The Ties That Bind: a new season at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, Theater News

For their upcoming 48th season, Workshop West Playwrights Theatre, devoted to the development and showcasing of the Canadian repertoire and its writers, will feature a trio of mainstage productions from veteran theatre artists with long and distinguished histories with the company: a world premiere by a star Canadian playwright, a solo memoir by and performed by another, and a Canadian classic, directed by the Workshop West founder himself.

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Announced Monday from WWPT’s newly reno’ed Gateway Theatre in Strathcona, by managing director Martin Galba, the 2026-2027 lineup, dubbed The Ties That Bind, was assembled by an “interim artistic programming committee,” following the abrupt departure of artistic producer Heather Inglis after six years, at the end of this past season. .

The Workshop West season to come includes the much anticipated world premiere of Last Supper, a new “culinary caper” by multi-award-winning Edmonton playwright Conni Massing (Dead Letter, Matara, The Invention of Romance, Fresh Hell). Her ties with WWPT date back more than three decades (Dustsluts in 1992, Homesick in 2000). At the centre of the new Massing comedy is a fraught dinner encounter between a formidable and snobby restaurant critic and a disillusioned chef, a wedding caterer with dreams of a career in haute cuisine. Brian Deedrick directs a four-member ensemble that includes Belinda Cornish and Garett Ross as the critic and the chef, Jenny McKillop, and Graham Mothersill. The production runs Jan. 27 to Feb 6.

Frank Moher in Boy Player at Western Edge Theatre, and the season-opener at Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. Photo froom website.

The season opens (Nov.4 to 15) with Boy Player, a solo memoir that brings the celebrated actor/playwright Frank Moher (Odd Jobs, The Third Ascent, Kidnapping the Bride, McLuhan: The Musical) back to the stage in person. The Edmonton-born Gabriola Island-based Moher tells, with music, the true, life-changing story of … Frank Moher, orphaned as a kid and suddenly relocated from Edmonton, Alberta to New York City,  where he’s rescued by discovering his true passions — for theatre and for the soul-mate who would become his wife. Moher, whose plays have been produced across the country and internationally, has a history with Workshop West that unspools back his Sterling Award-winning Prairie Report in 1988. Boy Player premiered this past spring at Western Edge Theatre in Nanaimo, a company he started in 2002, and ran till 2022.

Steven Greenfield in Billy Bishop Goes To War, directed by Gerry Potter. Poster image by Dave DeGagné

The finale of the season (May 19 to 30), is a bona fide Canadian classic: Billy Bishop Goes To War, a 1978 two-hander musical by John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson. The production we’ll see at the Gateway, starring Steven Greenfield and Cathy Derkach, is directed by Workshop West founder and first artistic director Gerry Potter, who first directed Billy Bishop for his new company in 1983, citing its importance to a new sense of cultural nationalism. He directed a revival, with the same cast, for the new Edmonton Repertory Theatre last fall.     

Workshop West’s signature Springboards New Play Festival returns (April 20 to 24) with staged readings of new plays at every stage of development, by playwrights at every level of experience. And there’s a new “Workshop Series,” happening four times in the course of the season, with a workshop and staged reading for each of four scripts curated from submissions to Workshop West’s Play Reading Service, led by dramaturg in residence Conni Massing and curated by Jessy Ardern, whose Cyrano de Bergerac at the Citadel was the hit of last season.

The Edmonton Playwrights Circle, co-presented by the U of A Drama Department, is led by the season’s playwright in residence Brad Fraser, another star playwright with long connections to Workshop West. Toronto-based Fraser is back in his hometown for the year as the U of A’s  Lee Playwright In Residence.

Behold, the bar! newly reno’ed Gateway Theatre. Photo by Martin Galba

Workshop West’s multiple programs to foster playwriting and develop the community of writers here continue, including the Indigenous Playwrights Circle led by Josh Languedoc, and #WritesOfPassage, started in 2015 by then-Workshop West artistic director Vern Thiessen to spread the word(s) amongst Edmonton high school kids.

Since 2024 all Workshop West tickets and subscriptions are pay-what-you-will, available at workshopwest.org.