the incredible true story of the sole African American survivor of the wreck, Lanier Phillips, the first black man to be seen by some of the residents of the town of St. Lawrence. A haunting and hopeful tale of two cultures, Oil and Water is an honest legend that still resonates with power seventy years later.
Old Love
by Norm Foster"The story spans three decades and half a dozen meetings between Bud, a salesman, and Molly, his boss's wife. One of them is smitten from the very first meeting—the other, let's just say—less so. The story is straightforward, easy to follow and funny, often very funny. Canada's pre-eminent comic playwright Norm Foster has written a clever and witty dialogue celebrating the pursuit of love, the kind of love that makes you breathe just a little bit faster. Charmingly written, with just a few curse words for effect, Foster's use of one-liner's serve the script well and has the audience smiling, chuckling and laughing throughout the entire play." —The Hub
On a First Name Basis
by Norm FosterDavid, a successful novelist with writer's block, has received some devastating news he's kept to himself. Lucy, his housekeeper of twenty-eight years, has her own secret that she's afraid to admit. As Lucy is getting ready to end her shift, David invites her to stay and have a drink, curious about the woman who's been tending to his house all these years. But as the night sets in and the drinks start to flow, secrets reveal themselves, for better or worse.
One-Actmanship: Two Plays by Norm Foster: My Narrator / The Death of Me
by Norm FosterMy Narrator Imagine what would happen if that little voice inside your head—the one that tells you how to behave and what choices to make—suddenly took on a life of its own? For Lacy and Miles, love is what happens, and with hilarious results. The Death of Me When John bargains with the Angel of Death for a second chance at life, he quickly discovers that fixing the mistakes of your past is difficult, and that perhaps his destiny is not yet etched in stone.
One Voice: House and Here Lies Henry
by Daniel Brooks Daniel MacivorGiving his characters life in a whirlwind of words, Daniel MacIvor showcases his talents as a writer and performer in two of his most celebrated solo shows. Published here for the first time in their newly revised scripts, House and Here Lies Henry seethe with anger and soothe with comedy.In House, Victor drags his audience through his life, his fantasies, his desires, and his recent push to the edge. Here Lies Henry is a story about a man alone on a room with a mission to tell you something you don't already know.
Opening Night
by Norm FosterThe madcap antics start as Jack and Ruth Tisdale celebrate their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary with an evening at the theatre. It's a dream come true for Ruth and an imposition for Jack who would rather be at home watching the World Series. However, after the events both on and off the stage that fateful night, their lives and those of all of those involved are irreparably altered.
Other Side of the Game
by Amanda ParrisI don’t think you can expect society to change if you’re not ready to take the first step. In the 1970s Beverly walks into an office of Black activists, wanting to join the Movement, and has to prove she’s committed enough to fight. Some forty years later, in the Hip Hop Generation, Nicole reunites with her ex-boyfriend on a basketball court, wondering where he’s been, when a police officer stops them. In this striking debut, Amanda Parris turns the spotlight on the Black women who organize communities, support their incarcerated loved ones, and battle institutions, living each day by a ride-or-die philosophy, strengthening their voices and demanding to be heard.
Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers
by Makambe K SimambaSlimm, a seventeen-year-old Black boy in a hoodie suddenly finds himself in the first moments of his afterlife. He calls out for God. God does not respond. What happens next is a sacred journey through the unknown, as Slimm grapples with the truth of the life he lived and the death he didn’t choose. Our Fathers, Sons, Lovers and Little Brothers is a protest for all Black life beyond headlines and hashtags, a prayer for all families left behind, and a promise to the community that all Black lives matter.
Outlaw
by Norm FosterA young Canadian homesteader travelling far from home finds himself accused of murder in the state of Kansas in 1871. With only his wits to defend himself, he turns the law of the land—and the men hell-bent on enforcing it—upside down. This authentic western is a unique take on the days when guns were the law.
Outside
by Paul DunnDaniel’s ready to talk. And his friends Krystina and Jeremy are ready to help. But is it too late? Set in separate but simultaneous lunch periods at two different high schools, the teenagers are faced with acknowledging what drove them apart. At his new school, Daniel speaks to the Gay-Straight Alliance about the bullying and depression that forced him to move. He looks back fondly at the bond he formed with Krystina and Jeremy in history class and the trauma he faced from anonymous text messages. At his former school, Krystina and Jeremy are setting up for their first GSA meeting while grappling with the guilt of not doing more to help their friend. For the first time Daniel has an appreciative audience, but his friends face an empty room. The narratives intertwine as Daniel gains more confidence in his queer identity and Krystina and Jeremy try to assess their boundaries as straight people who want to create a safe space. By talking about mistakes, abuse, a suicide attempt and a move, the teens find comfort in perspective and power in numbers.
Palace of the End
by Judith ThompsonBased around the lives of three distinct characters—a young soldier imprisoned for her misconduct at a prison camp in Iraq, a microbiologist-cum-weapons inspector who exposes the false justifications for war, and a mother/political opponent of Saddam Hussein—Palace of the End details the reality of the war in Iraq from three unique perspectives. With its emphasis on the human voice and power of the soul in the midst of a destructive war, each account is a riveting and brilliantly portrayed indictment of one of the contemporary world's worst conflicts.Winner of the 2008 Susan Smith Blackburn PrizeWinner of the 2008 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play
paper SERIES
by David YeeAn unhappy orphan who finds solace in paper cut-outs of her parents, an Indian doctor who displays his medical degree in his taxi cab, and waiters who tamper with fortune cookie are some of the vibrant characters who are brought to life in this anthology of six monologues that revolve around paper. From drama to comedy to crime-thriller, Yee brings us a variety of plots and characters in a series of imaginative, thought-provoking vignettes.
