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This article was published 30/03/2023 (1281 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The next season at Prairie Theatre Exchange is all about moving forward — as a society coming out of a global pandemic and as a theatre company entering its 51st year.

“There’s a bunch of (plays) that are really funny and sweet,” PTE artistic director Thomas Morgan Jones says. “And then there’s some that are digging into big questions about how we operate as societies, how we treat people within them and what our interests or obsessions are and how that can do damage.”

Coming off a golden anniversary, Jones also sees an opportunity to establish a new legacy for the next 50 years.

“What kind of work do we want to make? What voices are we empowering? What communities are we engaging with?” he says. “We’re doing things in ways we’ve never done them before.”

The 2023-24 season will see the return of a five-play regular subscription schedule, as well as several digital and live additions. Three shows will make their world debut at the Portage Place theatre.

Feast (Oct. 10-22) is a surreal tragi-comedy about internal struggles and existential crises. Is M going to slide off the face of the Earth or does he just need a good meal? Is Julia having hot flashes or is it global warming? Jones will direct this world première from Guillermo Verdecchia.

The Waltz (Nov. 14-26) is a rom-com sequel to Prairie Nurse, a play from PTE’s 2018 season about two Filipino nurses working in a small rural hospital. Playwright Marie Beath Badian revisits small-town Saskatchewan 24 years later with a new cast of characters and a serendipitous storyline.

Will musical improv be a new Winnipeg holiday tradition? A Christmas Carol: Big Dickens Energy (Dec. 12-23) returns to Portage Place for the second season in a row.

It’s safe to say Outside Joke effectively entertained hearts, minds and funny bones with their goofy rendition of a festive classic.

“It’s never the same show,” Jones says. “And that’s so fun because now we get to see another however many more Christmas Carols that have never existed before.”

Also back next season is Space Girl (Jan. 17-28) by Frances Koncan. The original story about the trials and tribulations of an intergalactic social media influencer wraps up its debut run at PTE this weekend and will return as a digital performance in the new year.

Everything Has Disappeared (Feb. 1-4) plays with the fourth wall by blending live theatre with interactive digital elements. This experimental production from Darren O’Donnell and Winnipeg’s Hazel Venzon investigates the relationship between the Filipino diaspora and the global economy through imagined erasure. There may or may not be a magician and a mentalist reserved for the show.

Diggers (Feb. 27-March 10) is a tribute to essential workers — specifically, the unenviable but necessary labour of gravediggers during the outbreak of an illness in Sierra Leone. It’s a pertinent point of view amid the pandemic. This world première by Donna-Michelle St. Bernard is a co-production with Montreal’s Black Theatre Workshop.

Rise, Red River (March 8-23) is another world première with deep local themes. Written and directed by Calgary-based playwright Tara Beagan, this post-apocalyptic play follows a woman trudging through the clay of the dried-up Red River. As she walks, Indigenous women emerge from the heavy mud to share their stories. The narrative is inspired by Drag the Red and is co-produced with ARTICLE 11 and Théâtre Cercle Molière. It will be performed at the latter in English, French and Anishinaabemowin.

“This show is a total amalgamation of all those voices and languages and cultures and histories,” Jones says.

Joan Didion’s charmed life and intimate loss are translated from the page to the stage in The Year of Magical Thinking (April 9-21). The literary drama — directed by Jones and based on the author’s celebrated book of the same name — follows Didion on a vulnerable journey as she parses through grief in the year after her husband’s sudden death.

The Outside Inn (May 7-19), by Sharon Bajer & Elio Zarrillo, takes place in a vintage camper in the middle of nowhere. It’s a potentially claustrophobic setting for a dark comedy about a mother and adult son struggling to understand each other after their seemingly perfect lives fall apart.

Visit pte.mb.ca for more information.

eva.wasney@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @evawasney