Bachelor Man – Renaissance Canadian Theatre
On July 1st, 1929, Toronto Chinatown teahouse owner, John, greets an extraordinary day. John left his wife in China. So did Grandad. Six men and the two women who enter their lives, grapple with the 6th anniversary of the Exclusion Act, the immigration act that prevented the wives and families of the men who came from China, largely to build the railroad, from joining them in Canada. It was the perfect ‘Bachelor Society’ that lasted 24 years.
RENAISSANCE CANADIAN THEATRE COMPANY is proud that BACHELOR MAN will be the Tarragon Theatre’s 2025-26 Resident Guest Presentation and will enjoy ushering in their season with their long-awaited reimagined revival production of BACHELOR MAN.
September 2 – 14
Tarragon Theatre – 30 Bridgman Avenue
https://tarragontheatre.com/plays/2025-2026/guest-presentations-2025-2026/bachelor-man/
The Elephant Girls – Parry Riposte Productions
Clever, organized, devious and daring, The Elephant Girls stole from the rich and gave to themselves. This is the gripping story of the all-female gang that terrorized London for over 100 years. A fascinating piece of lost women’s history, the play centres on the 1920s when the gang was at the height of its power—and when the events took place which would mean its downfall.
“Right here, right now, for one night only, I’ll tell you something special I ain’t never told no one before; I’ll tell you the truth.”
– Maggie Hale, The Elephant Girls
Maggie Hale — the gang’s butch, suit-wearing, bloody-knuckled, girl-chasing “enforcer”— will tell you all: who they were, what they did, how they got away with it, and how it all came crashing down. But should you trust the words of someone who’s made deception her stock-in-trade? Just how much are you sure you want to hear?
Wrapping issues of power, class, gender, and violence around the story of Maggie Hale, the show uses history to grapple with issues society still struggles with today.
September 10 – 14
Red Sandcastle Theatre – 922 Queen St E
https://ticketscene.ca/series/1483/
The Welkin – Soulpepper Theatre, Crow’s Theatre, and The Howland Company
A searing courtroom drama by Tony-nominated playwright Lucy Kirkwood, THE WELKIN is set in rural England, 1759 as Halley’s Comet burns in the sky, and a young woman is sentenced to hang. But when she tries to escape the noose by claiming to be pregnant, a jury of twelve women are gathered to decide whether she is telling the truth. As tensions rise, their task becomes a reckoning: with the law, with power, and with the roles they’re forced to play in a world that silences them. A bold and blistering courtroom drama—by turns darkly comic and quietly devastating—THE WELKIN is a story of justice, duty, and righteous dissent.
September 4 – October 5
Baille Theatre – Yonge Centre for the Performing Arts – 50 Tank House Lane
https://www.soulpepper.ca/performances/thewelkin
Octet – Crow’s Theatre, Soulpepper Theatre, and The Musical Stage Company
One of the most innovative, moving, and singular new musicals of the last decade: OCTET by three-time Tony Award nominee Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812, Ghost Quarter) is a funny, intimate, and wholly original choral exploration of how we navigate our online and offline selves—and the ways technology complicates, magnifies, and deepens our longing for connection. A hypnotic, a cappella chamber musical for eight voices, OCTET is set against the backdrop of a mysterious 12-step meeting. Soul-stirring and hilarious, the show blends razor-sharp contemporary insight with haunting choral harmonies. Malloy’s examination of the most pervasive social force of the 21st Century offers a funny, intimate, and deeply affecting meditation on how our virtual lives are reshaping identity, memory, and our most primal longing: the need to connect.
September 9 – October 12
Guloien Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest – 345 Carlaw Ave
https://www.crowstheatre.com/shows-events/octet
Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs – Nightwood Theatre in association with Tarragon Theatre
Time stands still as Vic crash-lands in a women’s shelter. The more she tries to listen to her inner voice, the more the fractured perspectives of her personified mind clamour to be heard. Enormity offers a highly physical, fresh, and unexpectedly comedic take on a woman in her 20s seeking refuge.
Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs was developed in Nightwood Theatre’s esteemed Write from the Hip program, marking a 10-year collaboration for celebrated artists Chelsea Woolley (playwright) and Andrea Donaldson (director).
September 16 – October 5
Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre – Performance Hall – 877 Yonge St
https://www.nightwoodtheatre.net/enormity-girl-and-the-earthquake-in-her-lungs/
The Veil – Guild Festival Theatre in association with Crow’s Theatre and Thought for Food Productions
Inspired by classic horror writers like Edgar Allan Poe and Shirley Jackson, this haunting new work tells the tale of a high-powered lawyer who inherits a sinister curse. As every terrible deed he’s ever committed stirs to life and lurks just beyond his sight, reality blurs into nightmare and The Veil spirals into a pulse-quickening race against time.
The Veil is a gripping monologue play that follows a young lawyer whose career is faltering as he struggles to make ends meet. Desperate for success, he strikes a sinister deal in exchange for wealth and status. As his fortunes rise, dark forces creep into his life, but it is only when his daughter is endangered that he realizes the true cost of his ambition.
September 17 – October 12
Studio Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest – 345 Carlaw Ave
https://www.crowstheatre.com/shows-events/the-veil
Waiting for Godot – Coal Mine Theatre
In Waiting for Godot, two wandering tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait by a lonely tree, to meet up with Mr. Godot, an enigmatic figure in a world where time, place and memory are blurred and meaning is where you find it. The tramps hope that Godot will change their lives for the better. Instead, two eccentric travelers arrive, one man on the end of the other’s rope. The results are both funny and dangerous in this existential masterpiece.
September 14 – October 5
Coal Mine Theatre – 2076 Danforth Avenue
https://www.coalminetheatre.com/waiting-for-godot
blood.claat – Watah Theatre and The Theatre Centre
Part 1 of The Sankofa Trilogy by d’bi.young anitafrika. In blood.claat, Mudgu Sankofa, the 15-year-old protagonist, navigates their relationship with their menstruation, the blood of the violence they witness, and the cycles of love, life and death in their family.
September 23 – October 12
The Theatre Centre – 1115 Queen Street W
https://theatrecentre.org/event/sankofatrilogy/
The Green Line – Produced by In Arms Theatre Company + the MENA Collective in association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Factory Theatre
Two love stories twist together in two Beiruts riven by time and conflict. In 1978, two women share spit on the ends of cigarettes and yearn for tenderness under the tumult of war. In 2018, a foreigner and a local flirt over vodka sodas as their contradictions collect like condensation on the sides of their glasses.
September 25 – October 4
Buddies in Bad Times Theatre – 12 Alexander Street
https://buddiesinbadtimes.com/show/the-green-line/
Ride the Cyclone – Shifting Ground Collective
Saskatchewan’s Saint Cassian High School’s Chamber Choir has never won anything, until one fateful day when they ride the Cyclone rollercoaster on an outing following a choir competition – leading to an unfortunate accident that claims all of their lives.
Finding themselves in an unsettling middle space between life and death, they meet a mysterious fortune-telling machine offering one of them a chance to return to life.
A darkly comedic and deeply poignant musical from Jacob Richmond and Brooke Maxwell of Victoria based Atomic Vaudeville explores what it means to live life to the fullest.
September 24 – October 4
Annex Theatre – 730 Bathurst St
https://shiftinggroundcollective.com/cyclone/
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