THE HERALD, A World Premiere By Jill Connell, Opens This March At Buddies In Bad Times

On stage this March at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, The Herald makes its world premiere as a new production from Canadian theatre collective It Could Still Happen, presented in partnership with Buddies. Written and directed by Jill Connell, the production runs from March 4 through March 14, with opening night set for March 5.

Known for formally innovative, aesthetically bold work that centers embodied experience and collective meaning-making, It Could Still Happen brings a new meditation on labor, faith, and attention to the Buddies stage. The Herald blends lecture, myth, movement, and poetry, navigating what it means to work, to make, and to exist in community amid the grind of contemporary life.

The play moves through a constellation of ideas and images—an analysis of Antonio Banderas’ astrological chart, a questioning chorus, and the physical reality of moving through the world in a single human body. Connell’s text interlaces Greek myth with modern productivity culture, asking how meaning is created, what labor endures, and how attention itself might be an act of care.

The cast features William Ellis, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, Jackie Rowland, Rose Tuong, and Fan Wu.

The creative team includes ciaran brenneman (stage manager), Paul Chambers (lighting design), Sascha Cole (creative producer), Ishan Davé (scenography), Brian Drader (dramaturgy), Sebastian Marziali (technical director), Philip Nozuka (music and sound design), ORXSTRA (costume design), Laura Phillips (production manager), and Tedi Tafel (embodied practice / meta-witness). Longtime collaborators of It Could Still Happen, the team works across disciplines to create a piece that functions simultaneously as theatre, installation, movement work, and live score.

“With this play I really wanted to work on how we work together,” said Connell. “There is so much that needs rethinking about how we make theatre, and what our ‘work’ on earth is more generally. A rehearsal hall is one of the best places to work with the unknown.”

Buddies in Bad Times Artistic Director Ted Witzel added that Connell’s writing is “among the most inventive, poetic, tender, and surprising in Canada right now,” calling The Herald “an arresting, funny, virtuosic text” shaped through extensive development at Buddies.