Lora Brovold in Dead Letter, Workshop West Playwright’s Theatre. Photo by Dave DeGagné

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There’s a cross-country vision to Workshop West Playwright Theatre’s upcoming 45th season, Borderlands, Encounters on the Outskirts, announced Monday from their Strathcona headquarters, the Gateway Theatre.

The trio of 2023-2024 mainstage productions at Workshop West, a theatre devoted from the start to the development and showcasing of the Canadian repertoire and its writers, is bookended by plays, both mysteries in high-contrast ways,  one from Quebec and one from Edmonton. And between the two is a highly unusual touring production, an experiment in audience collaboration created by one of most exciting and inventive of the new generation of Canadian theatre artists.

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The season grand finale, one of the most anticipated premieres of the Edmonton season, is Dead Letter, by star Canadian playwright Conni Massing whose history with Workshop West goes back decades (most recently Matari in 2018). Born during the pandemic at WW’s Playwright’s Exchange, and workshopped at last year’s  Springboards New Play Fesival and Script Salon, it’s “a comedic mystery,” as WW artistic director Heather Inglis describes, spun from the small, hidden mysteries of our lives.

“Part rom-com part mystery,” Dead Letter is triggered by the arrival in the protagonist’s mailbox of a letter that’s years old. Suddenly it begins to add up to her, a clear signal of “larger forces at work” in a world where meaning is elusive — a cosmic connection between the letter, those single socks gone AWOL from the drier, the missing Tupperware lids….

Massing’s characters, says Inglis, “always feel lived in … down to what they eat, and even the recipes.” In the case of Dead Letter they’re in “a whodunnit that’s surprising and delightful.” Inglis’s production (May 17 to June 2), which happens in the round, stars husband and wife Collin Doyle and Lora Brovold (last seen together onstage in Conni Massing’s Oh Christmas Tree at the Roxy in 2018), along with Maralyn Ryan. And the multi-talented actor/playwright/composer Rebecca Merkley has been enlisted for the sound design.

Kristin Johnston in Mob, Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. Photo by Dave DeGagné

The season opens with Mob (La Meute), by the Quebec TV and film star-turned playwright Catherine-Anne Toupin. The touchstone of the hit psychological thriller, which premiered at La Licorne in Montreal in 2018 (and was remounted twice there), is Hitchcock, and especially Pyscho, says Inglis who directs the Workshop West production (Oct. 25 to Nov. 12).

“A slow burn,” as Inglis describes it, the play builds on concealed identities, and turns on a point of unease, restraint,  and escalating menace. Sophie, “a refugee from her job,” arrives at a remote B&B out of town in the Eastern Townships “looking for solace.” And she meets the inhabitants, including “a young man who’s a little odd, living with his aunt.” Ring a bell?

Not much more about Mob can be revealed in advance, as Inglis says, save that it’s “a dark, challenging piece, and super-well-written.” Her production, the play’s English language debut in western Canada, stars Kristin Johnston (“I’m a big fan … ever since We Had a Girl Before You” at Northern Light), with Graham Mothersill and Davina Stewart. Workshop West hasn’t done a Quebec play since the mid-‘80s, Inglis thinks: a production of Michel Tremblay’s Hosanna. “We’re primarily about Alberta voices, but other sensibilities enrich our writers as well….”

The English version, which premiered at the Centaur in Montreal in 2020, has an estimable pedigree: it’s translated by Chris Campbell, a former literary manager at the Royal Court Theatre in London.

This Is The Story Of The Child Ruled By Fear, Workshop West Playwrights Theatre. Photo by Dave DeGagné

Found Festival audiences in 2021 had a chance to see an early sighting of This Is The Story Of The Child Ruled By Fear, David Gagnon Walker’s uniquely immersive experiment in storytelling. Since then, it’s been at SummerWorks in Toronto, the High Performance Rodeo in Calgary and Vancouver’s Pi Theatre, among other theatre to destinations, in a cross-country tour by the playwright’s company Strange Victory Performance. The short Edmonton run, Jan. 31 to Feb 4, is part of that ongoing journey.

It reminds Inglis, she says, of Spalding  Gray’s monologue Swimming To Cambodia, “but with  significant visual elements, multi-media design and projections.” And this: the audience is invited to join Gagnon Walker in telling the story, a fantastical poetic fable of the rise and fall of an imaginary civilization, with imaginary creatures in a state of slowly unfolding emergencies. Inglis calls it “a communal play reading.” You can participate to your own comfort level, reading for a character, joining the chorus, or sitting back to watch.” It was originally developed during COVID, “but it’s not specifically about that,” says Inglis. “Really it’s about coming together, the art of storytelling as a metaphor…. A reminder, in production form, of the power of just reading a play.” Christian Barry of 2b Theatre in Halifax, directs with Judy Wensel.

The third Edmonton iteration of The Shoe Project, designed to seek out and amplify the voices and stories of immigrant women, is part of the season in partnership with the SkirtsAfire Festival (March 2 and 3). And the lineup also includes the return of Workshop West’s signature Springboards New Play Festival (March 25 to 3), with readings of plays at every stage of development by playwrights at every level of experience. Presented in a cabaret setting, it’s a chance, as Inglis says, for writers to hear their works read by actors, supplemented by selected design possibilities, light, and sound.

For audiences, it’s our chance to go backstage in the process of theatre-making, where the artists hang out, and their ideas begin to take theatrical form. And, as plays like Dead Letter demonstrate, Springboards is a launching pad into full productions and onto stages of all sizes. Sneak previews with wine.

Consult workshopwest.org for subscriptions, schedules, and news about the company’s assorted  playwright development programs, including Writes of Passage, Indigenous Playwrights’ Circle, Edmonton Playwrights’ Circle, and Playwrights’ Reading Program.