Factory’s 2022/2023 Season has been announced!
10 World Premieres. 10 Canadian Women Playwrights. Welcome to Factory’s 2022/2023 Season
Factory Theatre is THRILLED to announce its 2022/2023 Season – Myth Makers! Proudly presented by outgoing Artistic Director Nina Lee Aquino and Managing Director Mark Aikman, Factory’s upcoming Season is the company’s biggest in recent memory – featuring a staggering ten new works, both for the physical and digital stage, many of which were commissioned or developed by Factory and each written by a Canadian Woman playwright.
Admission for Factory’s digital shows this season will once again be entirely free of charge to audiences. Tickets for in-person productions will range from $10 – $75 with a limited number of $0 tickets being offered at every performance. Audiences are invited to select whichever ticket price option works best for them in order to experience theatre at Factory.
FACTORY’s commitment to new play development and telling stories that showcase artists who represent the true diversity of Canada remain at the forefront this season. Each show in the 2022/2023 Season pushes the boundaries of Canadian storytelling and is sure to shape audiences’ perspectives on how we view ourselves and the world around us.
This year, we’re going big and bold: taking beautiful risks, forging new types of partnerships, and welcoming new adventures. Myth Makers are woven throughout this year’s programming. They are the creators of new traditions and rituals. They are the people who tell us the stories that let us understand who we are – as individuals and as communities. They are the artists who stand at the nexus of our past and present so that we can imagine a better future.
Nina Lee Aquino, Artistic Director
The 2022/2023 Season kicks off in August with the World Premiere of TROJAN GIRLS & THE OUTHOUSE OF ATREUS by Gillian Clark and directed by Mitchell Cushman. An epic exploration of generational inheritance in the age of Climate Emergency, inspired as much by Greek mythology as it is by the movie GREASE. Welcome to New Troy, Canada, August 2009. The night of the annual Duck n’ Swing dance. Odysseus hatches a death-defying Prom-posal, Nestra and King Memnon rendezvous in the Outhouse for some old Summer Lovin’, and Cassandra feasts on raw hot dogs, while sooth-sayin’ the world’s destruction.A Co-Production between Outside the March and Factory, in association with Vancouver’s Neworld Theatre, TROJAN GIRLS & THE OUTHOUSE OF ATREUS is a two-part immersive experience performed in tandem between two theatre spaces by the same ensemble. Half the audience will gather outdoors around the campfire, while the other half will cut a rug in the dance hall, all while the actors move back-and-forth – inhabiting both the teenagers of New Troy, and their middle-aged parents. At intermission, audiences switch spaces to experience the other side of the story. TROJAN GIRLS & THE OUTHOUSE OF ATREUS has been developed with support from the NAC National Creation Fund and is based on Clark’s play The Ruins, developed by Two Planks and a Passion.Presented in the Factory Studio Theatre and Factory Courtyard, August 3 – 28, 2022.
In October, Marie Beath Badian returns to the Factory stage with the sequel to Prairie Nurse – THE WALTZ, directed by Nina Lee Aquino and presented by FACTORY in partnership with the Blyth Festival. It’s August 1993, 24 years after the events of Prairie Nurse. Romeo Alvarez is travelling across the country from Ontario to British Columbia to attend University when he makes a pit-stop in Saskatchewan to connect with some of his mom’s old friends. His journey leads him to a remote cabin where his unexpected arrival is greeted by a suspicious Beatrice Klassen. It is here, on these doorsteps of a rustic cabin in North East Saskatchewan that two teenagers, whose histories are serendipitously interweaved, spend one evening with a boom box under the magnificent Saskatchewan sky at dusk. A romantic comedy that is sure to capture the hearts of audiences, THE WALTZ explores whether we ever truly feel at home in the world. Presented in the Mainspace Theatre, October 22 – November 13, 2022.
Returning by popular demand to headphones across the globe, FACTORY kicks off the New Year with the return of its audio drama series YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE, VOL. 3. Featuring five new audio dramas from some of Canada’s most captivating Canadian Women playwrights (to be announced at a later date), YOU CAN’T GET THERE FROM HERE, VOL. 3 will bring listeners new stories that offer fresh perspectives from neighbourhoods across the country and glimpses into the micro-dramas occurring each day around us, hidden in plain sight. Episodes drop February 2023, available to access on all podcasting platforms.
In the Spring, FACTORY presents the World Premiere of VIERGE by Rachel Mutombo, Directed by Natasha Mumba. Sixteen-year-old Divine doesn’t really fit in anywhere, and her only real friend is Jesus (Christ) — that is, until her family joins a new church and through the other girls in her youth group she discovers the world around her is not as it seems. Filled with an abundance of heart and humour, Vierge follows four Congolese Canadian teenage girls as they journey to navigate between the pressures of Christianity, virginity and teenage hormones. A stunning new work about faith, community, and sex from one of Canada’s most exciting new writers that is sure to leave audiences tearing up one moment and laughing out loud the next. Presented in the Studio Theatre, April 8 – 30, 2023.
FACTORY will close the 2022/2023Season with the World Premiere of Colleen Wagner’s ARMADILLOS, directed by Jani Lauzon. On a cross-country theatre tour of a new interpretation of the classic Greek myth of the Marriage of Thetis and Peleus, the onstage danger spills into the backstage world as four actors have to navigate the realities of tour life, challenges to patriarchy and the disruption of a new actress performing Thetis halfway through the tour. The chaos she brings forces each to confront how the stories we tell about love, sex, power, and consent shape our everyday lives and interactions. A provocative and unabashedly feminist new play from Governor General’s Award-winner Colleen Wagner, ARMADILLOS brings audiences beyond the edge of their seats to the edge of the stage and asks us: what stories do we have to leave behind in order to fully and truly love? Presented in the Mainspace Theatre, May 27 – June 18, 2023.
This will be the last season programmed by Nina, and it as much a celebration of what has been accomplished over the last decade as it is a place where the potential and promise of a new era can manifest itself. It is a reminder of the power of the stories we share to shape who we are, and a promise that Factory will always be a place to discover new mythologies, new understandings, and new experiences.
Mark Aikman, Managing Director