Kelly Thornton

Goodman Artistic Director Susan V. Booth talks about directing The Penelopiad, an unexpected remix of Homer’s 'The Odyssey,' told by the celebrated and subversive author Margaret Atwood ('The Handmaid’s Tale').

The Segal Centre for Performing Arts will start the first half of the season with Tony and Grammy- winning musical Beautiful: The Carole King Musical, a co-production with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, which brings the songbook of the incomparable singer-songwriter to life from October 15 to November 5. It is followed from November 19 to December 10 by a presentation of a Talk Is Free Theatre production of Boy Falls From The Sky, an insider's unflinching true story of what it takes to make it on Broadway starring Degrassi's Jake Epstein, who, coincidentally, originated the role of Carole King's husband in Beautiful.

Beautiful: The Carole King Musical comes to the Segal Centre in October. Performances run October 15, 2023 - November 05, 2023 in the Sylvan Adams Theatre.

The Segal Centre for Performing Arts launched their 2023-2024 Theatre season earlier today with a celebratory toast in their Lobby surrounded by Montreal theatre lovers. This stellar season of theatre brings two prestige shows that wowed audiences on Broadway and two groundswell Canadian hits that point to our country's vibrant future in the arts. These premium shows are happening in your own backyard at accessible prices.

Artistic Director Kelly Thornton and Managing Director Beth Brown are proud to announce Nightwood Theatre's 2019/20 season. Marking our 40th year as Toronto's preeminent feminist theatre company, we have curated an electric lineup of productions that bravely and playfully examine politics, privilege, power, and progress. Offering up three world premieres born out of creative collaboration from Common Boots Theatre, Aluna Theatre, and Nightwood's own Write from the Hip program, as well as a Toronto premiere from Governor-General Award-nominated playwright, Karen Hines, Nightwood is proud to step into this landmark season with a focus on the future of contemporary Canadian theatre.

Nightwood Theatre and Native Earth Performing Arts are thrilled to present the Toronto premiere of the critically acclaimed touring production of Inner Elder. Written and performed by Gemini award-winning Cree Artist Michelle Thrush and directed by Karen Hines, Inner Elder premiered at One Yellow Rabbit's High Performance Rodeo in 2018 to standing ovations and sold-out houses.

From the cafeteria to the playground, six performers guide the audience through their memories and fantasies of grade six as they navigate who they are in this world. ERASER, directed and choreographed by Bilal Baig and Sadie Epstein-Fine, and created by the Company, runs May 7-14, 2019 at The Theatre Centre.

Nightwood Theatre's Board of Directors are thrilled to announce Andrea Donaldson as the new Artistic Director. With nearly 20 years of professional experience, Andrea has been a vibrant presence in Toronto's theatre scene. She has worked as a playwright, actor, and producer but most significantly she has focused her career on Directing and Artistic Direction with a strong emphasis on new play development and nurturing women's voices. Andrea will assume her new role in May 2019. Kelly Thornton will remain Artistic Director until April 30, 2019.

Alice's life is perfect. She has a wonderful husband and a gorgeous new baby. The only thing is: her husband has left on a work trip and the baby is colicky. Alice cannot sleep. Into her chaotic world arrive two fantastical creatures who take an unnatural interest in her child. In a play described as Rosemary's Baby meets Fight Club, playwright Lisa Ryder explores the taboo subject of postpartum depression and the extreme places the mind can go. A Blow in the Face is a searing and irreverent take on a subject to which every parent will relate.

Paulina, the reigning Queen Bee at Ghana's most exclusive boarding school, has her sights set on the Miss Universe pageant. But the mid-year arrival of Ericka, a new student with undeniable talent and beauty, captures the attention of the pageant recruiter - and Paulina's hive-minded friends. Jocelyn Bioh's buoyant and biting comedy explores the universal similarities (and glaring differences) facing teenage girls across the globe. How far would you go to be Queen Bee?

