SummerWorks Performance Festival show poster

SummerWorks Performance Festival

August 6–16 2026

Presented by SummerWorks in Partnership with Factory Theatre

Festival, Summer Fun

SummerWorks is a leader, collaborator and community builder at the forefront of contemporary performance – supporting bold artistic exploration, reflecting on critical questions, and presenting creative expressions from diverse artists that reveal the complexity of our society. Anchored by our annual SummerWorks Performance Festival in August, SummerWorks offers a year-round program of creation, presentation, and learning opportunities for artists and audiences. 

This year’s Festival theme, Fight | Flight brings forward urgent creative responses to this troubling moment in time. Across the 2026 Festival, artists root themselves in place, in community, in ancestry, and in practice, while also shifting perspectives, rewriting histories, and creating new narratives through the body, exploring memory, consent, transformation, and identity, through resistance, humour, and intimacy. This year’s festival takes place at Factory Theatre and various locations and venues.

Michael Caldwell | Artistic Director
Morgan Norwich | Managing Director 

Factory Season artwork by Mark Krzepis.


SummerWorks at Factory

Below are the SummerWorks shows taking place at Factory in 2026. Click on the images to learn more about the shows, and for the full SummerWorks programming lineup at all venues, visit their website.

Provisions

Photo portrait of woman covered in white clay except her eye, which is open and emphasized by a line of light.

Theatre / Live Art Lester Trips (Theatre) Co-presented by Factory Theatre 

Soft Squishy Things

Photo of person lit by green lighting handling small model mobile.

Theatre / Live ArtGhost River Theatre / Macromatter

The “Fight For Your Right To Party” Party

Photo of audiences at the SummerWorks party, sitting in the Factory Theatre courtyard.

Party • Factory TheatreFREE