Out for a walk in their West End neighbourhood, Mike and Marissa—an interracial couple—meet a dog with an unfortunate breed name: Redbone Coonhound. This small detail unleashes a cascading debate between them about race and their relationship that manifests as a series of micro-plays, each satirizing contemporary perspectives on modern culture. Through its hard-hitting comedic elements, Redbone Coonhound explores the intricacies of subtle and overt polemics of race, systemic power and privilege in remarkable, surprising and hilarious ways.

A wild and subversive journey back through history and into the future. Redbone Coonhound reveals deep fears, rage, insecurities and, ultimately, hope.

In a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto, a late night visit from a mysterious stranger rattles the cage and shatters the peace. Now Ayub must face reality, the family he’s left behind, and the dreams he’s abandoned, all while keeping the restaurant clean to a mirror shine.

From award-winning playwright and author Anosh Irani, Behind the Moon is an achingly beautiful story of love and loss, freedom and faith, the meaning of brotherhood, and how we begin a new life.

When Izzy’s family immigrates to a small rural town, the young queer Muslim boy becomes the salvation pet project to the local Pastor Isaac. In his attempt to reconcile his sexuality and faith, Izzy invents an imagined Garden of Eden, where Adam and Hawa’s (Eve in Arabic) relationship is turned upside down by the arrival of Steve, a beautiful, blue-eyed, white-skinned northerner.

An emotionally-charged and ritualistic journey of two universes colliding, The Hooves Belonged to the Deer offers an epic story of life, discovery and belonging where small town Canada meets the Garden of Eden.

A cockroach smoking catnip. A bard lamenting over immortality. A boy stuck in a sticky situation. Three splinters caught in a collision of language, longing, and lobsters (who sometimes burst, and who sometimes burp).

From Toronto Theatre Critics award-winning playwright
Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho), Cockroach is a coming-of-age play about the stories we tell ourselves to comfort, to survive, to resist, to overcome, and to be.

Welcome to the world of the 1%, the corporate elite, the
“C-suite” – the “king-makers” whose influence flows through every aspect of our lives virtually unnoticed. When a CEO and his top executives are on a business trip for a major deal, a damaging sex scandal at the company is unearthed back home. As the pressure to complete the deal mounts, more secrets come to the surface, endangering the CEO’s company, his family, and his legacy. What happens to morality when human beings have limitless power?

Biting and unabashedly oozing with the condition of greed, Post-Democracy asks what is the price of silence envisioned through the remarkable lens of Director Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu.

From legendary Canadian artist Walter Border, The Last Epistle of Tightrope Time is a deeply personal reflection on Walter’s journey of life.

An invigorating autobiographical performance Walter re-visits the show, initially written and performed in 1986 as Tightrope Time Ain’t Nuthin’ More Than Some Itty Bitty Madness Between Your Twilight & Your Dawn. Through a solo performance featuring 10 characters, Walter explores homosexuality from a Black perspective and offers an experience of the resiliency of the human spirit.

An epic journey across time, oceans, and tectonic shifts in political history.

A Poem for Rabia weaves the stories of three queer women from the same bloodline: Zahra, a disillusioned activist in 2053, navigating a Canada that has just abolished prisons; Betty, in 1953 British Guiana, caught between her new secretarial job at the Governor’s office and the growing national independence movement; and Rabia, an Indian domestic worker in 1853, abducted by colonial ‘recruiters’ and sent sailing from Calcutta to the Caribbean on an indentured labour ship.

Three people gaze out their living room window as the days pass. Across the street in Withrow Park life goes on – or is it a dream?

Then a knock at the door. Time has found them, hiding in plain sight. Or possibly it’s just a man in a wrinkled suit. But they must act, now, or forever be devoured by their own indifference. Logan Avenue awaits, and beyond it, heaven, perhaps. They can no longer live on the periphery of their own lives. They must invite the young man to dinner.

