Theatre

Hoping to snag their perfect home in a red-hot housing market, an African Canadian man, a Chinese Canadian man, and a Jewish/Indigenous lesbian couple show up to an open house run by a white settler real estate agent. Each potential buyer feels most deserving of the prize. When a police incident outside traps them together in the house, debate erupts over which of their cultures has faced the most discrimination and exclusion. Passions run high and opinions clash. With wry humour, Open House deftly navigates current conversations about oppression, colonization, and middle-class aspirations.

Additional Information
5.82" x 8.26" | Paperback 

“The map of the land is in our blood.”

A woman trawls the bottom of a riverbed with a makeshift plough, hoping to dislodge something—anything. The world has drastically changed: rivers run dry, rampant bushfires leave little left to burn. Still she persists searching for the stories of her loved ones, maybe even her own. She is not alone—an ancestor watches nearby. This desolate landscape is about to unearth its long-held secrets.

Inspired by the grassroots organization Drag the Red, which searches for evidence of missing Indigenous women, girls, and 2 Spirit people in the Red River of Treaty One Territory, this ethereal and engrossing drama is a profound offering to those who persevere in spite of sorrow. Told in Anishinaabemowin, English, and French, Tara Beagan’s prophetic play draws a direct connection between the treatment of Indigenous peoples and the abuse inflicted on the land. Fluid and majestic like the river itself, Rise, Red River is an invocation, a revelation, and a call to action.

Educator Information
Told in Anishinaabemowin, English, and French.

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.37" x 8.38" | Paperback

Stolen Sisters is a first-of-its-kind play that gives voice to the lives and legacies of three Beothuk women and girls whose names have survived in historical record.

These are stories that have been mis-told, misrepresented, and mythologized by colonial interference. By shifting the lens of history to reflect Indigenous perspective and experience, the women brought to life in Stolen Sisters set the record straight, telling their own stories with both humour and unflinching honestly. Based on the oral and written Indigenous histories of colonization locally and worldwide, the voices of Stolen Sisters shine a light on the global experience of Indigenous women and girls and, in particular, Newfoundland's part in that legacy.

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96 pages | 5.57" x 8.37" | Paperback 

Revived from a coma after a traumatic event, Megan’s injuries leave her capable of great violence, forcing her desperate physician Cassandra to recruit Alison, an Indigenous clinician, as her consultant. Alison uses an innovative form of technologically enhanced expressive arts therapy to augment the rehabilitative effects of speaking Lenape, their shared (and almost extinct) language. However, this reminder of cultural expression and identity triggers Megan, putting herself into a life-threatening situation. With Megan’s safety in jeopardy, Alison must internalize a life-changing lesson to be able to save her: pain is often unjust, but it also reminds us that we’re alive.

Everything I Couldn’t Tell You is a potent reminder of the healing and rehabilitative power within Indigenous languages.

Reviews
“Science, music, art and language combine in the search of a healing prayer in [the] . . .  mind-blowing, heart-wrenching Everything I Couldn’t Tell You.” — Life With More Cowbell

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.37" x 8.38"

Matt and Masha hit it off during a theatre research trip in Ukraine. At first they seem like opposites: Masha loves the sea, Matt loves mountains. Masha is Ukrainian, Matt is Métis. But the passionate spark ignited between them cannot be denied. Despite the improbabilities of a cross-continental relationship, a few fairy-tale visits overseas solidifies their bond. But when it seems distance could be the only obstacle in their path, a series of extreme circumstances put their commitment to the ultimate test.

Based on actual events, First Métis Man of Odesa is the extraordinary true story of a whirlwind romance that withstands a global pandemic, a surprise pregnancy, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Transcending the usual tropes of documentary theatre, this heartwarming how-we-got-together tale turns art of the here and now into a catalyst for action and a hopeful ode for a better future.

Awards

• 2024 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play winner

Reviews
“A star-crossed, windswept, war-torn romcom that waltzes back and forth across the threshold that separates dreams from nightmares.” — Ben Waldman, Winnipeg Free Press

“Many of the best tales in the show are so deeply improbable, or so straightforwardly honest, that the plot lines could never have held up as fiction; but as the true stories they are, they triumph.” — Julia Peterson, Saskatoon StarPhoenix

“For all its full-blown drama, First Métis Man of Odesa retains a dreamy charm without ever letting go of the truth.”— Liane Faulder, Edmonton Journal

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.12" x 7.62" | Paperback

It’s summertime on the rez. The frybread is sizzling, and the local radio station plays bluegrass, Anishinaabemowin lessons, and Friday-night bingo numbers. Lenna, the youngest of the Little family, is preparing to leave home for her first year of college, with little enthusiasm or help from her stubborn father and reckless brother. Amidst lingering doubts about departing the family flock, Lenna collides into a meet-cute with the charming and awkward Sam Thomas, who is returning to the reserve after many years away. With the promise of a romance budding between them, Lenna is caught in a whirlwind of uncertainty, wondering if she’s ready to bid farewell just as she's about to take flight.

