Sticking close to home

Five Canadian productions are slated for next season at Prairie Theatre Exchange, a downtown institution that’s in the midst of a post-pandemic bounceback under the leadership of artistic director Ann Hodges and managing director Katie Inverarity.

Midway through their first full seasons at the venerable Portage Place company, Hodges and Inverarity have helped oversee a 59 per cent increase in subscriptions with a 27 per cent leap in single-ticket sales compared to 2024.

So when it came time to program PTE’s 54th season and her second at the helm, Hodges — who inherited the artistic mantle in 2024 from Thomas Morgan Jones — figured she wouldn’t try to fix what’s firing on all cylinders.

Announced Friday, the 2026-27 season will kick off with a trip to the rink for Tracey Power’s Glory, based on the story of the Preston Rivulettes, a women’s hockey team that won 95 per cent of its games over a dominant decade between 1931 and 1940. Set to be directed by Mariam Bernstein, the production (Oct. 13-25) will feature several hockey games choreographed by Victoria Exconde to era-specific swing music directed by Joseph Aragon.

“In addition to being an amazing story of underdogs who end up triumphant, it’s very hopeful and uplifting. And if you know swing dancing, it’s fast and dangerous, with lots of footwork, so it will be super fun for the audience,” says Hodges.

Next up, from Nov. 17 to 29, is a dramedy of morbid proportions written by Winnipeg’s Samantha Machado, a former member of PTE’s playwriting unit. The Incomplete Dictionary of Lexical Gaps has been on Hodges’ radar ever since she heard a staged reading in November 2024, less than a month into her posting.

In Machado’s award-winning Scripts on Fire text, a pair of empty nesters welcome a pair of strangers into their home under mysterious circumstances, with little initial clarity on how and why they’re connected. Hodges will direct.

A noirish thriller about misdirection and doubt, Johnna Wright and Winnipeg-raised Patty Jamieson’s adaptation of Gaslight — based on Patrick Hamilton’s book, made into an Oscar-winning film in 1944 — premièred at the Shaw Festival in 2022 with Winnipeg’s Julie Lumsden playing Bella, a woman whose grip on reality comes into question when she notices strange happenings that no one else will acknowledge.

To direct the production (Jan. 19-31, 2027), which will feature Darren Martens as manipulative husband Jack, and Mallory James as the maid, Nancy, Hodges has hired Toronto’s Marie Farsi, who will have quite the theatrical year in Winnipeg next year: her adaptation of Andre Alexis’s novel Fifteen Dogs is slated as the closing production for Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s next season at the Tom Hendry Warehouse. Daina Leitold will design Gaslight’s period costumes, with Ashley Au designing the post-Victorian soundscape.

As discombobulated cab driver Jalal, Omar Alex Khan will drift into a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto, seeking butter chicken and community in playwright Anosh Irani’s Behind the Moon (Feb. 23-March 7, 2027), which will be directed by Christopher Brauer. Hodges calls it a beautiful and funny exploration of the immigrant experience from three points of view, coloured by magical realism.

The five-show season closes with The Blackout, a musical by Steven Gallagher and Anton Lipovetsky about the massive power outage that hit the Eastern seaboard in August 2003.

Hodges has a history with the show, which will have its world première at PTE on April 13: she was part of the creative team behind a 20-minute version of the musical developed as part of the Musical Stage Company’s Launchpad program in 2018.

After that, the production was selected by the National Alliance of Musical Theatre for a workshop production, following a similar trajectory to other Canadian hit musicals such as Come From Away and The Drowsy Chaperone. Hodges, who will direct, has high hopes for the production’s potential to reach national audiences.

Sandwiched within the season proper are a pair of family-geared productions.

From Dec. 18 to Jan. 3, Munsch- busters! by Debbie Patterson will continue PTE’s longstanding tradition of adaptations of works by the beloved children’s author Robert Munsch. And from May 12 to 16, 2027, Winnipeg’s Oshkagoojin Theatre will present Dezarae Meade’s stage adaptation of Nanabush and the Spirit of Thunder, based on the book by renowned artist and storyteller Daphne Odjig. The show, which will be directed by Philip Geller, had its première last month at the second annual Kiyanaan Festival.

PTE’s 53rd season continues next month with Winnipeg-born Nia Vardalos’s (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) adaptation of Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the book of Dear Sugar advice columns by author Cheryl Strayed. The season-closing production runs from April 7 to 19 on the Cherry Karpyshin Mainstage.

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