With direction from Jackie Maxwell, and from the mind of Morris Panych, Withrow Park asks what we see in the darkness, and who is watching us from the light.

An all-new play about pathos; the “unshakable monster that is guilt,” and the things we’re not supposed to talk about.

Guilt (A Love Story) is a deep dive into a complex, uncomfortable, and highly human feeling. A state of being that most of us, especially parents, wrestle with inelegantly. Focusing on Flacks’ personal odyssey Guilt brings the perspective of a self-sacrificing Jewish mother who becomes the instigator of a family’s dissolution. Societal effects, causes and casualties and the feeling that we have when we’ve profoundly hurt others. This exploration may not pull punches, but don’t worry, it’s accompanied by laughs – because how else do we get through anything?

Diane Flack’s returns to Tarragon Theatre with GUILT (A Love Story) her 5th one-woman show.

Where stakes are high and kindness is in short supply.

3 Fingers Back is a double bill with a panoramic view of how we choose to treat each other: the captive, their captors and those who bear witness.

When we run out of options, we find out who we really are. In Give It Up, two women strategize to survive interrogation, and the cost of freedom. In The Smell of Horses, three soldiers plot to extract information through their humanity and the confines of duty.

From celebrated artist Donna-Michelle St. Bernard this double bill of plays from her 54ology occupies different vantages on the same world.

Twenty years have passed since the three Jurado sisters lost their parents, and life just seems to continue on in their East Vancouver home.

A birthday party, a failed proposal, and a missed connection fill the days and months until an earthquake nearly destroys the city, and brings forward a shocking turn of events that splits their world wide open.

From Dora-Award winning playwright Christine Quintana El Terremoto is a dramatic comedy about how nothing matters, so everything matters.

When John Hall is confronted by his ancestors, he is forced to revisit his entire life.

Worlds collide as he travels back through time rediscovering life as a
husband, father, son, war scout and freedom fighter. As he relives his dangerous past,
John must decide – continue life as the oldest man, abandon everything and serve
those on the earthly plane or exist in the Unknown.

Based on true events, Come Home – The Legend of Daddy Hall is told through poetic text, music and song.

A play about the afterlife, love, legacy and being legendary. Come Home asks where we come from, where we’re headed and what we may be asked to do when we get there.

“Leave expectations at the door. We are not putting on a play, we are throwing a party. This is a concert, comedy show, and confessional all in one. Come celebrate your mediocrity with us!“

Tarragon Theatre and Nightwood Theatre are thrilled to present the live stage premiere of Fatuma Adar’s unforgettable show She’s Not Special.

Co-directed by Adar (Playback’s Artist to Watch) and Graham Isador (The Beaverton, VICE), 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!) Fatuma is on a mission to free you from the clutches of exceptionalism and teach you how to relish in the joys of mediocrity. 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.)

When their Matriarch ends up in a coma, a ma’iingan-wolf clan family gathers together to work through their collective grief and begin to heal from an incident in the past. While the Aunties camp out in the hospital room, the younger cousins spend their time at the Grandmother’s house by the backyard firepit; all while being circled by a cackling crow jokester.

As the veil between the ancestral plane and the earthly realm gets thinner, tensions and emotions are high and vulnerabilities are exposed, revealing the true strength and resilience of the ma’iingan kwe.

Yolanda Bonnell’s My Sister’s Rage is a story about the nuances of holding trauma and joy at the same time and how laughter is medicine.

“Why shouldn’t a dream be just as much a truth? A fantasy be just as deep a reality?”

After twenty-five years estranged, Cecelia and her father, Jules, are attempting reconciliation. Unable to communicate past shames and shortcomings, the pair become dependent on increasingly dramatic fairy tales to explain away their pain.

Paint Me this House of Love is a rhythmic, yearning, experimentation of language, exploring the threads that stitch together our shared family narratives, and asks how we communicate, “I Love You”, when the words alone are not enough.