Filled with Indigenous humour, small-town seasoning, and dream-world interludes, this heartwarming love story captures the bittersweet highs and lows of a rural teenage upbringing. A love letter to community, Niizh is a refreshing coming-of-age romcom about two young lovebirds leaving the nest.

Reviews
“In Niizh, Joelle Peters offers up a profound love and simultaneous longing for family and community. She stages generational strengths—humour, caring, and insightfulness—alongside generational wounds that can keep our dearest at arm’s length. This disarmingly simple story is artfully crafted with dialogue featuring a uniquely Peters-ian dry wit. Niizh is a celebration of the joys, beauties, and challenges of a young and fiercely capable Indigenous woman.” — Tara Beagan

“I was excited about this play the first time I read it. It's smart and funny, and it's exactly what we need right now.” — Keith Barker

“Joelle can write the rez. Conveying the history, the hardship, but, more than anything, the humour and the beauty of our complicated communities. And to see those spaces on stage is a powerful thing.” — Falen Johnson

“What's most satisfying is how many themes Peters layers into the script—including the loss of Indigenous language and culture, the fear of failure of those embarking on something new and, most poignantly, the shame and anger around abandonment.” — Glenn Sumi

Additional Information
112 pages | 5.40" x 8.35" | Paperback

On the twentieth anniversary of its first volume, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3 is a curated collection of new works rooted in Indigenous values, aesthetics, and narrative structures. Inspired by their own dramaturgical practices and current conversations in contemporary theatre creation, co-editors Monique Mojica and Lindsay Lachance identify the invaluable and understudied ways that many Indigenous theatre artists are creating culturally specific dramaturgical processes and shifting the paradigm for what is considered “text.” By presenting models for relational theatre-making and land-based explorations outside the traditional “well-made-play” structure, Staging Coyote’s Dream Volume 3 is more than just a collection of plays; it offers some strategies and tools for how Indigenous artists can reimagine the structures of new-play development and performance on Turtle Island.

An anthology that identifies and highlights a vast array of anti-colonial performing arts processes, including reclamation, embodiment, and community-engaged work—to name only a few—Mojica and Lachance gather the works of artists leading these practices to not only honour how their plays are expanding dramaturgy, but to build Indigenous performance literacies for all practitioners creating on Turtle Island.

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416 pages | 6.00" x 9.00" | Paperback

In eighteen hundred and something something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for twenty-first century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel.

Marie-Angelique, a Metis Taurus, is determined to woo Louis (a Metis Libra)—who will be arriving soon—by sending him boldly flirtatious letters. Eugenia, an Ojibwe Sagittarius, brings news of rebellion back to the fort after trading, but isn’t impressed by Louis’s true mediocre nature. And Cecilia, a pregnant British Virgo, is anxiously waiting on her husband’s return from an expedition, but can’t resist pining over the heartthrob Thomas Scott (Irish Capricorn), who is actually the one secretly responding to Marie-Angelique’s letters. This will all go smoothly, right?

This lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.

Awards

• 2023 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English
• 2018 Toronto Fringe Best New Play Contest winner
• 2024 Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play

Reviews
“Not only is the play a fun and clever look at the province’s history, but by weaving in modern slang and references, Koncan (who is of Anishinaabe and Slovene descent) highlights how many Indigenous issues from our past are still relevant today.” — Stephanie Cram, CBC News

“A timely, provocative piece of theatre written from a perspective and voice we need to hear.”— Ian Ross, Winnipeg Free Press

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.32" x 8.35" | 2nd Edition | Paperback 

From the author of Bears comes two dark comedies that expose the effects of disturbing the natural order and what we’re capable of when pushed to our breaking point.

Set in the aftermath of the disaster that nearly destroyed Fort McMurray in 2016, After the Fire centres around two couples whose lives have been deeply affected by the ruin. Sisters Laura and Carmell have been channelling their devastation after the disaster into their daughters’ hockey team . . . maybe a little too much. Their Indigenous oil-worker husbands Barry and Ty are fighting their own demons as they try to sort out how to move on, while digging a very big hole.

In The Particulars, a week’s worth of daily routines for an insomniac is disrupted by a mysterious home invasion. Gordon battles his invaders on two main fronts—in his home, where he believes he is dealing with vermin, and in his yard, where insects have taken over his garden. By day, Gordon forges ahead, in control of every aspect of his life. But by night, the scratching he has begun to hear in his walls is unravelling him, driving him to the edge of cosmic desperation.

The sharp commentary in these two plays will shock and satisfy the temptation of taking matters into your own hands.

