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Pretty Goblins
by Beth GrahamFrom holding hands in the womb to holding each other’s hair back when they puked, twins Laura and Lizzie grew up only having each other. They couldn’t count on their practically feral mom, absent dad, or even the boys they liked. They’re polar opposites—Laura’s reserved while Lizzie’s reckless—but their shared mischievous giggles and dreams for the future kept them going. One day, Laura finds a familiar book of poems in Lizzie’s apartment and is dragged through their turbulent past. Together, the sisters relive their complicated history in an effort to make sense of the present. Framed by the beauty of a well-loved poem, this story of ferocious sisterhood, addiction, and the aftermath of trauma will leave howls echoing in your ears.
Proud
by Michael HealeyShortly after the Conservatives win a majority government in the 2011 federal election, the prime minister discovers a secret weapon in his caucus—Jisbella Lyth, a single mother with a limited understanding of her role as an MP. Using her ignorance to his advantage, the PM hatches a plan to have Jisbella front and centre in a campaign of misdirection and distraction. Humorous and clever, Proud explores the corrosive nature of the politics of division.
Public Enemy
by Olivier ChoinièreThree generations of a family argue over current events, finances, and culture, with everyone looking to blame someone else for society’s ills in this satirical examination of how judgment can both divide and unite people. Elizabeth, the matriarch, has invited her children and grandchildren over for dinner. Instead of a nice family meal, it quickly slides into the adults arguing in the dining room and the kids fighting in the living room. Rapid-fire dialogue fuses and overlaps, but no one listens to each other. A blistering take on the family drama, Public Enemy asks, who’s really responsible for all our suffering?
Pugwash
by Vern Thiessen1957. Barely a decade after the first use of atomic bombs, the world is divided and fearful of the real threat of nuclear weaponry. In an effort to understand the devastating effects of radiation, leading scientists and academics—world-renowned “Thinkers”—are invited to a conference in the small town of Pugwash, Nova Scotia. Two local children, Conni and Jamie, take interest in some of the Thinkers, who are humbled by their innocent welcome. But a spy disguised as a reporter has conned Jamie for information to use against the Thinkers, putting the entire conference—and the town of Pugwash—at risk.
Punch Up
by Kat Sandler SandlerDuncan has always been a pretty boring guy, leading a simple life while working at a bread factory. Then he stumbles upon Brenda, a sad young woman who’s about to end her life. Convinced he’s fallen in love, Duncan strikes up a desperate deal: if he can get her to laugh, she'll give life another shot, but if she doesn’t even giggle, he'll help her go through with her plan. There’s just one catch: Duncan isn’t funny. At all. So he borrows Pat, his second-favourite comedian, to help him come up with the perfect routine. But Pat is having a hard time mustering his sense of humour after a bad break-up, and the last thing he wants to do is teach a lonely loser the difference between knock-knock jokes and schadenfreude while chained to a typewriter. A tragicomedy of three misfits, Punch Up navigates a hostage situation and a life-or-death comedy lesson to show just how far we’ll go for a laugh.
Pyaasa & Letters to My Grandma
by Thomas Jones Anusree RoySet in Calcutta, Pyaasa tells the story of Chaya, an eleven-year-old untouchable who dreams of nothing more than learning her times tables. When Chaya's mother begs a woman from a higher caste to give Chaya a job at a local tea stall, Chaya's journey from childhood to adulthood begins and ends over ten days. A moving and heartfelt play, Pyaasa illustrates with subtlety and nuanced truth the inequalities and injustices that persist through the Indian caste system.Winner of the 2008 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play and Outstanding PerformanceIn the haunting Letters to My Grandma, Malobee unearths letters detailing her grandmother's fight to survive the 1947 partition of India, which resonates with Malobee's own struggles to create a new life in present-day Toronto. A grand multi-generational tale of hatred, regret, love, and forgiveness, Letters to my Grandma weaves the remarkable stories of these two women together, inextricably linking their histories and delving into how the hatred bred between Hindus and Muslims in the Old World consumes families in Canada today.