An unintended pregnancy, followed by an unhelpful doctor’s appointment, leads to a Christmas Eve abortion and one woman’s reckoning with the practical and existential considerations in deciding to become a parent… or not.

Hypothetical Baby is a time-travelling exploration that grapples with the personal and societal factors that shape our reproductive lives and the intricate relationship between choice, change, and loss.

From the creator of the award-winning Aborsh podcast, Rachel Cairns mixes data and drama in this autobiographical work to publicly talk about abortion the way we do privately — with neurotic vulnerability, unflinching honesty, and frank irreverence.

Performance at The Creative School and Tarragon Theatre collaborate on two workshop projects which support the development of new work, featuring the graduating class of Performance Acting students.

Di and David have devoted their lives to giving their son, Jack, every opportunity they never had. But a startling incident outside the school grounds threatens to ruin everything they’re striving for.

As events begin to accelerate, Di and David begin to question whether they can trust Jack, his closest friends, or even themselves.

Studio 180 Theatre (The Chinese Lady, Indecent, Oslo, You Will Remember Me) returns to Tarragon with the Canadian premiere of James Fritz’s taut darkly comic, and deeply provocative Olivier Award-nominated drama. A thrilling exploration of issues of consent, privilege and the insidious opportunities new technology offers.

UP TO 30% OFF FOR TARRAGON SUBSCRIBERS!

The Sally Stavro Family Series

Supported by The Steve and Sally Stavro Foundation

We all have the capacity for evil. Most people show restraint, but history shows harm will more likely come from those closest to us rather than from strangers.

Dark Tales explores our shadowed thoughts and desires through several tales by writer Shirley Jackson, herself an inspiration for Stephen King. In this sinister series of stories, what appears at the start is not what appears later; each story twists and turns in unexpected ways.

Shots fired! A new satirical comedy comes to the Tarragon Theatre with all guns blazing!

Elly and ThreebyZero in association with Larry Silverberg presents the WORLD PREMIERE of
Eli Pasic’s FRIENDLY FIRE: AN EVENING OF SEVEN POCKET-SIZED COMEDIES.
This gut-busting potpourri of madness, reproach, and frivolity is being presented at the Tarragon Theatre for a limited run of 5 performances, April 11-14, 2024.

When three Goblins come across a copy of the Complete Works of William Shakespeare, they’re eager to take over a theatre and take a stab at Macbeth. A unique blend of comedy and tragedy, with a spatter of improvisation, Goblin:Macbeth is a fresh-blood take on a Shakespearean classic.
Created by Spontaneous Theatre, who brought you Blind Date, and Undercover, this is like no Macbeth you’ve ever seen.

INTERIOR DESIGN (World Premiere)
A Tarragon Theatre Production
Written by Rosa Laborde
Directed by Kat Sandler

October 15 – November 10, 2024
Extraspace
Tarragon commissioned
True friends stab you in the front. – Oscar Wilde
An attempted intervention between a group of girlfriends backfires spectacularly in this new play from award-winning playwright Rosa Laborde (Léo, Light), directed by Tarragon favourite Kat Sandler (Mustard, Yaga) Interior Design is a comedy of messy renovations and even messier truths.

CRAZE (World Premiere)
A Tarragon Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company Co-Production
In Association with Theatre ARTaud

Written by Rouvan Silogix and Rafeh Mahmud
Directed by Mike Payette

Nov 19 – Dec 15, 2024

Mainspace
Out of the storm and straight into the inferno.
Two couples shelter from an epic storm for a late night drinking session where technological mayhem and sexual frivolity may turn into something more… At times surrealist, dangerous, and laugh-out-loud outrageous, Craze is sure to keep you right on the knife’s edge.

