Toronto's Factory Theatre unveils its 2021-2022 season

Factory has just announced its 2021/2022 season.  Good things are happening here as I always look forward to this theatre’s slate.

The season opens with a rebroadcast of last season’s production of David Yee’s acts of faith which runs October 20-23, 2021, for nine performances. It tells a story about the power of belief, the disillusionment of youth and the eternal struggle between good and evil. The story follows Faith, a young woman who gets mistaken for a prophet. I reviewed this production last year and will re-post my review closer to performance date.

Cast Iron by Lisa Codrington runs November 19-28, 2021, online. Reimagined as a live audio drama, the story follows Libya Atwell, a Bajan immigrant, as she wields acerbic wit and humour in an attempt to appease the ghosts of her past. Alone in her Winnipeg nursing home, Libya receives an unexpected visitor from Barbados. Past repression resurfaces, until the tragedy that shaped her life spills from her soul.

Year of the Rat are commissioned works written and performed by Augusto Bitter, Charlotte Corbeil-Coleman, Rosa Laborde, and Anita Majumdar. These works are a series of 15-minute monodramas about our connections to our four walls, and how the last 18 months of the pandemic have changed it all forever. Featuring four interconnected works set in different parts of the home and performed by the playwrights themselves, Year of the Rat pushes the boundaries of fact and fiction and takes audiences behind closed doors for a glimpse into how four very different lives were impacted this past year…when they thought no one was watching. The production runs February 24 – March 5, 2022.

Admission to acts of faith, Cast Iron and Year of the Rat is free of charge, but we must register online through the Factory Theatre website: www.factorytheatre.ca.

Beginning March 3, 2022, online, You Can’t Get There from Here, Vol. 2 features 5 Commissioned audio drama works from Marjorie Chan, Ins Choi, Amy Lee Lavoie, Omari Newton, Kat Sandler, and Guillermo Verdecchia. This series offers listeners fresh perspectives on familiar Toronto landmarks and neighbourhoods and glimpses into the micro-dramas occurring each day around us, hidden in plain sight. Each episode offers a new, self-contained story and a vivid audio experience from each of our playwrights. 

The world premiere of David Yee’s Among Men runs April 23 – May 15, 2022, in the Mainspace Theatre at Factory. The story takes place in 1959, Ameliasburgh, Prince Edward County, Canada. On the edge of spring, two men are finishing an A-frame cabin on Roblin Lake. In the coming decade all three of them – Al, Milt, and the A-frame – will become famous and change the face of Canadian poetry. But now all they have is the stench of sweat, whiskey, and words. From Governor General’s Award-winner David Yee, among men is a poetic and charged portrait of male friendship in uncertain times, and a story of how Canadian literature was changed forever.

The Factory Toronto premiere of Wildfire runs May 28 – June 19, 2022. From the play Le Brasier by David Paquet with translation by Leanna Brodie, Wildfire is a dark comedy with a spark— highly absurd and ferociously funny, Paquet’s seemingly ordinary characters remind us that sometimes it’s the people we look right past who experience the most extraordinary fates.

To learn more about Factory Theatre and its upcoming season, please visit www.factorytheatre.ca.