Touchstone Theatre to Open 50th Anniversary Season with National Revival of Frances Končan’s WOMEN OF THE FUR TRADE

Touchstone Theatre will launch its landmark 50th Anniversary season with the acclaimed national revival of Women of the Fur Trade by Anishinaabe/Slovene playwright Frances Končan.

The production runs September 24– October 4, 2025 at the Frederic Wood Theatre at the University of British Columbia, with a media opening on Thursday, September 25. Presented in partnership with UBC and Western Canada Theatre Company, the play arrives in Vancouver following its 2024 premiere at the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre (Ottawa) and Native Earth (Toronto), where it earned a Dora Mavor Moore Award nomination for Outstanding New Play.

A witty, time-bending satire set “in eighteen hundred and something something” on the banks of a Red River fort, Women of the Fur Trade reimagines colonial history through the lens of three women whose twenty-first-century slang and pop culture sensibilities collide with the politics, romance, and rebellion of the era.

Marie-Angelique (Kelsey Kanatan Wavey), a Métis Taurus with a romantic fixation on Louis Riel (Jonathan Fisher), dreams big and writes love letters; Ojibwe trapper Eugenia (Columpa Bobb) delivers news from the rebellion with a healthy dose of skepticism; and European settler Cecilia (Cheri Maracle) anxiously awaits her husband while harboring feelings for Thomas Scott (Victor Hunter)—the man secretly answering Marie-Angelique’s letters. Blending sharp wit, cultural commentary, and historical insight, Končan flips the traditional male-centric narrative to center women’s voices in the story of the fur trade.

Directed by Renae Morriseau, the cast also includes Victor Hunter and Jonathan Fisher. Končan’s work has been produced widely across Canada, from its Toronto Fringe debut to the Stratford Festival, cementing the play’s reputation as one of the most-produced works in the country.