This season will be artistic director Alexander Shelley’s last with the National Arts Centre.Curtis Perry/Supplied
The National Arts Centre has unveiled its 2025-26 season programming, featuring an eclectic blend of local, national and international productions across its four performance spaces in Ottawa.
The NAC Orchestra season, revealed to be artistic director Alexander Shelley’s last with the company, opens with Giacomo Puccini’s opera Tosca, produced in partnership with Edmonton Opera’s Emerging Artist Program. Following that is a slate of programming from across the country, with performers including Toronto’s Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra and Quebec City’s Les Violons du Roy.
The orchestra’s popular Pops programming will include a tribute to Aretha Franklin as well as the film scores from The Muppet Christmas Carol and Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of The Black Pearl.
NAC English Theatre will present two co-productions with Toronto theatre companies: Copperbelt by Natasha Mumba, and cicadas by David Yee and Chris Thornborrow.
“The thing that makes this season special is that for the first time in a long time, from memory, English Theatre is producing again,” says artistic director Nina Lee Aquino. “I’m a new play development kid, so I’m happy we’re able to really explore that direction.”
Also in the season is a presentation of After the Rain, a new musical by Rose Napoli and Suzy Wilde that premieres at Tarragon Theatre this summer, and Catalyst Theatre’s The Invisible – Agents of Ungentlemanly Warfare.
Rounding out the English Theatre season are the acclaimed Crow’s Theatre/Segal Centre production of Fifteen Dogs, which director Marie Farsi will update to include references to local Ottawa neighbourhoods, and The Storyville Mosquito, aimed at families.
On the French side of programming, artistic director Mani Soleymanlou has prepared a season that celebrates francophone theatre in the National Capital Region and beyond.
Robert Lepage’s take on Macbeth is due to premiere in English at the Stratford Festival this month, but NAC French Theatre, TNM in Montreal and Le Diamant in Quebec City will soon translate the play for a short tour that will end at the NAC in 2026.
Another highlight of the season is Camions (fantômes de la liberté), a site-specific work inspired by the events of the trucker convoy that took over downtown Ottawa in 2022.
“The NAC was a neighbour to that whole event,” says Soleymanlou. “The idea is to be close again, and to think about the convoy with some distance, some more calm, some peace. The NAC was in the heart of all that; the story is important for us.”
Also included in the NAC French Theatre season is a slate of programming for children under 12, as well as Nuits claires, a collective creation from the University of Ottawa’s theatre conservatory program. The company will additionally premiere Visages, a choral creation by Alexia Bürger, and present shows from two companies familiar to the NAC: Sibyllines’ Passion simple and L’eau du bain’s Créatures.
Rounding out the NAC French Theatre season are Pas perdus | documentaires scéniques, a creation by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and Émile Proulx-Cloutier; La dernière cassette, a tribute to André Brassard written by Olivier Choinière and performed by Violette Chauveau; La vie est une fête, a satire by Les Chiens de Navarre; and Querelle de Roberval, Olivier Arteau’s stage adaptation of Kev Lambert’s novel.
NAC Indigenous Theatre will present the world premiere of Rose by legendary Cree playwright Tomson Highway. The third chapter in Highway’s “Rez Cycle” of plays, Rose, written in 1992, has never been professionally staged before due to its scale.
“This is a great work by one of our great playwrights; this is exactly the kind of thing that NAC Indigenous Theatre should be doing,” says artistic director Kevin Loring. “It’s what we were built to do. It’s a signature piece.”
Nigamon/Tunai, billed as “a poetic manifesto” by Émilie Monnet and Wiara Nina, opens the NAC Indigenous Theatre season, followed by Tupqan|Nos territoires intérieurs, a political thriller co-produced by Ondinnok and Duceppe.
Next comes Rinse, a co-production with NAC Dance, created by Australian First Nations artist Amrita Hepi, as well as Axis Theatre’s Th’owxiya, a production geared toward families that features traditional Coast Salish music, masks and imagery. Closing out the season is Te Tangi a Te Tui, a collaboration between New Zealand’s Te Rehia Theatre and The Dust Palace.
Fans of both classical and more experimental dance will be pleased by executive director Caroline Ohrt’s season programming. Next year, NAC Dance will present Rinse as well as Moroccan choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Ihsane. Dance Theatre of Harlem, a multi-ethnic ensemble, is also on deck to present a mixed program.
Canada’s Royal Winnipeg Ballet will return to Ottawa with Hansel & Gretel in November, then The Nutcracker closer to the holidays. Guillaume Côté and Robert Lepage will also present their production of Hamlet.
Later in the season comes Procession, a new work from the National Ballet of Canada.
The NAC Dance slate also includes a handful of presentations in the Babs Asper Theatre: Skatepark, by Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen; Mellowing by choreographer Christos Papadopoulos; Manifesto by Australian choreographer Stephanie Lake; and Voice of Desert by Saburo Teshigawara.
The company will also co-produce three Canadian works: Scénographies-Paysages, a site-specific work by Danièle Desnoyers; an untitled work by Justine Chambers; and an untitled work by award-winning dance duo Vias.