Exquisitely told in a stunning blend of documentary theatre, striking visual projections and choreography, Grace is a searing piece that ignites a discussion on the failures and limitations of the legal system. "There was no justice, there was just a legal outcome." In the wake of a young woman's disclosure of childhood sexual assault, a family presses charges. A true story about survival, hope, and the pursuit of justice at a time when provability still usurps truth in our courtrooms.

Exquisitely told in a stunning blend of documentary theatre, striking visual projections and choreography, Grace is a searing piece that ignites a discussion on the failures and limitations of the legal system. "There was no justice, there was just a legal outcome." In the wake of a young woman's disclosure of childhood sexual assault, a family presses charges. A true story about survival, hope, and the pursuit of justice at a time when provability still usurps truth in our courtrooms.

It is with a mix of both excitement and sadness that Nightwood Theatre's Board of Directors announces the departure of Artistic Director Kelly Thornton. Kelly will be stepping down from her position in order to take on the role of Artistic Director of Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in Winnipeg. Royal MTC is Canada's oldest regional theatre, and produces 10 plays on two stages, a regional tour of Manitoba and Northwest Ontario, a wide range of youth programming and two annual festivals: the Master Playwright Festival, and North America's second-largest Fringe, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival. 

Following two hit runs as part of Nightwood Theatre's 2016/17 and 2017/18 mainstage seasons, Diane Flacks' Dora Award-nominated Unholy will be remounted in an exclusive return engagement from November 16-18, 2018, live at Zoomer Hall (70 Jefferson Ave.) in Liberty Village.  Unholy will be shot in front of a live studio audience for an upcoming special on VisionTV, Canada's only multi-faith, multi-cultural television channel available in over 10 million homes.

Nightwood Theatre, Quote Unquote Collective and Why Not Theatre are immensely proud to co-produce the World Premiere of Now You See Her. With a track record of successful collaboration, from supporting the first iteration of Quote Unquote's Mouthpiece in the RISER Project in 2015, to its production in Nightwood Theatre's 2016/17 and 2017/18 mainstage seasons, the relationship has been a fruitful one. Now, fresh from premiering the critically acclaimed adaptation of MOUTHPIECE as the Special Presentations Opening Night film at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, Dora Award-winning artists Amy Nostbakken and Norah Sadava (Artists to Watch in Fall 2018 - NOW Magazine) have joined forces with Lisa Karen Cox, Maggie Huculak, Raha Javanfar, and Cheyenne Scott to create this incendiary new piece of theatre.

Jacoba Knaapen, Toronto Alliance or the Performing Arts (TAPA) Executive Director and Dora Mavor Moore Awards Producer, announced the VIP presenters today for the 39th Annual Dora Mavor Moore Awards, to be held on Monday, June 25 at the Winter Garden Theatre of the Elgin and Winter Garden Theatre Centre.

Artistic Director Kelly Thornton and Managing Director Beth Brown are proud to announce Nightwood Theatre's 2018/19 season. In our penultimate season before our 40th anniversary, we have assembled an ambitious lineup of some of the most dynamic female voices working in theatre today. Nightwood is proud to support and partner with an ever-burgeoning community of artists and like-minded arts organizations to develop high-caliber contemporary theatre.

In alignment with Crow's Theatre's 2018/19 Season Announcement, Nightwood Theatre is pleased to announce its production of Grace by Jane Doe in January 2019.

Mouthpiece is a heart-wrenching and humorous journey into the female psyche. The performance is a virtuosic display of physical ingenuity and vocal orchestration. In the wake of her mother's death, Mouthpiece follows one woman, for one day, as she tries to find her voice. Interweaving a cappella harmony, dissonance, text, and physicality, two performers express the inner conflict that exists within one modern woman's head.

Artistic Director Evalyn Parry announced an exciting line-up for Buddies in Bad Times Theatre's 2017/18 season today. The season presents a series of engaging, timely productions that grapple with questions of race, indigeneity, sex, queerphobia, religion, and climate change.