Artistic Director Andrea Donaldson and Managing Director Naz Afsahi are proud to announce Nightwood Theatre’s 2022/23 season – a vibrant celebration of liveness, centering the creator-performer and featuring urgent perspectives shared in fresh new formats. With pieces that spotlight opera, comedic songwriting, hip hop, live projection and documentary theatre, this season offers Nightwood’s most inventive, outside-the-box programming yet, as Andrea Donaldson delivers her first completely in-person season since becoming Artistic Director in 2019.

In anticipation of this innovative new season, Andrea Donaldson shares: “For good reason, we’re all deeply out of practice with doing, seeing, being with, and being near. And despite the continued uncertainty, and while maintaining many of the practices that keep us safe, I’m ready to be reawakened. So this year Nightwood Theatre celebrates this awakening with trailblazers – the DIYers – the creator-performers. Each of the brand new works in our season offer distinct perspective, inspired theatricality, and instil hope through provocation, intimacy and humour to rekindle our cultural spark.”

NIGHTWOOD THEATRE’S 2022/23 SEASON

THE QUEEN IN ME

Created and performed by Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野

Co-Directed by Andrea Donaldson & Aria Umezawa

A co-production by Nightwood Theatre, Amplified Opera, Canadian Opera Company and Theatre Gargantua

September 22, 24 and 25, 2022

Greenwin Theatre, Meridian Arts Centre

After selling out its world premiere last June, Nightwood Theatre, Amplified Opera, Theatre Gargantua and the Canadian Opera Company are thrilled to bring back The Queen in Me by interdisciplinary artist Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them), accompanied by pianist David Eliakis (he/him). Combining comedy, drama, and opera, this electrifying show explores the many ways that race, gender, and sexuality are policed in the opera industry. Through the lens of The Magic Flute’s iconic Queen of the Night, the show reclaims space for the multitudes of women, trans, and non-binary individuals excluded from the stage, daring to imagine bold new possibilities for the art form and beyond.

Featuring arias from La Bohème, Lucia di Lammermoor, Macbeth, Madama Butterfly, Manon Lescaut, Rigoletto, Salome, Turandot and The Magic Flute.

Catch this multi-Dora Award-nominated show before it tours to the Belfast International Arts Festival from October 18-20! 

CHILDREN OF FIRE

Created and written by Shahrzad Arshadi and Anna Chatterton

Verbatim text translated by Shahrzad Arshadi

Directed by Beatriz Pizano

RUTAS International Performing Arts Festival presents

A Nightwood Theatre Production in association with Aluna Theatre

October 6, 8 and 9, 2022

Theatre Passe Muraille

Children of Fire returns to the stage after its stunning outdoor World Premiere in June of 2022. This powerful piece offers an intimate portrayal of the Kurdish female freedom fighters that hosted Shahrzad Arshadi and Anna Chatterton in the mountains of Kurdistan in 2018. Co-created with a mix of verbatim theatre and first-person confessional, this play follows the journey and layered relationship across cultures between Shahrzad and Anna, and asks what is at the heart of living bravely as a woman and activist.

I LOVE THE SMELL OF GASOLINE

Created and performed by Claren Grosz

Directed by William Dao

Pencil Kit Productions and Nightwood Theatre present in association with Aluna Theatre

March 6 - 19, 2023

Aki Studio

Overhead projection meets performative research essay meets personal narrative as Claren Grosz attempts to reconcile her Alberta oil-industry roots with the current environmental emergency. I love the smell of gasoline was born of a frustration with divisive Canadian politics, rampant hypocrisy, and a lack of team spirit when facing impending doom. What does it really mean to sacrifice and to survive? How can we harness our agency and responsibility in a global crisis?

LOVE YOU WRONG TIME

Created and performed by Maddie Bautista and Deanna H. Choi

Directed by Erin Brubacher

Nightwood Theatre presents a Bad Muse Collective production

Various dates at pop-up venues throughout April 2023

Love You Wrong Time is a hilarious, no-holds-barred song cycle featuring two friends looking for love while contending with the fetishization of Asian women. Using music, true stories, bar games, and stand up, Deanna H. Choi and Maddie Bautista’s inventive, interactive show serves as a battle cry in the wake of mass violence against Asian femmes, creating a space for rage, grief, tenderness and ruthless comedy.

SHE’S NOT SPECIAL

Created and performed by Fatuma Adar

Co-directed by Fatuma Adar and Graham Isador

A Nightwood Theatre and Tarragon Theatre co-presentation

May 2023

Tarragon Theatre

She’s Not Special combines musical theatre and comedic storytelling to explore the pressures of Black Excellence. As a Black Muslim Woman (a triple threat!), creator Fatuma Adar is on a mission to free you from the clutches of exceptionalism and teach you how to relish in the joys of mediocrity. Co-directed by Adar (Playback’s Artist to Watch) and Graham Isador (The Beaverton, VICE). Adar’s music has been described by CBC Arts as “… equal parts Bo Burnham stand-up set and Pharrell Williams club jam.” After a critically acclaimed digital run at the Next Stage Theatre Festival, She's Not Special returns to the stage LIVE! (Still, Adar hopes that you come with only moderate expectations... thanks.)

THE GROUNDSWELL FESTIVAL: Readings from our 2021/22 Write From The Hip Playwrights program

Program Directed by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard

November 2022

Aki Studio

Don't miss this week of new plays from some of the most compelling emerging playwrights in the city and beyond. The 2021/22 Write From The Hip playwrights are Omolola Ajao, Stephanie Fung, Juliet Jones-Rodney, Merlin Simard, Jillian Welsh. Visit nightwoodtheatre.net for the full Groundswell Festival schedule in November 2022.

2022/23 TICKETS: Please visit nightwoodtheatre.net for show and ticket info.

ABOUT NIGHTWOOD THEATRE

As Canada’s foremost feminist theatre, Nightwood Theatre is driven by artistic excellence, advocacy, and the successful training and development of women and gender marginalized artists – this includes but is not limited to trans, cis, Two-Spirit and non-binary folks. Founded in 1979, Nightwood Theatre has created and produced award-winning plays, which have won Dora Mavor Moore, Chalmers, Trillium, and Governor General’s awards. To learn more about Nightwood Theatre, please visit nightwoodtheatre.net.