Reviews
“After the Fire may have one of the greatest surprise endings ever in a Canadian play—and certainly has one of the most Canadian surprise endings ever to a play . . . It is also good writing that alters your perception of all of the characters, the state of their relationships—and maybe Fort McMurray as well.”— J. Kelly Nestruck, The Globe and Mail

“The Particulars entices you with its details, but it’s the exploration of life’s biggest mysteries that will break your heart.”— Carly Maga, Toronto Star

"Moving and funny, audaciously strange . . . Suffice it to say that it’s as if Martin McDonagh took up writing the kind of Canadian family plays where revealing dark secrets of the past usually tends to be the way forward. Basically, [After the Fire] blows that Canuck m.o. into smithereens, while slyly seducing us into feeling its embrace."— Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

"The writing [in The Particulars] stands on its own—I like how our narrator speaks of himself in third person—and MacKenzie effectively brings the cyclical smallness of a life to life."— Elizabeth Withey, Edmonton Journal

Additional Information
120 pages | 5.37" x 8.38" | Paperback

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon.

For five years, the Indigenous Voices Awards have nurtured the work of Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Established in 2017 initially through a crowd-funded campaign by lawyer Robin Parker and author Silvia Moreno-Garcia that set an initial fundraising goal of $10,000, the initiative raised over $116,000 in just four months.

Through generous support from organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, CELA, and others, the award has grown and have helped usher in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVA recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt, Tanya Tagaq, and Jesse Thistle. The IVAs also help promote the works of unpublished writers, helping launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird.

For the first time, a selection of standout works over the past five years of the Indigenous Voices Award will be collected in an anthology that will highlight some of the most groundbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and in an Indigenous language. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Carleigh Baker, Jordan Abel, and Indigenous scholar Madeleine Reddon, this anthology will be a true celebration of Indigenous storytelling that will both introduce readers to emerging luminaries as well as return them to treasured favourites.

Educator Information
Carving Space: The Indigenous Voices Awards Anthology: A collection of prose and poetry from emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada includes a selection of standout work from the first five years of the Indigenous Voices Awards.

Additional Information
400 pages | 5.50" x 8.25" | Paperback

A diverse group of seven writers comes together to create seven tender scenes about their hopes for the future.

The Many Mothers Collective came together during the pandemic, hoping to make sense of the world they found themselves in. What evolved was their need to not only focus on the present moment, but on the world they will leave behind for their children and grandchildren, and for seven generations to come. In seven scenes for the stage, the members of the collective explore the past, where they come from, and the future, where they are going, with a deep sense of hopefulness rooted in resistance.

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70 pages | 5.00" x 8.00" | Paperback

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.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

Grocery-store clerk Beth has had a hell of a week. A hell of a life, actually, full of people squashing her soul. And after pushing back at life—stabbing a steak to her boss’s desk and lighting a magazine rack on fire, for instance—freshly unemployed Beth regroups at her mom’s suburban home. Just when Beth starts to think she’s to blame for systemic limits, the gift of a bird feeder sparks a relationship with a talking Crow who reconnects her with her true power.

This sly chamber piece from new voice Caleigh Crow turns post-capitalism ennui on its head with a righteous fury. It unearths the subtle (and not so subtle) ways we gaslight the marginalized, especially Indigenous women, people living with mental-health afflictions, and anyone struggling to make ends meet in low-income service jobs. There Is Violence captures the vivacity and humour of one truly remarkable woman not meant for this earth, and brings her to her own glorious transcendence.

Additional Information
80 pages | 5.10" x 7.60" | Paperback

Miskozi is searching for something...There's something missing. And she's not sure what it is. She goes on a search for herself and her culture, accompanied by her inner white girl, Waabishkizi, and guided by Ziibi, a manifestation of an ancestral river, both provoking her to try and find the answers. She begins the journey back before she was even born, right at the seeds of colonization when her ancestors were forced to hide their culture anywhere they could. Burying their language.Their teachings.Their bundles.Their moccasins. White Girls in Moccasins is a hilarious and poignant reclamation story that world-hops between dreams, memories, and a surreal game show. Miskozi recounts her life and is forced to grapple with her own truth, while existing in a society steeped in white supremacy. A love letter to brown kids born in the 80s, surviving in the 90s and all those continuing to deeply reclaim.

Additional Information
72 pages | 5.50" x 8.50" | Paperback

A significant moment in Canadian history is portrayed in this documentary musical about race relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Weaving hundreds of real interviews conducted with Saskatchewan residents and the court transcripts surrounding the killing of Colten Boushie and trial of Gerald Stanley, a kaleidoscopic picture is formed of the views of the incident, the province, and Indigenous people in Canada.

Reasonable Doubt—with interviews by Joel Bernbaum, music by Lancelot Knight, and dramaturgy by Yvette Nolan—provides a space to honestly talk to each other about what has happened on this land and how we can live together.

Reviews
“Verbatim theatre usually does a good job of putting the audience in the shoes of the people speaking, but Reasonable Doubt puts you in your own shoes and makes you deal with the mud splattered across them.” — Matt Olson, Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Additional Information
128 pages | 5.37" x 8.38" | Paperback