2025 Productions
Jane Austen, Action Figure
by Elaine Ávila
Direction Thrasso Petras
November 1-8, 2024
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts theatre
Does it take superpowers to be a writer, a traveller, a parent, a lover ... or Jane Austen? A collection of short plays, from comic to tragic, exploring key events in the lives of famous authors, a mother writing while raising a small child, orgasms throughout history, and couples continually re-creating their love.
The Soldier Dreams
by Daniel MacIvor
Direction Alana Hawley Purvis
November 8-15, 2024
Studio Theatre
The Soldier Dreams is a play about love, an examination of the effect of death on the living, and a homage to those we love who have left us. A young man lies dying of AIDS, as his family gathers around. He whispers a few seemingly disjointed words, and it is up to his family to decipher them, even as they come to terms with his pending death.
The Wolves
by Sarah Delappe
Direction Tamara McCarthy
March 20-28, 2025
Laura C. Muir Theatre Performing Arts Theatre
Left quad. Right quad. Lunge. A girls indoor soccer team warms up. From the safety of their suburban stretch circle, the team navigates big questions and wages tiny battles with all the vim and vigor of a pack of adolescent warriors. A portrait of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for nine American girls who just want to score some goals.
Black Watch
by Gregory Burke
Direction Deborah Neville
March 28 - April 4, 2025
Studio Theatre
Hurtling from a pool room in Fife to an armoured wagon in Iraq, Black Watch is based on interviews conducted by Gregory Burke with former soldiers who served in Iraq.
Viewed through the eyes of those on the ground, Black Watch reveals what it means to be part of the legendary Scottish regiment, what it means to be part of the war on terror and what it means to make the journey home again.
"This is not only an urgently topical piece about the sort of conflict soldiers have faced in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the changing nature of warfare, and about the morality of fighting; it is also a superb, multifaceted, political, and social drama. It explores the male psyche with sympathy and wit - by turns, comical, visceral, and surprisingly, lyrical." - Financial Times
Black Watch won over 22 awards between 2006 and 2009 including Best New Play at the 2009 Laurence Oliver Awards.
2024 Productions
To Please the Audience
by Elaine Ávila
Direction Scott Malcom
Nov. 3-10, 2023
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
A true story from the 16th century is brought to life through the trials and tribulations of Italian prima donna Isabella Andreini and King Henri III, one of France’s first openly gay kings.
Written by internationally award-winning playwright and Douglas College Creative Writing instructor Elaine Avila, To Please the Audience is a dark comedy that explores religion, sexuality, power, revenge and love. In a revolt against royal authority, Huguenot rebels capture Isabella and her theatrical comedy group while travelling to Paris to perform for the king, who must now deal with a new chapter in a monumental religious war.
The Moors
by Jen Silverman
Direction Kathleen Duborg
Nov. 10-18, 2023
Studio theatre
Two sisters and a dog live out their lives on the bleak English moors, dreaming of love and power. The arrival of a hapless governess and a moor-hen set all three on a strange and dangerous path. The Moors is a dark comedy about love, desperation, and visibility.
The Whole Shebang
by Rich Orloff
Direction Claire Fogal
March 15-22, 2024
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
This play asks the question, "What if the entire universe was just some nerd's science project?" In a classroom in a dimension far beyond ours, a student striving for a "Master of the Universe" degree gives an oral presentation on an unusual thesis -- the creation of the heavens and the earth. Two professors and a dean interrogate the student and his two visual aids, a "typical" man and woman.
Further than the Furthest Thing
by Zinnie Harris
Direction Deborah Neville
March 22-28, 2024
Studio Theatre
On a remote volcanic island in the middle of the Atlantic, a community has lived undisturbed for centuries, defying the swirling currents of modernity and capitalism. Cut off and exposed to the elements, their survival has created a complex bind with their land. But when one of the inhabitants brings an outsider to the island, their way of life is changed forever.
Based on real events on the island of Tristan da Cunha, Zinnie Harris’s award-winning modern classic is a story of a community haunted by its past and under threat from a modern world in crisis.
2023 Productions
Unity 1918
by Kevin Kerr
Direction Deborah Neville
November 10-17, 2022
Studio Theatre
In the fall of 1918, a world ravaged by four years of war was suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague—the “Spanish Flu.” The illness struck not only the young and the elderly, but also people in the prime of their lives, advancing rapidly toward mortality in its victims. This phenomenon in effect brought the terror, the panic, the horror and the sense of helplessness of the Great War home with the returning soldiers—more people died of this epidemic than had been killed in battle throughout the armed conflict.
