23.24 Season Brochure

23-24 Season

Stephen Jackman-Torkoff.

Photo by Lorne Bridgman

Welcome

Dear friends,

We are thrilled to share our 2023.24 season with you. The truth: it was made possible by you.

Re-opening after two years of government-mandated closures and pandemic life held many unknowns for all of us, including hardest-hit sectors like theatre and live performance.

Fortunately, Canadian Stage experienced a return of our pre-pandemic audiences and a record number of brand-new theatregoers across every production last season. The extraordinary response put wind in our sails, truly. We particularly wish to thank the many individuals who chose to become donors, season subscribers, and pass holders, granting Canadian Stage increased resiliency and support.

As you flip through these pages, consider that it was your love of the arts, particularly your support of local Canadian artists, that has made this ambitious season and range of offerings possible. Whether you are renewing a subscription or considering signing up for the first time, we appreciate the essential role you play in Canadian theatre and are offering you even more packages, new benefits, and extraordinary art from here and around the world.

We hope you’ll be as excited about this season as we are – and that we’ll see you at the theatre soon.

Brendan Healy Artistic Director

Monica Esteves Executive Director

Cast of Fall On Your Knees. Designed by Camellia Koo, Judith Bowden, Leigh Ann Vardy, and Brian Kenny. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Canadian Stage has three homes spread across our great city. The Bluma Appel and the Berkeley Street Complex bookend the vibrant St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood and run along what was once the shore of Lake Ontario. Our beautiful High Park Amphitheatre is nestled within the grassy mounds and forests of our city’s most beloved park. Canadian Stage is grateful to be able to tell our stories on this bountiful land that we all share.

This sacred land has held story for thousands of years: stories that live in the fabric of who we are as a nation. Canadian Stage would like to acknowledge and thank the original caretakers and knowledge keepers of this territory: the Anishinaabe Nations (including the Mississaugas of the Credit), the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Wendat and Métis Nations. We give thanks to the Nations recorded and unrecorded, acknowledged and unacknowledged, who also share the responsibility for this territory. We honour the Dish With One Spoon Treaty and our responsibility to peaceably share and care for the resources that surround us. We are honoured to be in this meeting place called Tkaronto that many First Nations, Inuit and Métis people from across Turtle Island call home.

Pictured: the Flatiron building in the St. Lawrence Market Neighbourhood

Topdog/ WrittenbySuzan-LoriParks Underdog

An electric revival of a modern classic

The greatest American play of the past 25 years —The New York Times

A darkly comic fable of brotherly love and sibling rivalry. Lincoln and Booth are brothers haunted by their past – as well as their names. When Lincoln gets a gig impersonating his namesake, Booth takes over his brother’s old racket as a three-card monte dealer. This beloved Pulitzer Prize-winning play is a tangle of secrets, lies, and one-upmanship, where the stakes get higher and higher, and someone’s bound to end up on top.

Suzan-Lori Parks, widely considered one of the most adventurous and acclaimed playwrights of her generation, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Topdog/Underdog, a piercing examination of family identity and the ways we are defined by history. Hot off the heels of a wildly successful Broadway revival, we are ecstatic to be producing a brand new production of Topdog/Underdog directed by Tawiah M'Carthy.

It's a theatrical event that demands to be seen right here, right now.—Variety

Tawiah M’Carthy Director

September 22 –October 8, 2023

Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre

A Canadian Stage production Topdog/Underdog is generously underwritten by David W. Binet The first production in our 23.24 season is underwritten by Sandra Simpson in recognition of her generous gift to Canadian Stage’s Transformation Campaign

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Drama

NYT Critics' Pick

A stunning piece of contemporary dance that the whole family will love

Jungle Book

reimagined feels like a blockbuster cinematic experience with a powerful message for us all. It’s truly exceptional —The Stage

With a new sense of urgency, the worldrenowned Akram Khan has reinterpreted this known story from another perspective: through the lens of today’s children – those who will inherit our world and become our future storytellers.

