Soulpepper debuts its new artistic vision with 12 shows and a Hot Docs partnership coming next season

“This season, for me, is one about radical connection,” said Santalucia, who spoke with the Star ahead of the public announcement. “These are all plays that ask us to be in conversation with the choices we have to make to find empathy in ourselves, and they remind us that that practice is a choice, not an automatic reaction.” 

Santalucia will kick off the season in September with his new adaptation of “Spring Awakening,” Frank Wedekind’s German coming-of-age tragedy. Perhaps best known for inspiring the 2006 Broadway musical adaptation of the same name, the original play follows a group of adolescents at the end of the 1890s who struggle to come to terms with their sexuality while stifled by their oppressive, turn-of-the-century society. Santalucia’s adaptation, which he will direct, is to feature an ensemble of up-and-coming actors, along with Toronto stage veterans Raquel Duffy, Liisa Repo-Martell and Daren A. Herbert. 

In November, Soulpepper will remount its highly successful production of “De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail,” written and directed by Gregory Prest, with a score by Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson. The musical fantasy, which adapts love letters Wilde wrote while imprisoned for his homosexuality, earned rave reviews when it premiered in 2024. This upcoming run will reunite the show’s original cast, including Colton Curtis, Jonathan Corkal-Astorga and Damien Atkins, who won a Toronto Theatre Critics’ Award for his performance as Wilde. 

Next, the company will remount its production of the romantic comedy “Parfumerie,” written by the Hungarian playwright Miklós László, and adapted by Adam Pettle and Brenda Robins. Once a mainstay in Soulpepper’s repertoire, the production hasn’t been seen on the company’s stages in more than a decade. The holiday play, directed by Morris Panych, follows a pair of perfume shop clerks who detest each other but unwittingly fall in love through anonymous letters. It will star Peter Fernandes and Akosua Amo-Adem. 

Santalucia’s inaugural season marks a return, somewhat, to the company’s classical roots and comes as the company has witnessed a significant shift in its audience demographics in recent years. Whereas Soulpepper under Mengesha’s leadership was more focused on developing new plays and presenting contemporary works by both local and international artists, the upcoming lineup places a heavier emphasis on classic works. 

That emphasis is intentional, with Santalucia noting that he’s “keenly interested” in reinterpretation and adaptation. “There’s a lot to be gained from the ways in which Canadian artists interpret works from elsewhere, and that feels like a very unique thing that Soulpepper can bring,” he said.    

Not including adaptations of existing plays, the 2026-27 season will only feature a single world premiere: Erin Shield’s previously announced stage adaptation of the Mona Awad novel “All’s Well,” which will be presented as a co-production with Crow’s Theatre. Helmed by former Shaw Festival artistic director Jackie Maxwell, it will run from November to December 2026. 

Soulpepper will then open the new year with a new production of Highway’s “The Rez Sisters,” the most high-profile revival of the season. A seminal work in the Canadian theatrical canon, the 1986 play was inspired by Michel Tremblay’s “Les Belles-soeurs” and follows a group of seven Indigenous women who all dream of winning the biggest bingo in the world. Jessica Carmichael, who revived the play in 2021 at the Stratford Festival, will direct this new production, featuring Brefny Caribou, Nicole Joy-Fraser, Grace Lamarche, Trina Moyan, PJ Prudat, Tara Sky, Star Slade and Montana Summers.

Partially overlapping with the run of “The Rez Sisters” will be a new revival of Edward Albee’s debut play, “The Zoo Story,” an absurdist, one-act drama about a chance encounter between two men on a park bench. Frank Cox O’Connell will direct the production, starring Fernandes and “Schitt’s Creek” star Noah Reid. 

Later, in March 2027, director Marie Farsi will join forces with Canadian choreographer Peggy Baker to lead a production of Sophie Treadwell’s 1928 expressionist drama “Machinal,” a play about female rage and repression, inspired by the true story of a woman who was executed for murdering her husband, with the help of her lover. The ensemble cast includes Evan Buliung, Charlotte Dennis, Herbert, Jeff Lillico, Dan Mousseau and Nancy Palk. 

The final two plays of the season will be Jocelyn Bioh’s Tony-winning comedy “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” directed by Mumbi Tindyebwa Otu and produced in partnership with Obsidian Theatre, along with a revival of Noël Coward’s “Design for Living,” which will be led by director Andrew Kushnir and mark the season’s second and final Crow’s-Soulpepper co-production. 

In addition to these nine productions, Soulpepper will present three concerts and docu-concerts (the latter blending music and historical, documentary-style storytelling). The first will be “The Thrill of Hope,” a holiday show that reimagines the music of Christmas through the lens of various genres. It will be followed in January 2027 with “The Last Waltz,” a docu-concert featuring the music of artists including Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Neil Young. Finally, the season will conclude with a docu-concert double bill — “Closing Time: At the Matador” and “Closing Time: At Maple Leaf Gardens” — which draws inspiration from Leonard Cohen’s “Closing Time” and charts the history of Toronto’s various iconic but now-shuttered venues.  

The shows will also be complemented with an additional slate of public programming, including a new partnership with Hot Docs that will see Soulpepper host a series of documentary screenings. As well, the company will also partner with the Toronto Star to host Toronto Star Live, a journalism series that will feature talks and events with journalists, artists and community leaders. 

The expansion of community events comes as the company has seen a drastic shift in its audience demographics, according to executive director Gideon Arthurs. Last year, some 25,000 people participated in the theatre’s public programming, including free movie nights. 

Currently, about 70 per cent of Soulpepper’s ticket-buying audience lives within five kilometres of the venue, up significantly from 15 to 20 per cent before the COVID-19 pandemic. As well, the company’s average audience age has dropped by 25 years. “There is a clear correlation between the shift in our audience and the broad scale community programs that we’ve done,” said Arthurs. 

Santalucia added that these public programs form a core part of Soulpepper’s operations and will continue to be throughout his tenure as artistic director.

“When I think of important civic institutions, I think of libraries. And when I think of the purpose of a library, it is of course bound by the shared love of literature. But people can go to a library and have a really meaningful experience without ever taking a book out,” he said. “So, when I think of Soulpepper as a civic library, with our plays as the books, what inspires me is creating a context in which people don’t have to come and take a book out of Soulpepper in order to say that they’ve had a meaningful experience.”