THE WOLF IN THE VOICE (World Premiere)
A Tarragon Theatre production in association with Nightswimming
Created by Martin Julien & Brian Quirt
February 4 – February 26, 2025
Extraspace
An exploration of the very first musical instrument…the singer’s voice.
From Nightswimming (These Are The Songs I Sing When I’m Sad, Tarragon Greenhouse Festival) comes a trio about trios. Join Neema Bickersteth, Jane Miller and Taurian Teelucksingh for an intimate and uplifting evening as they swap stories and songs about their struggles and triumphs as singers, and the mystery of The Wolf in the Voice.

FEAST
Toronto Premiere
A Tarragon Theatre Production
Written by Guillermo Verdecchia
Directed by Soheil Parsa

April 1 – April 27, 2025
Mainspace

A culinary tour, a global crisis, and yet, still always hungry. Can one ever be truly full? From celebrated artist Guillermo Verdecchia, Feast is a biting look at a world where some are movers and some are moved, chaos, and how long we can last when your family is falling apart.
Mermaid or siren? Paradise or dystopia? Travel the globe, just don’t forget your loved ones…or your soul.

BENEVOLENCE (World Premiere)

A Tarragon Theatre Production in association with Broadleaf Creative
Created and Performed by Kevin Matthew Wong

April 8 – May 4, 2025
Extraspace
Kevin is a theatre creator. Kevin is Hakka (客家)…he thinks. Out of the blue, he gets a phone call asking him to write a play about Hakka identity. For seniors. In Markham.
From creator and performer Kevin Matthew Wong (The Chemical Valley Project) comes a charming and intimate story that transforms into a layered Chinese-Canadian tale spanning continents, migrations, and generations.

AFTER THE RAIN (World Premiere)
A Tarragon Theatre & The Musical Stage Company Co-production
Book by Rose Napoli
Music & Lyrics by Suzy Wilde
Directed by Marie Farsi

May 27 – June 22, 2025
Mainspace
Tarragon and Musical Stage Company co-commission
Her parents are famous. Her boyfriend is stupid. And Suzie is a mess.
When she accepts a mature piano student obsessed with mastering only one song, Erik Satie’s “Gymnopedie No. 1”, struggling songwriter Suzie’s life takes an unforeseen turn. Full of family turmoil, life’s complexities, and centred around a devastating discovery, After the Rain is a musical based on a true story about the healing power of music.

Beneath the colourful lights of a digital metropolis, six young people struggle to find purpose in their idyllic but sheltered existence. When a cryptic message from beyond begins to reveal the nature of their world, they embark on an epic journey to find answers – and themselves along the way. Vibrant Waveforms is a story about love, loss, friendship, and healing. This one-of-a-kind electronic musical brings the awesome power of live synthesizers to the Tarragon Mainspace in July 2024.

Qalb means heart in Persian, the native language of the beloved 13th century poet, Rumi. Diving into his world of thoughts and poetry, 1s1 Theatre’s latest production Qalb – A Journey of the Ego is about heart and resilience. Inspired by Dawn Jani Birley’s life as a Deaf person facing audism, her struggle for equity is relatable to all dealing with oppression. Birley turns to the philosophy of Rumi to transform her isolation, anger, and frustration into a force of love in the world.

After forty-five years of hard work and dedication, Frau Esel, the longest serving housekeeper of Völksenhaus, has been fired and sent out to pasture. In a rage, she sets out on a winding journey to Bremen to live with her estranged son.

Gregory Prest brings Bremen Town, a rural folk tragicomedy, to Tarragon Theatre. Featuring Nancy Palk as Frau Esel, Oliver Dennis, William Webster, and an exceptional ensemble cast, Bremen Town brings music and storytelling together in this award-winning production!

Kids words for grown ups.

Forty whip-smart and brutally honest children are asked about love, life, and the world. From their fresh perspectives four adult actors speak their exact words and make them their own!

Using the words of a younger generation, new ideas and experiences come to life through the voices of adults. Hilarious, profound, and surprising, CHILD-ish is an intergenerational new twist on ‘verbatim theatre’ from a creative team that spans ages 6-77.

