Daddy wants to win the lottery, Mommy is still bitter about getting knocked up at twenty, Simeon has war-related PTSD, and Rachel just wants to get out of her parents' Oakwood/Eglinton place and have a home of her own, but first there are a few things she's got to get off her chest. It's Jamaica's Independence Day, Toronto is sweltering, and everyone is on edge--then the air-conditioner breaks. Loosely inspired by Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, Andrea Scott's Get That Hope looks at the dysfunction of a Jamaican-Canadian family that has no idea how to communicate without wounding.

It's 1950 in the deserts of Southern California. Evangelist Brother Cain has a booming trade; his tent revival show moves from town to town, fleecing crowds desperate for something to believe in. When he discovers Mary, a Ntlaka'pamux woman from BC's Nicola Valley, reading the Bible, he puts her onstage, renames her Grace, and displays her as a miracle: an Indian who can read. A grand, sweeping story of friendship and redemption, The Ministry of Grace is a powerful look at people struggling to live, love, and retain dignity in a heartless world.

Sarena Parmar's The Orchard (After Chekhov) is an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, told through the eyes of a Sikh farming family in the Okanagan Valley, Canada. Set in 1967, the play offers a fresh perspective on our history, and a subversive look at ethnicity within the classical western canon.

Still grieving the loss of her youngest son, the matriarch of the Basran family returns home after five years abroad in India. But all is not well; the family she left behind is unravelling and their orchard has fallen into foreclosure. With the bank calling and relations strained, will the Basrans be able to save their beloved orchard in time?

Inspired by the playwright's own childhood, The Orchard (After Chekhov) is a bold new adaptation that confronts life, loss, and the immigrant experience with bravery and beauty.

In Altar, Eugenio, a young Mexican immigrant living in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, experiences heartbreak when Benjamin, his new boyfriend, inexplicably ghosts him. Looking to the traditional Mexican holiday Dia de Muertos, Eugenio decides to build an altar in the hopes that he will be able to summon his boyfriend's ghost and gain the closure he so desperately desires.

In Urn, siblings Esteban and Mariana reconnect at their mother's funeral after years of being estranged. Guzman explores the concept of home from the perspective of two immigrants who have to deal with the consequences of what happens when the only person who has grounded them in their cultural identity is gone.

Serving Elizabeth begins in Kenya in 1952, during the fateful royal visit of Princess Elizabeth and the Duke of Edinburgh. Mercy, a restaurant owner, is approached to cook for the royal couple. Though she could use the money, she is a staunch anti-monarchist. She vows to stick to her principles, but her daughter, Faith, keeps trying to convince her to take the job. In London in 2015, in the production offices of a series about Queen Elizabeth, a Kenyan-Canadian film student, Tia, serves as an intern on the project. It's a perfect fit for her as she has been a fan of princesses her whole life. But when she reads the Kenya episode, she starts to understand that fairy tales and real life are very different things. Serving Elizabeth is a funny, fresh, and topical play about colonialism, monarchy, and who is serving whom -- or what.

Flying SOULO details the innovative SOULO storytelling and creation method that can transform personal experience into a moving, entertaining, and powerful one-person show. Tracey Erin Smith leads readers step-by-step through the method she developed and has been using for many years to guiding people from various walks of life to create solo dramas. (It's also the method featured on Tracey's hit TV show, Drag Heals.) Packed with exercises, insights, and anecdotes, Flying SOULO is the blueprint you need to help you to tell your own unique story.

Considered a masterpiece of Canadian literature, Margaret Laurence's The Diviners is the compelling story of Morag Gunn, a woman who perseveres through challenge after challenge as she attempts to carve out an authentic life as a writer. The play moves backward and forward through time, taking us to Morag's impoverished childhood in rural Manitoba, her early struggles to establish herself as a female artist, and her present, as she works to finish a novel while navigating a thorny relationship with her teenage daughter, Pique. Inextricably bound with Morag's Scottish settler story is the Metis story of Jules Tonnerre, her friend, lover, and Pique's father. Adapted for the stage by Vern Thiessen with Yvette Nolan, The Diviners illuminates issues of identity, class, and reconciliation.

Scirocco Drama presents two plays by Jessica B. Hill: The Dark Lady, a drama about Shakespeare's mysterious Dark Lady of the Sonnets, and Pandora, a solo show about hope, interconnection, and life's biggest questions.

Emilia Bassano, believed to be the woman known as the Dark Lady in Shakespeare's sonnets, was actually one of England's first female published poets. She was also trilingual, mixed race, and a force to be reckoned with. In The Dark Lady, Shakespeare and Bassano collide as they wrestle with artistic collaboration, ambition, envy, and love--an entanglement that will profoundly shape both their lives and their work.

Pandora is sorry. It's all her fault and she's so sorry. From devastating natural disasters to that time you hit your shin on the coffee table, Pandora's been carrying the burden of world chaos and human suffering since the beginning of time. But she's starting to feel pretty suspicious...What if it was a set up? What if the box was empty all along? If there's one thing we know about Pandora, it's that she's curious. That curiosity leads her on a quest across time to discover the meaning of life, but the more she searches, the more questions seem to arise!

our place by Kanika Ambrose is a new work set in a fictional Caribbean restaurant, Jerk Pork Castle in Scarborough, where newcomers Andrea and Niesha work in exchange for cash under the table. As the two women scrape out a life in Canada, leaving their children in their Caribbean homelands, they must also navigate their status as undocumented workers. This funny, keenly observant script unveils the lives of these undocumented Caribbean workers who go to desperate lengths to get Canadian citizenship for the betterment of their children--a moving, timely story of those rendered invisible in a welcoming Canada.