With spectacular technology that turns the stage into a mythical world, this Jungle Book reimagines the journey of Mowgli through the eyes of a refugee caught in a world devastated by the impact of climate change. This family-friendly epic dance work speaks to all generations as a step to remind, relearn, and reimagine a new world together. Suggested for children aged 8+ years.

Simultaneously engaging, sobering, transfixing, and hopeful.—The Sunday National

2 Olivier Awards

10 Critics' Circle National Dance Awards

–

Akram Khan Creator

Tariq Jordan Writer

October 12

14, 2023 Bluma Appel Theatre

An Akram Khan Company production presented by Canadian Stage

Akram Khan is one of the world's most celebrated choreographers

Pui Yung Shum. Photo by Ambra Vernuccio

Red Sky Night at

Five Year Celebration

Cast of Miigis. Photo by Ridley Vaughn

Five years of brilliant and illuminating Indigenous dance

Magnificent in the scope of its imagination, and mysterious in its beauty

—The

Globe and Mail

Red Sky at Night is an evening of celebration featuring thrilling excerpts of Red Sky Performance’s work and showcasing a spectacular evening of dance, live music, and theatre from a line-up of outstanding Indigenous performers and special guests. Red Sky at Night brings together artists at the intersection of new and electrifying performances.

We are proud to celebrate five incredible seasons of Red Sky Performance at Canadian Stage with this exclusive three-nights-only performance.

Sandra Laronde is a force of nature to be reckoned with. Dance International

Sandra Laronde Creator

16 Dora Mavor Moore Awards and nominations

2 Canadian Aboriginal Music Awards

Lt. Governor’s Ontario Heritage Award for Excellence in Conservation

November 3-5, 2023

Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre

A Red Sky Performance production presented by Canadian Stage

Red Sky at Night is generously supported by:

Supporting Underwriters

Shawn McReynolds & Elaine Kierans and by Performance Underwriters Huw Evans & Kathryn Bird and the Remembering Otto & Marie Pick Charitable Foundation

A family and a company that changed the world

Genuinely epic... Behold it with wonder

—The New York Times

On a cold September morning in 1844 a young man from Bavaria stands on a New York dockside, dreaming of a new life in the new world. He is joined by his two brothers and an American epic begins. 163 years later, the firm they establish –Lehman Brothers – spectacularly collapses into bankruptcy and triggers the largest financial crisis in history.

Featuring a cast of three playing the Lehman brothers, their sons, and grandsons in an extraordinary feat of storytelling told in three parts on a single evening.

Its theatricality is utterly astonishing. The Guardian

Winner of 5 Tony Awards including Best Play

Canadian Premiere

November 14 – 26, 2023

Bluma Appel Theatre

A Canadian Stage production

The Lehman Trilogy is generously underwritten by John & Nancy Embry and by the William and Nona Heaslip Foundation

The Lehman Trilogy is sponsored by Polar Asset Managment Partners

Philip Akin Director

Jordan Pettle Cast

Graeme Somerville Cast

Ben Carlson Cast

The Lehman

Written by Stefano Massini

Graeme Somerville, Jordan Pettle, and Ben Carlson. Photo by Lorne Bridgman

Anewcreation CrystalPite

Renée Sigouin and Gregory Lau. Photo by Erik Berg

From the creators of Betroffenheit and Revisor

One of the world's great choreographers —The Globe and Mail

Canadian Stage is proud to be a cocommissioner of Kidd Pivot’s highly anticipated new work by acclaimed choreographer Crystal Pite and co-creator Jonathon Young. This new creation follows the massive success of Revisor and Betroffenheit, which The Guardian called “the best dance work of the 21st century."

With a style that is brilliantly orchestrated, highly energetic, and an inventive hybrid of dance and theatre, Pite has been described by The Guardian as “the dance genius who stages the impossible.”

In this newest work, Pite and Young explore our need to congregate and belong. In a gathering place that doubles as community hall and mythic realm, we witness the joys and dangers of devoted like-mindedness and the pain of exile. This breathtaking, moving, and inspiring new work is not to be missed!

