Upcoming
Inspired by the unsolved massacre of Ontario’s Donnelly family in 1880, Vigilante is an original rockopera from Edmonton’s Catalyst Theatre, known for their bold design aesthetic and electrifying sound. These frontier ghosts appear at the NAC Theatre from March 29 to April 15.
The GCTC offers one of Canada’s smartest and most politically savvy playwrights. Michael Healey’s latest play, 1979, is a silly, satirical look at Joe Clark’s brief time as our prime minister, with eerie echoes of the political circus playing down south — April 11 to 30.
TACTICS returns this spring with two mainstage offerings at Arts Court Theatre. The Hottentot
Venus — untold, is Jacqui du Toit’s masterful ode to a South African woman named Sarah Baartman. As the story goes, she went to England in 1812 — it’s unclear whether she went willingly or was forced to go — where she was put on display as a freak. It’s on from April 19 to 23. And Girls! Girls! Girls!, Greg MacArthur’s devastating play about violence and teenage girls inspired by the 1997 murder of Reena Virk, is on April 26 to May 6.
Maestro is an entertaining, smart, and unpretentious look at high-level orchestral antics. The show, from Plosive Productions, runs in both French and English with the same bilingual cast. Directed by virtuoso Gilles Provost, it’s at The Gladstone from May 26 to June 10.
Children of God has been in the works since 2011; the passion project by Indigenous composer Corey Payette tells the story of an Oji-Cree family whose children were taken away to residential school. At the NAC from June 7 to 18.
Think you know the story of Louis Riel? Think again.
Louis Riel is a tour de force opera sung in English, French, and Cree that seeks to rethink Canadian history — just in time for Canada’s 150. A co-production of the Canadian Opera Company and the NAC, it runs from June 15 to 17 at the NAC.