Setting the stage Something old, something new in Ann Hodges’ wide-ranging first season at PTE By: Ben Waldman Posted: 6:00 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 14, 2025

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Ann Hodges loves Robert Munsch forever.

Which is why the newest artistic director at Prairie Theatre Exchange is bringing back from a six-year hiatus one of the company’s most beloved annual traditions: an adaptation of the Canadian children’s author’s work as reimagined by Winnipeg playwright Debbie Patterson.

It was an easy decision. “Everyone — everyone — in the staff room, and in the community, has been asking me, ‘Are you going to bring back Munsch?’” says Hodges, who took over for Thomas Morgan Jones last fall.

In programming her first season at PTE’s helm, Hodges had no limit on production permutations.

But whereas the company’s most recent leadership was sometimes criticized for flying against audience taste and consumer appetite, the artistic director has shown an instinct to look to the past to better navigate a path toward sustainable, modern and hopefully popular theatre at one of the city’s most venerable institutions.

“One of the main indicators of whether a person is going to continue attending the theatre when they’re adults is that they were exposed to it as children, so it’s about sustainability. It’s about inviting these young people to experience theatre. Even if they don’t attend as teenagers or in their 20s, they will come back,” says Hodges.

“In fact, two of our board members during our season presentation put up their hands and said, ‘I love theatre now because of the Munsch shows.’ It was kind of a no-brainer to bring it back.”

But elsewhere in crafting the remainder of the company’s next season, a seven-show lineup announced Friday, Hodges and managing director Katie Inverarity — a former Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre marketing executive — were given the opportunity to splash colour onto a blank slate.

“In fact, two of our board members during our season presentation put up their hands and said, ‘I love theatre now because of the Munsch shows.’ It was kind of a no-brainer to bring it back.”–Ann Hodges

Inheriting the creative mantle of a company five years after the onset of COVID-19, amid a period of reimagining for the downtown company’s Portage Place headquarters, Hodges has programmed a season she hopes will give PTE every chance to succeed in the next phase of its post-COVID comeback.

While Munsch Upon a Time (Dec. 19 to Jan. 3) and the Outside Joke troupe’s annual improvised holiday musical (Dec. 10 to 21) are set to hold down the fort during the company’s all-important yuletide swing, the rest of the season includes:

• a buzz-worthy world première (The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light) from Curve Lake author Drew Hayden Taylor;
• an adaptation (Tiny Beautiful Things) of bestselling author Cheryl Strayed by way of Winnipeg’s Nia Vardalos;
• a Royal Family story (Serving Elizabeth) from Toronto playwright Marcia Johnson; and
• well-received comedies about a heartfelt ruse (Toronto playwright Sophia Fabiilli’s Liars at a Funeral) and hoarded goods (Big Stuff, by Second City alumni Matt Baram and Naomi Snieckus).

“The arc of the season that I hung on to was to start with a big hug and a laugh-bomb, before taking the audience through a journey throughout the season so not everything feels the same,” says Hodges, who will direct the season-opening Liars at a Funeral (Oct. 15-26) and season-closing Tiny Beautiful Things (April 8 to 19, 2026).

“I wrote to Sophia Fabiilli to ask for her script and after she emailed it to me, I read it right away and was literally laughing out loud, which I don’t often do,” Hodges says of Liars.

The concept — a grandmother fakes her death to reunite her estranged family — blends screwball farce with heartfelt realism.

Serving Elizabeth (Nov. 12 to 23), tells the story of the then-princess’s interactions with an anti-monarchist cook in 1950s Kenya in tandem with the experiences of a modern-day Kenyan-Canadian film student interning on the production side of a popular regal streaming series. It will be directed by Winnipeg’s Cherissa Richards.

“It’s an incredible script, so engaging and refreshing, and it’s had multiple successful productions across our country,” says Hodges.

“One role that PTE has played historically is that we are a venue that can bring these great Canadian plays for their second and third and fourth productions, so something we’re doing this season is giving audiences a taste of what’s been going on in Canada for the last few years when it comes to really great Canadian writing.”

When it came to Big Stuff (Jan. 21 to Feb. 1), Hodges was convinced to add it to the pile by a rave review from her colleague Inverarity and by a glowing endorsement from the Globe and Mail’s recently installed theatre critic, Aisling Murphy. Hodges felt the comedy about possessions and the meanings they hold onto fit well into the new year’s window.

In Hodges’ sample season, she had picked out a play by Taylor, a prolific Governor General’s Award shortlisted writer.

“But coincidentally, one of the first people to contact me when I got this position was Drew, and being such a fan,” she says, “I’m like, oh my gosh — I was fan-girling about it. And he had three or four plays he’d recently written, and I read them all, and this one really jumped out because of the topicality.”

The Undeniable Accusations of Red Cadmium Light (Feb. 25 to March 8) follows an Otter Lake gallerist specializing in the work of the late Norval Morrisseau, a legendary Anishinaabe artist whose legacy was detrimentally affected by predatory art-world fraudsters.

The careers of both the gallerist and her daughter, a prominent educator focused on Indigenous issues, are thrown for a loop when a reporter researching counterfeit Indigenous art initiates a startling discovery.

Grounded in contemporary concerns about cultural appropriation, authentic authorship and falsified identities, the world première, which will be directed by Winnipeg’s Tracey Nepinak, is certain to colour outside the lines of expectation.

For the season closer, Hodges is leaning into local and international star power, programming Vardalos’s (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) stage adaptation of Tiny Beautiful Things, based on the book of columns from Strayed (Wild), who offered online advice under the pen name Dear Sugar.

“This play is literally Cheryl answering letters, with actors playing multiple letter-writers, and we get to see Cheryl give the advice right in front of us,” says Hodges.

“It’s a non-judgmental, human-t0-human, empathetic journey, and it uses theatre to do that. As the world continues, it feels like we need that more and more.”

A co-production with Capital Theatre Port Hope, which collaborated with PTE on this season’s opening production of Bed and Breakfast, Tiny Beautiful Things will run from April 8 to 19.

PTE’s current season, its 52nd, will wrap up next month with the première of playwright Keith Barker’s Raised by Women (April 1-13).

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com