Paradise
by Patti FlatherAfter a traumatic assault in Central America, Rachel returns home, but it isn’t the reprieve she expected. She comes back to turmoil between her parents, and a part-time job in her dad’s medical office. Her father, George, full of endearing blunder, tries unsuccessfully to connect with his daughter, who seems to be reeling. Her childhood friend Khalil isn’t around to provide support. He’s in Afghanistan travelling and volunteering when he is wrongfully arrested. On the periphery is Wally—off work because of a logging injury—who spends a great deal of time in George’s office. Wally struggles to buy food for his dog Lucky, his rent payments are overdue, and the ringing in his ears just won’t stop. He’s looking for help in all the right places, but nobody seems to notice he’s deteriorating until it’s too late.
Paradise Lost
by John Milton Paul Stevens Erin Shields“The biggest mistake any of us could make would be to underestimate Satan.” The seventeenth century and present day are seamlessly intertwined as Satan vents to an audience about her frustration at being cast out of Heaven and her thoughts on oppression. When she finds out that God has created delicate new creatures called “humans,” she crafts a plan for revenge and betrayal on the Almighty. Erin Shields turns Heaven and Hell upside down in this witty, modern, feminist retelling of John Milton’s epic poem about the first battle between good and evil. Shields’s wickedly smart and funny script questions the reasons of the universe, the slow process of evolution and the freedom of knowledge. The debate over right and wrong has never been so satisfying.
The Patron Saint of Stanley Park
by Hiro KanagawaSiblings Josh and Jennifer are coping with the loss of their father, who disappeared in a floatplane accident last Christmas Eve. Their mother wants to pretend everything is normal, while Jennifer is angry and isolated and Josh scours the Internet for proof that their father is still alive. So on Christmas Eve, when the children are supposed to catch a bus to their uncle's place, they go to Stanley Park instead and make their way to Prospect Point to honour their father's memory. When a catastrophic windstorm thwarts their plans, Skookum Pete, a strange vagabond who roams the park, takes them to a fantastical bunker beneath the park, where they experience wondrous visions that help them understand the truth about their father.
Penny Plain
by Ronnie BurkettHumanity is facing extinction, and Penny Plain, elderly and blind, can only sit and wait for the end. After a heartbreaking farewell from her dog, Geoffrey, who leaves to live as a man, Penny faces the inevitable by herself. But she isn't alone for long as a cast of characters, including a serial killer, a cross-dressing banker, and talking dogs barge into her boarding house in pursuit of last chances and an escape from the hostile world outside. With this steady invasion, Penny bears witness to the funny and chilling consequences as mother earth cleans house and reclaims her ground.
A Perfect Bowl of Pho
by Nam NguyenNam, a procrastination-prone Vietnamese Canadian university student, sets out with the vague ambition to write a musical about his diaspora as embodied by food, particularly the world-famous noodle soup pho. What follows is pure meta musical, genre-bending through thousands of years of history, featuring rapping ancient kings, communist spies, dancing sharks and refugees, and awkward first dates in suburbia. However, Nam eventually finds himself caught between his different characters as each argues what pho (the food and the show) truly represents, and he struggles to find an answer that will satisfy everyone—in the end, isn’t this just a bunch of silly soup songs?
Perfect Pie
by Judith ThompsonIn the course of an afternoon's reunion between two long-estranged women, a buried memory, and two teenagers' wild secret, slams into the present. When Patsy invites her old friend Francesca, now a glamourous actress, to her home in Marmora after a thirty-year absence the two women reunite with a certain amount of unease. As the day progresses, we learn how their friendship blossomed in their adolescence and how, on one fateful day, it all ended.
Pig Girl
by Colleen MurphyAt 4:00 a.m. on a secluded farm, a woman fights to take her life back from a serial killer as her desperate sister and a haunted police officer reach across time and distance in an attempt to rescue her.
Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre
by Kailin WrightIn Canada, adaptation is a national mode of survival, but it is also a way to create radical change. Throughout history, Canadians have been inheritors and adaptors: of political systems, stories, and customs from the old world and the new. More than updating popular narratives, adaptation informs understandings of culture, race, gender, and sexuality, as well as individual experiences. In Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre Kailin Wright investigates adaptations that retell popular stories with a political purpose and examines how they acknowledge diverse realities and transform our past. Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre explores adaptations of Canadian history, Shakespeare, Greek mythologies, and Indigenous history by playwrights who identify as English-Canadian, African-Canadian, French-Canadian, French, Kuna Rappahannock, and Delaware from the Six Nations. Along with new considerations of the activist potential of popular Canadian theatre, this book outlines eight strategies that adaptors employ to challenge conceptions of what it means to be Indigenous, Black, queer, or female. Recent cancellations of theatre productions whose creators borrowed elements from minority cultures demonstrate the need for a distinction between political adaptation and cultural appropriation. Wright builds on Linda Hutcheon's definition of adaptation as repetition with difference and applies identification theory to illustrate how political adaptation at once underlines and undermines its canonical source. An exciting intervention in adaptation studies, Political Adaptation in Canadian Theatre unsettles the dynamics of popular and political theatre and rethinks the ways performance can contribute to how one country defines itself.
Pontypool
by Tony BurgessIn the sleepy town of Pontypool, Ontario, no one is safe from an epidemic so devastating it will leave you literally speechless.
Post-Democracy
by Hannah MoscovitchThe play is based on Hannah’s experiences of being around high-level corporate executives for years as a bartender—as the daughter of socialist and left-wing thinkers, she “felt like a spy.”First produced in a digital-only production by Prairie Theatre Exchange in April 2021