By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In the play that launches the new, all-Canadian season tonight at L’UniThéâtre, Alberta’s only professional francophone theatre company, an unlikely friendship blossoms, fast, in an unlikely place.

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As director Steve Jodoin explains, Le Palier opens with 11 quick scenes, “and no talking” — on the third floor landing (le palier) of an apartment building. The 2005 play, a touching two-hander by Quebec’s Réal Beauchamp and Jean-Guy Côté, chronicles an unexpected, intergenerational, bond between neighbours: “a lady nearing the end of her life and a young university student who doesn’t know what to do with his…. The whole play happens in a year and a half.”

Neighbourly connection, friendship, loneliness, compassion: Le Palier embraces them all, says Jodoin, L’UniThéâtre artistic director. “Laughter and hard reality.” His production (in French with English surtitles), starring Ève-Marie Forcier and Gabriel Gagnon, is the first of four shows (and the return of an annual festival) in the 2025-2026 season at the 33-year-old company. It’s attracted a top-drawer design team, including Paul Bezaire (set), Scott Peters (lighting), and Dean Stockdale and Ryder J. McGinnis (sound).

Le Palier runs at the Servus Credit Union Theatre at La Cité francophone (8627 91st St.) tonight through Sunday. Tickets: lunitheatre.ca.

Bouée, a buoy or a lifeline in English, by Céleste Godin, takes L’UniThéâtre audiences for the first time across the river to Theatre Network’s Roxy Theatre. A six-actor touring production from Satellite Theatre in Moncton N.B., it’s “cool and quirky, very physical,” as Jodoin describes. “It explores the ‘what’s next’,” he says. “Sci-fi meets everyday life,” in an absurdist, highly theatrical experience, as a group of scientists sets about updating the received portrait of humanity. It touches down in March 6 and 7 at the Roxy, 10708 124 St.

The season includes the premiere of a new play by Edmonton theatre artist Sophie Gareau-Brennan, set in Alberta. Bouanderie/ Boulangerie, a rom-com as Jodoin describes, is named for the two businesses, a laundromat and a bakery, next door to each other in a small Alberta francophone community. Among its quartet of characters is an a complex geometry of friendship and love, reunion and rediscovery. Part of the annual Theatre 8-Pack initiative that includes eight productions from eight different Edmonton theatres, the production co-directed by Jodoin and Gareau-Brennan runs May 21 to 24 and 28 to 31 at the Servus Credit Union Theatre in La Cité francophone.

In alternating seasons, L’UniThéâtre and their Vancouver counterpart Théâtre La Seizième take turns producing a kids’ show that tours in Alberta and B.C. It’s a long-time collaboration that counts as a bona fide Canadian theatre success story. This season the show is Petite Ondine, written by Anaïs Pellin and inspired by Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid, a co-production between Vancouver partners Théâtre La Seizième and Kleine Compagnie. And its particular aesthetic is miniature and found objects, a puppetry that happens directly onstage amplified by live video (and accompanied by the songs of Nina Simone). Jodoin plans a public performance here for this touring show at the end of May.

The L’UniThéâtre season also includes the return of an annual theatre festival for junior and senior high school students.

The L’UniThéâtre season happens in French, with English surtitles. Tickets and subscriptions: lunitheatre.ca.