2023-24 Season
Our Fall productions took the stage with smashing success, beginning with The Road to Hell, written by Kate Lynch and Michael Healy and directed by Henry Kemeny-Wodlinger. In late November, Punch Up by Kat Sandler (Canadian actor, director, and playwright) and directed by Danica Friss Wilson.
In Winter 2024, we welcomed the 20th McGill Drama Festival to our stage featuring five student-written plays; Red Wine, Women, and Song by Harriet Faught; Coping Mechanisms by Caroline Little; All You Can Eat by Corey Mandelzys; Big Top Down by Keianna Lewis; and A Farce About Time Travel by Carmen Mancuso. Closing out the 2023-24 season will be Medea by Seneca, directed by Adam Zanin.
2020-2021 Season
Inaccurate Conceptions, written by Sharon Reichert and directed by Kiara Pollice, is a gossip-filled play that is sure to capture your attention. In the play, four friends discuss romance, breakups, and honesty while navigating an underlying tension. This play has been craftily adapted to an online format, echoing the mundane truths of various lockdowns during the COVID-19 Pandemic.
This Is a Play, written by Canadian playwright Daniel MacIvor and directed by Thia McDowell, is a meta-play that scrutinizes the complexity of theatre and performance art. It explores the minds of three actors and the opinions they hold of each other, the crew, and most importantly: themselves. Within this unorthodox comedy is an equally absurd play called No Strangers Among Us. This Is a Play is an ode to actors, composers, musicians, directors, writers, and theatre lovers alike.
A prince waits imprisoned in a tower, longing to be free. But the stars have foretold that he will be a cruel ruler. Now his chance for freedom has come. Can he avoid his destiny? And can the world support his iniquity if the stars prove right? This modern and ecological retelling of Life Is A Dream, the finest drama of the Spanish Golden Age, explores issues of fate and free will, respect and exploitation, and reality and illusion. Directed and adapted by Emma Victoria, based on a play written by Pedro Calderón de la Barca.
2021-2022 Season
Breathing Space, directed by Hwaan Han, is a micro drama Breathing Space by Yvette Nolan written for the 2019 Climate Change Theatre Action is a post-apocalyptic play set in a future where the environment is completely destroyed and nothing new is produced anymore: humans must survive on what already exists. Mod and Ran spend a typical day hunting for abandoned objects in the streets that might be useful. They engage in a conversation about their present situation, and about the past.
And Then There Were None, written by Agatha Christie and directed by Sormeh Motevalli. Ten guests are invited to an island under false pretences and find themselves stuck while an unknown host starts murdering them one by one. They come to realize that the murderer must be one of the ten guests. They attempt to figure out the culprit as they are taken out. One. By. One. Will they find the perpetrator before everybody is killed off?
God of Carnage, written by Yasmina Reza and directed by Max Grosskopf. What happens when two sets of parents meet up to deal with the unruly behaviour of their children? A calm and rational debate between grown-ups about the need to teach kids how to behave properly? Or a hysterical night of name-calling, tantrums, and tears before bedtime? Yasmina Reza’s hilarious, Tony award-winning play begs the question: do we ever really grow up?
The McGill Drama Festival is a collection of 6 student written plays: Everyone is Annoying (written by Willow Cormier and directed by Danielle Gottlieb), The Ward (written by Mary-Anne Brodie and directed by Will Smyth), Every Postmodernist Poet Hates Postmodernism (written by Daisy Spencer and directed by Alyssa Razavi-Mastali), Metanoia (written by Mia Berthier and directed by Polina Vitrouk), Lazarus (written by Maria Sigrid Remme and directed by Carmen Mancuso), People V. Macdougall (written by Fred Azeredo and directed by Claire Tees).
4.48 Psychosis, written by Sarah Kane and directed by Basile Guichard, is a play with no characters, no scenes and no plot as you know it. Named for the moment our principal Voice has a moment of clarity, 4:48 AM, this iconic contemporary play is often regarded as one of the most visceral and honest depictions of major depressive disorder. The beautiful –and beautifully cryptic– text is meant to be understood through performance, rather than be taken at face value in a narrative story, in the way that makes most sense to each audience member….
An Inspector Calls, written by J.B. Priestly and directed by Alexa Marstoon. The mysterious 'Inspector Goole' interrupts a wealthy family's engagement party to tell them a young woman died of suicide that night. But what's that got to do with them? One by one, they will find out... as their shattering, dark secrets are revealed.
2019 - 2020 Season
2018-2019 season
In Henrik Ibsen's classic tale A Doll’s House, revised by Thornton Wilder and beautifully directed by Zarina Angell, Nora must act quickly to protect her family - along the way, discovering what is best for herself. In this production, with women at the centre of their own story, we invite you to come to see this 20th century classic... again or for the first time.
Come explore the tale of a married, middle-aged architect, Martha, her wife Stevie, and their son Billy, whose lives fall apart when Martha falls in love with an undesirable. Through showing this family in crisis, Tony-Award winning The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia? challenges audience members to question their moral judgment of social taboos. Written for the stage by Edward Albee, directed by Jordan Prentice.
Arcadia is a story about sex, math, and the inevitable death of the universe. The play follows Thomasina, a brilliant 19th-century mathematician whose findings are lost when she suddenly dies in young age, only for a group of bickering scholars to unearth her life’s work over a century later. As they uncover information about both her academic research and her personal life, they discover remarkable parallels to their own lives, as they explore the very house in which Thomasina once danced, laughed, and learned. A play by Tom Stoppard, directed by Steven Greenwood.
The everyday routines of the citizens of a small French town get permanently disrupted when a Rhinoceros runs by the cafe on a Sunday morning. Rhinoceros, Eugène Ionesco’s masterpiece project, follows the story of Berenger, a person who struggles to hold on to their identity while friends and colleagues gradually transform to join an unhinged herd of animals. Directed by Guy Ettlin.
2017-2018 season
Nightfall with Edgar Allan Poe, written by Eric Coble & directed by Kenzia Dalie. We enter the disturbed and dark mind of Poe through four famous tales: “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Pit and the Pendulum” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” We explore the madness and genius that is Poe’s poetry and literature as he desperately tries to convince the audience and himself that he is not mad at all.
This play is not about fairytales. It is not about Aesops fables nor is it in anyway related to the popular comic book series. It is a Canadian contemporary drama centering around the life of a family physician. Through dark and witty dialogue, watch as the relationships evolve between the doctor, his wife, and his two patients. Fables has only been performed once before and this may be your only chance to witness this fantastic piece of Canadian theatre.
Written by Jackie Torrens. Directed by Filip Rakic.