Soulpepper reveals its jam-packed 2024 season
Soulpepper Theatre Company has announced its all-star 2024 season, featuring Stratford favourites, world premieres, and more.
The season kicks off in January with Nick Green’s Casey and Diana, which premiered to unprecedented success at this year’s Stratford Festival under the direction of Andrew Kushnir. Other highlights include the return of Punctuate! Theatre’s award-winning First Métis Man of Odesa, a re-imagined Three Sisters set in 1960s Nigeria, and the Canadian premiere of Haley McGee’s Age Is a Feeling, which won the prestigious Fringe First Award at the 2022 Edinburgh Fringe.
Her Words Festival will also return in 2024, along with an exciting gamut of family-friendly holiday programming and concerts from the Slaight Music Residents.
“We couldn’t be more proud to announce our 2024 season, an ambitious season filled with powerful works that express our values and reflect the artistic excellence that audiences expect from Soulpepper,” said artistic director Weyni Mengesha in a press release. “These are plays about our past that can help us look at the moment we’re in, and plays written about today that help us see the world from a variety of perspectives. We hope you’ll join us on the journey.”
Single tickets for the season are available as of today on Soulpepper’s website. Act I subscription packages will be available until November 26, 2023.
Here’s an in-depth look at the upcoming season.
Casey and Diana
By Nick Green
Directed by Andrew Kushnir
Originally produced by the Stratford Festival
Toronto’s Casey House was Canada’s first-free standing AIDS hospice, providing care and comfort to clients diagnosed with and dying of AIDS. In 1991, as this devastating epidemic was reaching its peak, Casey House received a historic visit from Diana, Princess of Wales. Making its Toronto premiere after a sold-out run at the 2023 Stratford Festival, Casey and Diana is a gripping play that vividly captures a historic moment in time between caregivers, advocates, a princess, and people dying of AIDS. A moment that helped reshape the course of the AIDS pandemic by providing hope, challenging stigmas, and uniting a community.
Casey and Diana runs from January 23 – February 11, 2024.
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail
Directed and adapted by Gregory Prest
Original music by Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson
From Soulpepper favourites Gregory Prest, Mike Ross, and Sarah Wilson, De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail is a musical fantasy based on the letter Oscar Wilde wrote while incarcerated for two years at Reading Gaol, to his love Lord Alfred Douglas. The letter was written a page a day over a period of three months, collected at the end of each day, and handed over to Wilde on his release from prison.
De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail runs from February 1-18, 2024.
Three Sisters
By Inua Ellams
Directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu
A co-production with Obsidian Theatre
In the tumultuous backdrop of Owerri in 1967, as the Nigerian-Biafran Civil War looms ominously, three siblings; Lolo, Nne Chukwu, and Udo, grapple with the profound loss of their father. The nation has been thrust into turmoil by two military coups, with foreign involvement fueling the chaos. As the conflict gradually engulfs their rural village, the sisters yearn to return to Lagos, their cherished former home.
Three Sisters runs from February 29 – March 24, 2024.
Ladies of the Canyon — A Soulpepper Concert
By Hailey Gillis and Raha Javanfar
Laurel Canyon is a wooded neighbourhood in the Hollywood Hills. In the ‘60s and ‘70s it was a respite from the bustle of Los Angeles and cultural hotbed that brought together Joni Mitchell, Steven Stills, Jackson Browne, Mamma Cass Elliot and many more. An ensemble of Soulpepper multi-instrumentalists, led by Hailey Gillis and Raha Javanfar, follow the story of Joni’s move to the Canyon and the artists she encountered there. We’ll hear the rise and struggles of a musical moment through the music of the Canyon.
Ladies of the Canyon runs from March 13-24, 2024.
A Doll’s House
By Henrik Ibsen
Adapted by Tanika Gupta
Directed by Miriam Fernandes
Niru is a young Bengali woman married to Tom, an English colonial bureaucrat.
Tom loves Niru, exoticising her as a frivolous plaything to be admired and kept; but Niru has a long-kept secret, and just as she thinks she is almost free of it, it threatens to bring her life crashing down around her.