As fear of the dreaded flu begins to fill the town of Unity with paranoia, drastic measures are taken. The town is quarantined in an attempt to keep the illness out. Trains are forbidden to stop, no one can enter, and the borders are sealed. Mail from overseas, feared to be carrying the deadly virus, is gathered and then burned. But when the disease descends upon the town despite their precautions, the citizens begin to turn on each other as they attempt to find a scapegoat for the crisis.
Very little has been written about this worldwide calamity which, more than the war itself, destroyed forever the genteel and naive presumptions of European colonial society at the beginning of the twentieth century. Kevin Kerr offers audiences not only an epic chronicle of this forgotten chapter of Canadian history, but a chilling preview of the beginnings of our own new century.
The play is a Gothic romance, filled with dark comedy and the desperate embrace of life at the edge of death.
A Vampire Story
By Moira Buffini
Direction Deborah Neville
March 10-17, 2023
Studio Theatre
Two young women arrive in a nameless British small-town. Their
names are not their own. They don't declare their ages. Their relationship with
each other is not clear. Are they sisters, as their assumed identities declare?
Or are they mother and daughter?
Orlando
Adapted by Sarah Ruhl from the original by Virginia Woolf
Direction Thrasso Petras
March 17-24, 2023
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Based on the Virginia Woolf novel, this is the story of a young nobleman who is drawn into a love affair with Queen Elizabeth I. For a time, life at court is interesting enough, but Orlando yearns for something more. As he strives to make his way as a poet and lover, his travels keep him at the heart of a dazzling tale where gender and gender preferences shift regularly, usually with hilarious results.
2022 Productions
Love Sick
by John Cariani
Direction Tamara McCarthy
Nov. 9-13, 2021
Studio Theatre
John Cariani’s LOVE/SICK is a collection of nine slightly twisted and completely hilarious short plays. Set on a Friday night in an alternate suburban reality, this 80-minute romp explores the pain and the joy that comes with being in love. Full of imperfect lovers and dreamers, LOVE/SICK is an unromantic comedy for the romantic in everyone.
Light the Way
A Collection of Short Plays
Direction: Deborah Neville
Nov 17-20, 2021
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
The Ash Girl
by Timberlake Wertenbaker
Direction Thrasso Petras
March 9-17, 2022
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
In a big old house, Ashgirl lives huddled deep in the protection of an ashy hearth. With her mother dead and her father away, she lives with her stepmother and two stepsisters. When the invitation to the ball arrives from the prince, Ashgirl finds the strength to go with the help of her friends, some of whom come from unexpected places. When she gets home, Ashgirl realizes that in order to regain the fleeting happiness she found in the arms of the prince, she must fight the monsters who have slithered and insinuated their way into her heart and mind. She must believe in herself for others to do so. "An ambitious play with hints of the Brothers Grim, medieval allegory and anthropomorphism…it has a quirky originality… [Ash Girl] is prey to self-doubt and is under the thumb of her stepmother, while her prince is an exiled Asian isolated and unhappy in his new country. Wertenbaker's biggest innovation is to suggest that the forest en route to the palace is populated by an animalized version of the Seven Deadly Sins, which are out to destroy humanity. She even adds a further allegorical figure, Sadness, who tries to tempt Ashgirl towards death, and battles with the Fairy in the Mirror for her soul. The result is like a mix of C.S. Lewis and Sondheim's Into the Woods: an eclectic fairy-tale anthology. Where Wertenbaker scores is in her eye for detail." (The Guardian, London)
2021 Productions
Julius Caesar
A Play by William Shakespeare
Directed by Jane Heyman
Nov 12-14, 2020
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Blue Window
By Craig Lucas
Directed by Deborah Neville
November 19-21, 2020
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
A long running Off-Broadway hit by the author of Reckless and God's Heart. Before, during and after a Manhattan dinner party, the guests are revealed with touching comic irony as a cross-section of modern day humanity. The colorful cast includes a narcissistic actor, a parachute instructor, an aspiring songwriter, a secretary and a lesbian couple.
Mere Mortals and Others
Plays by David Ives
Direction Kathleen Duborg
March 16-18, 2021
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Zastrozzi The Master of Discipline
by George F. Walker
Direction Thrasso Petras
March 24-27, 2021
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline is a play by Canadian playwright George F. Walker, first produced at Toronto Free Theatre in 1977. It is loosely based upon the 1810 novel Zastrozzi: A Romance by Percy Bysshe Shelley.