A Chinese medical student, a Jamaican Tim Horton's manager, an Indian father of three, and a 17-year-old Syrian refugee walk into a curling club. It's Monday night at a small-town rink and it's the first-ever Learn to Curl class for new Canadians. Inspired by the local refugee resettlement program, community-minded Marlene organized this evening to welcome newcomers and diversify the club. But when she slips on the ice and breaks her hip, the club's ice-maker--who also happens to be Marlene's ex-husband--Stuart MacPhail is forced to step in as head coach. Trouble is, Stuart has plenty of opinions about immigrants. What follows is the hilarious and inspiring story of a group of unlikely athletes who face off against local prejudice and become a true team. Both laugh-out-loud funny and quietly moving, The New Canadian Curling Club is a new Canadian comedy with a heart as big as Canada itself!

In 1939, a group of students at a fictional residential school in Ontario are faced with the daunting task of putting on a play by William Shakespeare for the King and Queen of England on their first Royal Tour of Canada. But as news spreads and audience expectations abound, the students, resilient and resourceful, find their own way into the text, determined to challenge the notion that there's only one way to do Shakespeare. Born of both family legacy and the calls to action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the development of 1939 was guided by Indigenous Elders, survivors, and ceremony.

Joyce, Effie and BB are cowgirl goddesses on Mount Olympus who lament that the heroines of rodeos past are all but forgotten. It's a cowboy's world. Cocky steer-ropers have stolen the spotlight down on earth for long enough. The goddesses decide to use their considerable supernatural powers to give rise to a cowgirl revolution. When they discover Cassidy Clark, a talented, charismatic loner from Claresholm, they know they have found the barrel racer poised to lead their cause. The three goddesses appear to her one day, offering her all the gifts she will need to earn her first buckle at the Canadian Finals Rodeo championship. Cassidy and her trusty mare, Starbright rise to the top of the circuit, throwing back shots of Jack Daniels and two-stepping along the way..but just how far will Cassidy push herself and Starbright in pursuit of their dream?

Co-created with Meg Braem and Christine Brubaker

In this absurd and apocalyptic young-adult comedy filled with dazzling wit and wild imagination, two teenaged outsiders at one of the worst schools in the country seem to be the only ones who understand or care that the whole world is a mess. Joan responds by attacking everyone around her: Olivier retreats. But when they are forced to run against each other for student council, it unleashes their determination to change: the system, and themselves. Winner of the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama in French.

Misty Lake tells the story of a young Metis journalist from Winnipeg who travels to a Dene reserve in Northern Manitoba to conduct an interview with a former residential school student. What Mary imparts in her interview will change Patty's life profoundly, allowing the journalist to make the connections to her own troubled life in the city. Patty knows that her Metis grandmother went to residential school when she was a girl. But Patty hasn't understood until now that she's inherited the traumatic legacy of residential school that was passed down to her mother from her grandmother. With this new understanding, Patty embarks on a healing journey. It will take her to the Dene fishing camp at Misty Lake, a place of healing, where, with Mary, she will learn that healing begins when you can talk about your life.

It is 2150 in M-City, a society without gender where everyone uses the pronoun ish. When two historians discover an abandoned millennium-era house, they hatch a plan to turn the building into a museum that re-enacts life in the year 2000. The historians gather a group of locals, including a student, an engineer, and a community elder, to restore the building and animate the site for local visitors. Together, the volunteers explore the fashion, furnishing, and family roles of their millennial forebears, all through the lens of binary gender roles. But the project turns risky when one of the historians and the youngest volunteer start to explore illegal sexual acts in secret. When the others discover what they've been up to, they must decide if the project can go ahead or if it threatens to upend the values of their society.

Theo is a recently single man with self-image problem, Gwen is a good-humoured loner who works the ticket booth for a local boat tour company. On a summer day on a pier in a small town, the two strangers stumble into an encounter that just might save them both. Beyond the Sea is a story about the emergence of hope through grief, via two unforgettable characters.

Each pathway is created by the single steps of many who go before... Deep in a forest, in another time, begins the story of a child called Bentboy. Hunched and hobbled by his curved back, Bentboy is cast aside by his village--until one day, when he is chosen by an elder to embark on a quest to save the village from grave danger. And so begins his epic adventure, and a tale both treacherous and tender. Along the way, Bentboy encounters an uninvited companion, and the two are plunged into a world that comes to life in perilous and astonishing ways. Each on their own path, it will become a journey that transforms them both.

Controlled Damage explores the life of Canadian civil rights icon Viola Desmond and how her act of bravery in a Nova Scotia movie theatre in 1946 started a ripple effect that is still felt today. An ordinary woman forced to be extraordinary by an unyielding and racist world, Desmond never gave up -- despite the personal cost to her and those who loved her. Andrea Scott's highly theatrical examination of Desmond and her legacy traces the impact that she had on our culture, but also casts light on the slow progress of the fight for social justice and civil rights in Canada.