Three couples.
What might be.
What once was.
What could have been.

…profoundly… is a bold and unflinching exploration of love, desire, and human connection. Intimate, raw, and deeply moving, where hope meets vulnerability, and longing becomes language of its own. A must-see experience for those that believe ‘love’ is more than just a word – it’s an act, a feeling, a surrender.

With laughter through tears and the chasms between them, this triptych beautifully weaves the journeys of three couples seeking connection against all the elements that separate them. After the critically-acclaimed World Premiere at UK’s Royal Court, Tarragon and Obsidian come together in bringing a brand new production to Canada, marking its North American debut.

Brooke is perfectly content with her job selling cigarettes to the local fisherman at her uncle’s convenience store on the Rez. But what happens when a woman appears in a utility closet and claims to have known her mother? And where can she turn when one act of mischief derails her peace?

A heartwarming story where ancestry and the cost of justice collide, Mischief is a gentle comedy from lauded Mi’kmaw artist Lisa Nasson that celebrates the power of community.

Simon and Denise reside in a modest house on a quiet street, their life blissfully low-key and unassuming. But when it comes to light that their next-door neighbour has been hiding a sinister secret, it forces the couple to re-examine the past, leading the audience to a surprising conclusion that asks hard questions about the bonds that unite us.

From Governor General’s Award winner, Nicolas Billon (Butcher, Iceland), The Neighbours examines how good people can be complicit in acts of cruelty.

A woman in a nursing home has seemingly made no impact on the world. Her secret is that she is actually the great Irish Warrior Queen Maeve, reincarnated into one of many deceptive forms.

From her bedroom, she confronts her past, losses she’s suffered, and mistakes she’s made in the name of love. Judith Thompson returns to Tarragon Theatre with her newest play, a masterwork of storytelling featuring Canadian theatre icon, Clare Coulter as Queen Maeve. Moving, heartbreaking, and beautiful, Queen Maeve intertwines magic with reality, and asks what it means to face your ‘twilight years’ with a sword in your hand.

Monique, a tough and tenacious oil patch worker, is reeling from the brutal murder of her brother Nathan, an Indigenous climate activist. His violent death leaves Monique at a crossroads: trust the justice system or take action herself.

As she wrestles with her grief, Monique is plagued by a recurring dream in which she reconstructs Nathan’s bones from an owl pellet. This enigmatic vision is guided by the Owl, a spectral presence that is both a harbinger of darkness and a conduit for spirits with unfinished business. As the Owl urges her deeper into the mystery of her brother’s murder, Monique must confront the forces responsible and decide how far she is willing to go to find the truth.

Tense, poetic, and deeply visceral, Strife is a powerful reflection on loss, resilience, and the battle between hope and vengeance.

In 2035, a decade after the Trinity Bellwoods Collapse, an investigation into the mysterious disappearance of a young girl leads to a very peculiar house that has sunk into the earth. 

Could a strangely luminous painting unlock long-buried secrets of what flowed beneath the home? Howling winds, storms, and the ever-present sound of cicadas remind us that nothing stays buried.

cicadas is a modern eco-thriller from the minds of Governor General’s Award and Siminovitch Prize laureate David Yee and award-winning composer Chris Thornborrow that serves as both mystery and warning.

Witness a radical re-imagining of Rumi’s “Masnavi”.

The Caged Bird Sings tells the story of three prisoners: two star-crossed lovers and scientists – Rumi and Jin – who share a cell with Sal, a mysterious vagrant. As they navigate their new-found reality and reconcile their past lives, they are haunted by ghosts and demons of their own making. 

The Caged Bird Sings explores the literal and metaphorical prisons that we are put in, put ourselves in, and the ones that we create.  Inspired by Sufi mysticism and concepts of Fanafillah, the critically-acclaimed production examines our ability to overcome and break out of the cage.

Wee Festival
May 30th – June 5th 2025