2020 Productions
Goodnight Desdemona
By Ann-Marie MacDonald
Directed by Thrasso Petras
March 6-13, 2020
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) is an exuberant comedy and feminist revisioning of Shakespeare's Othello and Romeo and Juliet. It takes us from a dusty office in Canada's Queen's University, into the fraught and furious worlds of two of Shakespeare's best-known tragedies, and turns them upside-down. Constance Ledbelly is the beleaguered spinster academic, and unlikely heroine who embarks on a quest for Shakespearean origins and, ultimately, her own identity. When she deciphers an ancient and neglected manuscript, Constance is propelled through a very modern rabbit hole and lands smack in the middle of the tragic turning points of each play in turn.
Her attempts to save first Desdemona, then Juliet, from their harrowing fates, result in a wild unpredictable ride through comedy and near-tragedy, as mild-mannered Constance learns to love, sword-fight, dance Renaissance-style, and master a series of disguises Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) a gender-bendy, big-hearted and crazily intelligent romp, where irony and anger sing in perfect harmony with innocence and poignancy. Warnings: Strobe Lighting Smoke and haze effects
Jeckyl
Hal Coase
Directed by Madelyn Osborne
March 13-20, 2020
A lethal clash between two lives, two truths and two dreams and in this explosive, female-driven, re-imagining of the classic novella. Presented as a multi-layered story that comes hurtling towards you with a blend of heightened physical theatre, projections, music, and open-ended audience interaction. Hal Coase's Jekyll dives into society's deepest flaws and fears from identity to revenge and tackles the question when does being yourself risk those around you? Hyde is a legendary motivational speaker turned global superstar. For the right price, she can fix any of your problems and give you the confidence to be who you've always wanted to be. Jekyll is a lonely person and, like all lonely people, she knows this. Drawn towards the promise of total liberation that Hyde has to offer, Jekyll soon becomes obsessed with her latest idol. When Hyde meets her number one fan, their collision brings the curtain down.
2019 Productions
William Shakespeare's
The Tragedie of Macbeth
Adapted and directed by Jeffrey Renn
November 1 - 8, 2019
Douglas College Studio Theatre
This Halloween week
9 Women
Bloody-Bold-Resolute
Shakespeare's
MACBETH
Switch Triptych
By Adriano Shaplin
Directed by Deborah Neville
November 8 - 15, 2019
Laura C Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Set in a 1919 New York City telephone exchange on the eve of automation, Switch Triptych focuses on three Bell Atlantic 'hello girls' and their luckless male managers. Together they make up a microcosm of post-war urban society where the meanings of gender, technology and labor are shifting underfoot. A sexy play about labor history and clashing ideologies written by Edinburgh Fringe First winner Adriano Shaplin.
Cinderella Waltz
By Don Nigro
Directed by Claire Fogal
March 8 - 15, 2019
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Part Monty Python, part Brothers Grimm, Don Nigro's Cinderella Waltz, directed by Claire Fogal, is a twisted and hilarious retelling of the world's most popular fairy tale, with dashes of Beauty and the Beast and Snow White thrown in. Rosey Snow and her stepsisters Regan and Goneril live on a farm near Cinderville with their parents Mr. and Mrs. Snow, but life changes when the Prince and his Troll drop by. Zed, the village idiot, and Mother Magee, the raucous fairy godmother, are also full of surprises as the play reinvents what constitutes a truly happy ending. Veering far from the land of Disney, grotesque farce and romantic fantasy blend in this modern fairy tale.
7 Stories
By Morris Panych
Directed by Thrasso Petras
March 15-22, 2019
Douglas College Studio Theatre
If eyes are the windows to the soul, what then, are windows? 7 Stories is a meta-theatrical black comedy that gives the audience a view into the lives of extraordinary characters who interrupt and often unwittingly challenge the man standing on their ledge, trying "to get a better perspective on [his] situation.” An iconic Canadian play, 7 Stories, in the 30th anniversary of its first production, remains as relevant as the day it was written. It is an examination of existential contemplation that is filled with equal parts mirth and charm. Never has staring into the abyss looked more uplifting.
2018 Productions
Ted Hughes's
Tales from Ovid
Adapted by Tim Supple and Simon Reade
Directed by Kathleen Duborg
November 2-9, 2018
Douglas College Studio Theatre
Ovid's tales, which he wrote around 1 BCE, became Metamorphoses, a literary conduit for Chaucer, Shakespeare, and more recently, Marvel comics. This adaptation, itself adapted from a version by the English poet Ted Hughes, is a piece of theatre that plays with transformation and aspiration and shows what happens when the mythic plane is exposed to human chaos.