Queen Goneril
by Erin ShieldsSet seven years before King Lear, Queen Goneril centres the struggles of Lear’s daughters as they negotiate patriarchal systems built to keep them relegated to the sidelines. In Goneril, we find a natural-born leader. In Regan, a boundary pusher. And in Cordelia, a reluctant peacekeeper. As the three work to dismantle their individual constraints, a storm of inner reckoning begins to brew that reflects their deepest yearnings and mirrors our contemporary world.Whip smart and wide awake, Queen Goneril is another deliciously disruptive adaptation from Erin Shields. In her signature revisionist style, Shields investigates some of our most urgent feminist issues by reimagining the roles of women in classic texts—shifting them from subjects, objects, or witnesses to central figures of both their own lives and the story’s narrative. Queen Goneril lays bare the challenges of maintaining authenticity while achieving authority—how we retain a strong sense of self while twisting around systems meant to make us play small. A compelling story about complicated characters struggling—the way we all struggle—to find their place in this world.
Quick Bright Things
by Christopher Cook“Everyone hears voices. I’m treated like I’m broken for admitting it.” Can a weekend trip to visit family ever be smooth? Nick was hoping for a quick dinner at his brother Reid’s house when he stopped by with his seventeen-year-old adopted son, Gerome, on their way to meet Gerome’s birth mother. Gerome was recently diagnosed with schizophrenia, and he wants to know more about his family history. Though Reid and his family wreak havoc with their well-meaning but misguided ideas about Gerome’s diagnosis, they manage to convince Nick and his son to stay the night, even after they find Gerome on the roof ready to demonstrate backflips. The dinner pit stop becomes a tense weekend-long event full of claims and questions as the family attempts to “un-crazy” Gerome, leading them all to a dangerous breaking point. With truth, humour, and pathos, Quick Bright Things explores a family’s struggle with understanding mental health, their ways of expressing love, and what it ultimately means to be “okay.”
Quiver
by Anna Chatterton“She doesn’t care about me; she doesn’t even want to see me; she just pretends she does.” Shy, fourteen-year-old Maddie wasn’t expecting to have to worry about taking care of herself just yet. Her sixteen-year-old party-girl sister Bea has scandalously moved in with their mom’s ex-boyfriend, and in turn their brassy mother Sheila has run straight to the comfort of another lover. Maddie is finding that an empty apartment is quiet and lonely, even though her time is normally spent reading comics in her closet. Feeling abandoned and vulnerable, she turns to her favourite superhero, Arrowette. Armed with a backpack filled with a bow and arrows, she embarks on a radical plan to join the army, where she thinks she will find a new family she can count on. Meanwhile, Bea is second-guessing the whole dating an older man thing, and Sheila defends her unorthodox sexual candour, entertaining the ideals of freedom. When Bea and Sheila decide to come home for Maddie’s birthday, they’re faced with the pointed arrow of Maddie’s newfound power and the startling reality of the kind of family they’ve become.
Reaching for Starlight
by Donna-Michelle St. BernardReenie wants to dance, following in her mother’s footsteps. Just like the rest of her ensemble, she believes she has what it takes to earn the coveted solo at the year-end recital. But when she notices that their strict maestra is not holding everyone to the same “traditional” standard—particularly Maia, the other Black girl in the class—Reenie is determined to stop her friend from being counted out of the competition. Frustrated with not being understood by her mother and filled with a new-found passion to fight a broken system, Reenie hatches a plan with her classmates but doesn’t realize where her quick journey towards justice missed the mark with her friend.Reaching for Starlight is a compassionate story about the way we are told to move through a world not made for us, whether together or alone.
Reading Hebron
by Jason ShermanA Toronto Jew named Nathan Abramowitz investigates the Hebron Massacre - in which a Jewish settler murdered 29 Muslims at prayer - as a way of questioning his own responsibility for the oppression of Palestinians.
Real-ish: Audiences, Feeling, and the Production of Realness in Contemporary Performance
by Kelsey JacobsonIn the “post-truth” era, the question of how people perceive things to be real, even when they are not based in fact, preoccupies us. Lessons learned in the theatre – about how emotion and affect produce an experience of realness – are more relevant than ever.Real-ish draws on extensive interviews with audience members about their perceptions of realness in documentary, participatory, historical, and immersive performances. In studying these forms that make up the theatre of the real, Kelsey Jacobson considers how theatrical experiences of realness not only exist as a product of their real-world source material but can also unfurl as real products in their own right. Using the concept of real-ish-ness – which captures the complex feeling that is generated by engaging with elements of reality – the book examines how audiences experience the apparently real within the time and space of a performance, and how it is closely tied to the immediacy and intimacy experienced in relation to others.When feeling – rather than fact –becomes a way of knowing truths about the world, understanding the cultivation and circulation of such feelings of realness is paramount. In exploring this process, Real-ish centres audience voices and, perhaps most importantly, audience feelings during performance.
