Tarragon Theatre’s 2025-26 season will be its most ambitious since the pandemic, featuring nine productions that highlight both established and emerging Canadian artists.
The lineup, announced Wednesday morning, will begin in September with Gregory Prest’s tragicomedy “Bremen Town,” one of the hit shows from the 2023 Next Stage Festival. It’s set to star a trio of Toronto theatre legends — Nancy Palk, Oliver Dennis and William Webster — all reprising their roles from the previous run.
Inspired by the Brothers Grimm fairy tale “Town Musicians of Bremen,” the play follows an aging housekeeper who’s abruptly fired from her job after more than four decades of service. As she makes the long trek to reunite with her son, she meets a host of eccentric characters along the way.
Later in the fall, Tarragon will present Sunny Drake’s “CHILD-ish,” a piece of verbatim theatre drawn from interviews with more than 40 children. The play arrives in Toronto following a run by the Pacific Theatre in Vancouver.
The final show of the year will be the North American premiere of “a profoundly affectionate, passionate devotion to someone (-noun),” by the British playwright debbie tucker green. The triptych play follows three couples as they navigate their relationships with each other. This upcoming Tarragon and Obsidian Theatre co-production, directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu, marks the first collaboration between the two companies.
Mike Payette, artistic director of Tarragon, described the 2025-26 season as a celebration of intergenerational voices.
“We wanted to build a season that embraced and celebrated historic voices in Canadian theatre — names that have been foundational to the notion of what we understand Canadian theatre to be — while still making sure that we’re advancing the conversation around the next generation of Canadian classics,” he told the Star in a phone interview ahead of Wednesday’s announcement.
Payette attributed the large scale of the upcoming lineup to partnerships the organization has forged with both national and local theatres. (The company is presenting two more shows next season compared to this current one.)
Tarragon’s first show of 2026, “Mischief,” will be a co-production with two other companies, Native Earth Performing Arts and Halifax’s Neptune Theatre. Payette and Joelle Peters, artistic director of Native Earth, will codirect this new work by Lisa Nasson, a Mi’kmaq artist making her playwriting debut.
“The Neighbours,” a play by the celebrated Canadian playwright Nicolas Billon, about a couple whose neighbour is hiding a sinister secret, will then receive its North American premiere in February 2026. Matt White will direct the co-production between Tarragon Theatre and Green Lights Arts.
The following month, two-time Governor General’s Award winner Judith Thompson will mark her return to Tarragon with “Queen Maeve,” directed by Payette and starring the prolific Canadian actor Clare Coulter. The play, which premiered two years ago at Stratford’s Here For Now Theatre, follows a woman in a nursing home who’s an Irish warrior queen in disguise.
Tarragon’s spring lineup will begin with Punctuate Theatre’s production of “Strife” by Matthew MacKenzie, which follows an oilpatch worker whose brother, a climate activist, is brutally murdered.
In May 2026, Tarragon will partner with the National Arts Centre English Theatre in Ottawa to co-produce “cicadas.” Billed as a “modern eco-thriller,” the new work is created by Chris Thornborrow and David Yee, and will be directed by Nina Lee Aquino.
The season will conclude in June 2026 with “The Caged Bird Sings,” a reimagining of Rumi’s poem “Masnavi.” Written by Rouvan Silogix, Rafeh Mahmud and Ahad Lakhani, the play was presented last year in the courtyard of the Aga Khan Museum.