The Canadian Premiere of Heritage
By Nicola McCartney
Directed by Deborah Neville
November 9-16, 2018
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Saskatchewan, 1914. Sarah McCrea stands on the threshold of womanhood, facing a bright future in a new country. Leaving Ulster behind, Sarah and her family carve out their existence in an emerging community. Drawn to one another through tales of a near-forgotten, mythical Ireland, Sarah and her neighbour Michael Donaghue become firm friends. But when Sarah and Michael's relationship deepens and his determination to define his identity grows, centuries of old conflict threaten to blight their love. And for Sarah, the realization dawns that old battles are being fought on new territory.
Antigone
Adapted from Sophocles by Kathleen Weiss
Directed by Thrasso Petras
March 9-16, 2018
Douglas College Studio Theatre
A classical tragedy in which a woman vows to bury her brother's body, thereby defying what she considers a cruel, heartless political edict. This contemporary adaptation by Kathleen Weiss takes Sophocles' intellectual argument--a debate between secular and spiritual power--and works toward an extended metaphor about the aftermath of war, its physical and psychological consequences, and the destruction that occurs when extreme polarities will not move toward reconciliation. The actors work with image and heightened physicality, moving beyond naturalism, to tell a story that is larger than life but central to our core beliefs.
Lion in the Streets
By Judith Thompson
Directed by Claire Fogal
March 16-23, 2018
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Lion in the Streets by award-winning Canadian playwright Judith Thompson tells the stories of many interconnected lives, and one little girl whose experience threads them all together. Straying into magic realism, the play explores moments of transformation in which polite masks and civilized behaviour fall away as the truth comes roaring out of the cage we like to keep it in. Maybe Canadians aren't so nice after all...
2017 Productions
Concord Floral
By Jordan Tannahill
Directed by Kathleen Duborg
November 3-10, 2017
Douglas College Studio Theatre
Suburban teenagers have taken over a one million-square-foot abandoned greenhouse as their hang out. When two friends discover an awful secret there, they go looking for answers and set off an unstoppable chain of events. A re-imagining of Boccaccio's medieval novellaThe Decameron, in which teens must flee a mysterious plague they have brought upon themselves, Concord Floral is an exciting and thought-provoking play by one of Canada's best young playwrights.
The Diviners
By Jim Leonard, Jr.
Directed by Deborah Neville
November 10-18, 2017
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Disillusioned preacher C.C. Showers takes work on a farm in a fictional Depression-era Indiana town called Zion. Here, he befriends an intellectually disabled teenage boy, Buddy, who is terrified of water, yet has an extraordinary gift: he can divine underground aquifers. When the community discovers that Showers is an ex-preacher, they believe that he was sent to their community as a sign from God. This sets in motion events that lead to irreversible consequences for Buddy and Showers. A story about love, companionship, and salvation, The Diviners is a touching and endearing play.
Out of the Garden
A Short History of Sexuality Selections from plays by Caryl Churchill and Don Nigro
Directed by Claire Fogal
March 10-17, 2017
Douglas College Studio Theatre
A short history of sex since Eve bit the apple, Out of the Garden tells the story of Eve in four different eras, tracking our journey out of the Garden of Eden and the evolution of sexuality in Western Civilization.
Is Eve guilty? Could Alice be a witch? Will Elizabeth get horizontal with David? And when will Meredith love a real man more than she loves Frankenstein? Enter the tarot reading of Madame Blavatsky and you may get more than you came for.
A Midsummer Night's Dream
By William Shakespeare
Directed by Thrasso Petras
March 17-24, 2017
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
Shakespeare's most popular comedy-of-errors is brought to life in a gutsy production that pits lover against lover, lost in the darkest of woods, where every misstep can bring an actor to the point of making an ass of himself.
2016 Productions
Love and Information
By Caryl Churchill
Directed by Cheryl Swan
November 3-10, 2016
Douglas College Studio Theatre
Someone can't get a signal. Someone's not ready to talk. Someone's her sister's mother. Someone told the police. Someone got a message from the traffic lights. Someone never felt like this before. Caryl Churchill's play is a theatrical collage which explores the relationship between our emotions and our intellect, our free will and our DNA, our interconnected world and our isolated selves, and love and information. Extremely complex and highly interpretable, this fast-moving kaleidoscope is comprised of over 40 scenes and 80 characters played by 10 actors. Churchill scrapes the paint off our daily lives and invites us to look closely at what lies beneath.
Blackout
By Davey Anderson
Directed by Deborah Neville
November 10-18, 2016
Laura C. Muir Performing Arts Theatre
This is the true story of a 15-year-old boy charged with attempted murder who tries to piece together his life's events that have brought him to a secure care unit, and threaten to keep him there. This is also the Canadian premiere of this play by Scottish playwright Davey Anderson!