The Real McCoy
by Andrew MoodieElijah McCoy, born in Canada to runaway American slaves, showed so much promise in school that he won a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Edinburgh University. McCoy moved to the US, where no one believed a black man could be an engineer and so he was set to stoking boilers. Nevertheless, McCoy devised a solution to one of the greatest problems facing steam locomotion that was sold worldwide with the marketers' proviso that McCoy's race be concealed.
Reasonable Doubt
by Joel Bernbaum Lancelot Knight Yvette NolanA significant moment in Canadian history is portrayed in this documentary musical about race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Weaving hundreds of real interviews conducted with Saskatchewan residents and the court transcripts surrounding the killing of Colten Boushie and trial of Gerald Stanley, a kaleidoscopic picture is formed of the views of the incident, the province, and relationships between all people in Canada.A verbatim play with music created by Joel Bernbaum, Lancelot Knight, and Yvette Nolan, Reasonable Doubt provides a space to honestly talk to each other about what has happened on this land and how we can live together.
Redheaded Stepchild
by Johnnie WalkerNicholas is a twelve-year-old with red hair whose dad just remarried. This makes Nicholas a redheaded stepchild. Literally. And tomorrow at lunch, the biggest boy in grade six plans to beat him up—he even made a Facebook event about it. Should Nicholas skip school? His new stepmom, a chain-smoking, ex-Jehovah’s Witness golf pro named Mary-Anne, doesn’t want him playing hooky. His secret alter ego, the fabulous and charismatic Rufus Vermilion, thinks his ginger genetics will doom him either way. But when events in the schoolyard leave both Mary-Anne and Rufus speechless, it’s up to Nicholas to pick up the pieces and do some serious growing up.
The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee
by Daniel KarasikConvinced she is not like the rest of her boring family, nine-year-old Marnie McPhee decides it's time to leave Earth and take her place among the stars. But as she builds her spaceship, she realizes that maybe Earth isn't so bad after all, even if it is filled with imperfect human families. The Remarkable Flight of Marnie McPhee is a charming story of the infinite reaches of the imagination and the pleasure of dreaming.
Retreating to Re-Treat: A Performative Encounter at the 'Edge of the Woods'
by The Collective EncounterIn 2019, a group of scholar-artists led by Jill Carter stood with their audience in a liminal space at the 'edge of the woods'—a space between now and then, a space between now and later. Together, they engaged in a survivance intervention: an Indigenous reclamation of territory, using Storyweaving practices rooted in personal connections to the land as a method of restor(y)ing treaty relationships.Retreating to Re-Treat documents both their artistic offering and creation process, offered in the spirit of knowledge-sharing and enriching scholarship around collaborative practices. By revealing their unique and still-developing method for addressing a fraught and tangled (hi)story, the Collective Encounter invites readers to join them as we mediate those sites of profound experiences and renewal—sites in which the project of conciliation might truly begin.
Rick: The Rick Hansen Story
by Dennis FoonFifteen-year-old Rick Hansen is confident, outgoing, and the star of his high-school basketball team. He has his whole life planned out, until a tragic accident severs his spinal cord, leaving him in a wheelchair. Rick's accident forces him to adapt his positivity to deal with his new life, while helping to strengthen the relationship with his guilt-stricken best friend. Refusing to be put at a disadvantage, Rick conquers the challenges presented to him with a smile and changes the definition of what it means to be disabled. Based on the true story of the man who inspired millions with his Man In Motion World Tour, Rick is a triumphant play that showcases the importance of optimism and perseverance, encouraging audiences to make their own paths to change the world.
Robert Chafe: Butler's Marsh and Tempting Providence
by Robert ChafeButler's Marsh Thirty years ago Nora's mother disappeared into the small, dense forest of Butler's Marsh. She emerged three days later, covered in blood, badly shaken, and completely silent about what had happened. Having never been offered a suitable explanation, and now finding herself at her own moment of crisis, Nora ventures to Newfoundland for the first time to explore Butler's Marsh for herself. She is accompanied by her partner Tim, who, while less than helpful, is nevertheless adamant that she not be left alone. But as Nora's night in Butler's Marsh unfolds, and Tim's good humour wanes, the primary question of what happened to her mother quickly becomes less troubling than another; with whom exactly is she lost in the woods? Tempting Providence In 1921 Myra Grimsley signed a two-year contract and boarded a steamship from London, England, to St. John's, Newfoundland. Her charge: to serve as the sole health-care provider for three hundred miles of the sparsely settled coast of Newfoundland's Great Northern Peninsula. By the time her contract ran out two years later, Myra was married to local Angus Bennett, and had given birth to their first child, Grace. Based on the true story of Nurse Myra Bennett, Tempting Providence is a play about duty and sadness, love and change. Four strong characters drive this no-frills drama about a young British nurse who only signed on for two years, and the local man for whom she stayed for seventy.
Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage: Language, Identity, Nation
by Jane KoustasA leader in theatre production for a global community, Robert Lepage - actor, cineaste, and director - revolutionized the Toronto theatre scene from the 1980s onwards by challenging conventional notions of language, identity, and national belonging. Exploring Lepage’s twenty-five-year history on the Toronto stage, Jane Koustas analyzes his importance in the Canadian and international theatre scenes. Outlining the reasons behind Lepage’s success in Toronto, Koustas skilfully engages with a wide range of journalistic and scholarly texts, moving between French and English critical reception of his work. For Lepage, Toronto offered the best of both worlds: he could remain an ardent Quebecer while being welcomed as a fellow Canadian. Lepage, raised in a bilingual family, brought to his Toronto productions an understanding of English and Canadian culture that resisted presenting French against English and the rest of Canada versus Quebec. Instead, he took Toronto audiences on a global theatre voyage that transformed traditional geopolitical, cultural, and linguistic boundaries and questioned identity. Investigating the relationship between Quebec’s master dramaturge and Toronto, a burgeoning cosmopolitan city determined to be a global cultural capital, Robert Lepage on the Toronto Stage analyzes the success of one of the few Québécois artists to have achieved fame in English Canada.
Romancing the Bard: Stratford at Fifty
by Martin HunterRomancing the Bard offers a look at the Stratford Festival in its first fifty years as it developed from a bold venture driven by vision of a handful of eager enthusiasts to its present status as a multi-million dollar cultural and commercial enterprise. With profiles of Stratford personalities from founder Tyrone Guthrie to current artistic director Richard Monette, it provides glimpses of intrigue and conflict both offstage and on. The book traces the development of a distinctive Canadian acting style, the soaring costs of production and design, the conflict between artists and moneymen, the external image promoted by publicists or imposed by critics and the changing mandate as the Festival assumes an increasingly populist character. This is a celebration of a uniquely successful artistic enterprise, and focuses on some of the Festival’s finest productions. Illustrated with photographs from the Festival archives.
The Romeo Initiative
by Trina DaviesSingle men are hard to come by in 1970s West Germany. So when Karin Maynard, a government secretary, meets the handsome Markus Richter, a single man who pursues her, she can hardly believe her luck. But with Markus continually away on business, thoughts of infidelity begin to consume Karin. Is her insecurity unwarranted, or is she onto something? Based on a real program in East Germany in which men were trained and sent to develop long-term relationships with West German secretaries to determine their "perfect man," The Romeo Initiative is half romantic comedy and half spy thriller with a tantalizing twist.
Rune Arlidge
by Michael HealeyA family of women—the eldest incapable of keeping stories to herself, her two daughters on the verge of making life-altering decisions, a granddaughter wise beyond her years. Healey takes us on a 25-year-long trip to the family cottage. A new play by the author of The Drawer Boy.
The Russian Play and Other Short Works
by Hannah MoscovitchFour short plays by one of Canada's exciting, new theatre voices. In The Russian Play, the flower-shop girl tells the story of her love for the gravedigger. Essay casts a teaching assistant in the shadow of his professor as they argue the merits of a female student's paper. In USSR, a young woman relates her journey to Canada from Russia, and Mexico City follows Henry and Alice on their vacation in 1960. These four plays bring each character to life in full colour, jumping off the page before you and onto the stage.
Scratch
by Charlotte Corbeil-ColemanWhen fifteen-year-old Anna is told that her mother is dying of cancer, she responds in the only way she knows how—by ignoring the issue. Friends and family are unable to understand her reaction and Anna is increasingly frustrated by their attempts to help her, escalated of course by her persistent itching. Told by Anna with assistance from her best friend, father, aunt, and her dying mother, Scratch is a fresh, funny, and realistic play about the urgency of life and the need to live it to the fullest extent.