Pite structures her work with a thrilling intelligence and choreographs with a detail that makes you feel passion and unease under your own skin. The Guardian

December 6 – 9, 2023

Bluma Appel Theatre

A Kidd Pivot production presented by Canadian Stage This production is generously underwritten by Alexandra Baillie and by The Sabourin Family Foundation.

Crystal Pite Co-Creator

Jonathon Young Co-Creator

Winner of 5 Olivier Awards Limited Run!

When AI takes over from human intelligence, how will people be treated?

An extraordinary play... astonishingly artful

—The New York Times

Weaving a narrative through human rights, sexual politics, and the rise of artificial intelligence, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is a sly theatrical revelation reminding us that none of us are self-sufficient and all of us are responsible for the future.

Written and performed by neuro-divergent actors, this is a funny and beautiful play unlike anything else that will be seen on stage.

An indisputable must-see.

—New York Stage Review

Rare opportunity to experience Australia's innovative and acclaimed Back to Back Theatre

January 18 – 28, 2024

Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre

A Back to Back Theatre production presented by Canadian Stage

The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes is generously underwritten by Trina McQueen and supported by the Azrieli Foundation

Bruce Gladwin Director

Sarah Mainwaring Cast

Simon Laherty Cast

Scott Price Cast

the Hunter Becomes Prey

Simon Laherty. Photo by Jeff Busby

Lennox Eveleigh, Monica Garrido, and Rosie Bretz. Photo by Lorne Bridgman

The creators of Mouthpiece share a virtuosic new work

…a gift to lovers of boundary-breaking theatre —Stage Door

Witness the sheer power and force of the unaccompanied human voice in the newest work from Quote Unquote Collective. Part concert, part theatre play (and self-consciously neither of those things), the ensemble screams about the lack of affordable child care and growing inequalities while comparing different approaches to child care around the globe.

The combination of movement and brilliant voice work produced by Nostbakken and Sadava can be unforgettable; and at its best, seems to speak for a generation.

The Scotsman (Review of Mouthpiece)

February

13 – 25, 2024

Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre

A Quote Unquote Collective production commissioned by The Broad Stage, Santa Monica, in association with Nightwood Theatre, Why Not Theatre and the National Art Centre’s National Creation Fund, presented by Canadian Stage.

Germaine Konji Cast

Amy Nostbakken Creator

Alex Samaras Cast

Norah Sadava Creator

Fiona Sauder Cast

Joema Frith Cast

Takako Segawa Cast

Monica Garrido Cast

World Premiere

An epic new play, generations in the making

Stop the clocks. Here is the play of this year, of last year, and quite possibly next year as well

—The Evening Standard

The Inheritance reimagines E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End as a contemporary portrait of the generation after the height of the AIDS crisis. In contemporary Manhattan, Eric and Toby are 30-somethings who seem to be in love and thriving. But on the cusp of their engagement, they meet an older man haunted by the past and a younger man hungry for a future. Chance meetings lead to surprising choices as the lives of three generations collide—with explosive results. Sweeping the 2020 Tony Awards, The Inheritance is a modern masterpiece presented in two parts.

The most important American play of the century. The Telegraph

Winner of 4 Tony Awards including Best Play

Winner of 4 Olivier Awards including Best Play

March 22 –

April 7, 2024

Bluma Appel Theatre

A Canadian Stage production The Inheritance is generously underwritten by Paul Maranger and Robert Brown

Brendan Healy Director

Antoine Yared Cast

Aldrin Bundoc Cast

Stephen Jackman-Torkoff Cast

Breton Lalama Cast

Qasim Khan Cast

Salvatore Antonio Cast

Stuart Hughes Cast

Hollywood Jade Cast

Daniel MacIvor Cast

Antoine Yared, Qasim Khan, and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff. Photo by Lorne Bridgman

CS Platform

A Vanguard Performance Series

Experience some of the most trailblazing new voices in Canadian performance.