Tanika Gupta re-imagines Ibsen’s classic play of gender politics through the lens of British colonialism, offering a bold, female perspective exploring themes of ownership and race.
A Doll’s House runs from April 18-May 12, 2024.
First Métis Man of Odesa
Written and performed by Matthew MacKenzie and Mariya Khomutova
Directed by Lianna Makuch
A Punctuate! Theatre Production
Matt and Masha’s love spans continents, but distance can’t tame their passionate connection. After meeting on a theatre research trip in Kyiv, a Canadian Playwright and a Ukrainian artist spark up a romance that takes them from the beaches of the Black Sea to the banks of the North Saskatchewan River, through the onset of a global pandemic and the eruption of a brutal war, plus many moments of joy through it all including marriage and the birth of their son.
Winner of three Dora Mavor Moore Awards including Outstanding Production, Outstanding New Work, and Outstanding Direction. Based on actual events, this captivating real-life love story is set against the backdrop of the COVID pandemic and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
First Métis Man of Odesa runs from May 8-19, 2024.
Hamlet (solo)
Performed by Raoul Bhaneja
Directed by Robert Ross Parker
A Hope and Hell Theatre Co. Production
Hamlet (solo) combines the ancient art of storytelling and the modern “one-person show,” a thrilling evening with focuses on the three most essential elements of theatre: The Actor, The Text and The Audience.
This production is best described as “bare bones” in its presentation with Bhaneja playing 17 parts in a two-hour version using only Shakespeare’s text.
This critically acclaimed production has been enjoyed by audiences as diverse as the people of Inuvik, a community north of the Arctic Circle and the next generation of Britain’s young actors at The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. An exceptional and rare experience for both the novice and Shakespeare enthusiast!
Hamlet (solo) runs from May 23-25, 2024.
Age is a Feeling
Created and performed by Haley McGee
Directed by Mitchell Cushman
A Soho Theatre and Haley McGee production
Inspired by hospices, mystics and trips to the cemetery, Age is a Feeling wrestles with our endless chances to change course while we’re alive. A covert rallying cry against cynicism and regret. A call to seize our time. This never-the-same-twice show from the brilliant performer-creator of The Ex-Boyfriend Yard Sale is a gripping story about how our relationship with mortality shapes the way we live.
Charting the seminal moments, rites of passage, and turning points in an adult life, Age is a Feeling celebrates the glorious and melancholy unknowability of human life.
Coming June 2024
A Streetcar Named Desire
By Tennessee Williams
Directed by Weyni Mengesha
Back by popular demand, this award-winning 2019 production returns to the Soulpepper stage.
As Blanche’s fragile world crumbles, she turns to her sister for solace – but her downward spiral brings her face to face with a brutal, unforgiving reality. Tennessee Williams’ timeless masterpiece is a raging portrayal of what it means to be an outsider, in a society where we’re all desperate to belong.
Coming June-July 2024
The Big Easy — A Soulpepper Concert
Created by Beau Dixon
New Orleans has been the musical heartbeat of America from Congo Square to the Flood. The
Soulpepper music team brings the sounds of joy, resilience, and innovation from The Big Easy up to the Big Smoke, exploring the city that gave birth to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Dr. John and Jazz itself.
Coming August 2024
Billie, Sarah, and Ella: Revolutionary Women in Jazz — A Soulpepper Concert
Created by Divine Brown
It was the birth of the modern era, and Jazz was the soundtrack for change. This Soulpepper Concert remount explores the stories of the women that transformed the music industry and gave Jazz its social purpose – Billie Holiday, Sarah Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald. Soulpepper Slaight Music Associate Divine Brown pays tribute to the heroes – known and unknown – that inspired a movement.
Coming November 2024
Aisling Murphy
Aisling is Intermission's senior editor and an award-winning arts journalist with bylines including the Toronto Star, Globe & Mail, CBC Arts, CTV News Toronto, and Maclean's. She likes British playwright Sarah Kane, most songs by Taylor Swift, and her cats, Fig and June. She was a 2024 fellow at the National Critics Institute in Waterford, CT.
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