Diana Lopez Soto. Photo by Chris Lagesten

Searching for Eastman

Julius Eastman (1940-1990) was a Black and queer minimalist composer. Outspoken about his social identities, Eastman was a provocative character who infused his remarkable compositions with these sensibilities. Through music, poetry, theatre, dance, and video, Searching for Eastman reveals the complexities of this extraordinary artist and his art.

April 4 – 7, 2024

Marilyn & Charles Baillie Theatre

Presented by Canadian

NOMADA

NOMADA blends aerial dance, installation art, and contemporary Mexican Indigenous dance. Inspired by personal stories of displacement, rituals, and creation from the P'urepecha and Otomi nations of Michoacan and the relationship between our bodies, food, and land, NOMADA is a visually stunning and visceral experience.

April 18 – 20, 2024

Marilyn & Charles Baillie Theatre

Co-Presented by Canadian Stage and DanceWorks

Diana Lopez Soto Creator

charles smith Creator

Created by the wind in the leaves collective based on poetry of charles c smith

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Choir Boy opening night. Photo by Dahlia Katz

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8 Drink Vouchers at the Berkeley Street Theatre bar for the 23.24 Season 

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Curated Package Benefits

Choose From:

The Bluma Series: 5 shows

The Lehman Trilogy, Jungle Book reimagined, Kidd Pivot: A new creation, The Inheritance Part 1 & 2 Choose from evening or matinee performances

The Play Series: 6 shows

Topdog/Underdog, The Lehman Trilogy, Universal Child Care, The Shadow Whose Prey the Hunter Becomes, The Inheritance Part 1 & 2 Choose from evening or matinee performances

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Photo by Elijah Nichols

Locations

Berkeley Street Complex

26 Berkeley Street

• The Berkeley Street Complex is the home of Canadian Stage and houses both the Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre and the Upstairs Theatre Box Office Hours

• Monday – Friday: 12pm – 5pm or until showtime

• Saturday: 12pm until showtime (performance days only)

• Sunday: Two hours prior to showtime (performance days only)

Stage Orchestra

Balcony

Marilyn and Charles Baillie Theatre

Bluma Appel Theatre

27 Front Street East

• Canadian Stage also performs in the Bluma Appel Theatre, housed in the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts

Box Office Hours

• Two hours prior to showtime (performance days only)

Here is a list of the closest public parking in both neighbourhoods:

Berkeley Street Theatre:

• 323 Richmond Street East

• 70 Distillery Lane

• 100 Cooperage Street

• 31A Parliament Street

Bluma Appel Theatre:

• 2 Church Street

• 37 Queen Street E

• 40 York Street

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Choir Boy opening night. Designed by Rachel Forbes, Sophie Tang, and Kate DeLorme. Photo by Dahlia Katz

Thank You

Government Support

Special Foundation Support

Major Corporate Sponsors & Supporters

Major Foundation Supporters

City Builders – Principal Members

Hotel Sponsor

Marilyn & Charles Baillie Family Foundation

The Joan and Clifford Hatch Foundation

The William and Nona Heaslip Foundation

Kingfisher Foundation

Henry White Kinnear Foundation

Fabio Mascarin Foundation

Otto & Marie Pick Charitable Foundation

A round of applause

Many thanks to The Slaight Family Foundation for your transformational theatre initiative. Your commitment of $15 million to 22 Canadian theatre companies and training institutions is having a profound impact.

Over the next two years, this truly extraordinary investment from the Slaight Family Foundation will exponentially support and amplify the work at Canadian Stage, full of innovative projects and programs for artists and audiences. It will ease the expected and unexpected challenges with the sector’s re-opening after the long and volatile pandemic closure period. This incredible act of faith and support from the Slaight Family Foundation will have a lasting impact across the sector for years and years to come.

— Brendan Healy & Monica Esteves

Fairview: Ordena Stephens-Thompson, Sophia Walker. Designed by Rachel Forbes, Jawon Kang, Logan Cracknell. Photo by John Lauener

October

February