Content warning: sexual harassment, violence, fire

A northern land, the end of winter. A cold, dusky pre-dawn on the edge of a mountain; across the valley roars a mighty waterfall. In this valley there are two farms, one poor - owned by Runa, a single woman - and one rich, owned by Olaf, who wishes Runa for his bride.

Olaf proposes to Runa...

Content warning: explicit language, sexual violence, sexual content, alcohol, blackout drinking

Hook Up tells the story of three friends who have made it to university, each with their own unique desires and inner conflicts. Mindy is just excited to keep her high school friend circle together and finally get some privacy with her boyfriend. T...

Content warning: captivity, sex trafficking, sex work, sexual violence, violence, death

The Enslavement and Liberation of Oksana G. is a fictional dramatic opera built on extensive factual research. Set in Ukraine in 1997, it is the story of Oksana, a young woman lured into the world of sex trafficking by a Russian recruiter, Konstantin, who ...

Content warning: political indoctrination, interrogation

Winston Smith is interrogated by a member of The Party about some of his journal entries. In this scene, Smith struggles to differentiate his reality from the reality of The Party.

An opera for all ages. Sydney, an Asian elephant poached at a young age from the jungles of Indonesia, recalls her remarkable life in captivity, far from home, as her keeper of 22 years leads her on a journey towards sanctuary in the hills of Tennessee. A dynamic weaving of opera and dance unearths friendships lost and found and restores a stole...

Content warning: colonial violence, colonialsm, death, illness

1828, Notre Dame Bay, on the northeast shore of Newfoundland. William Cormack, an explorer and anthropologist, has recently created the Beothuk Institute: an organization designed to prevent the extinction of the original inhabitants of the island. After learning that a Beothuk wo...

Content warning: antisemitism, genocide, Holocaust, infanticide, murder, Nazis, sexual violence, sex work, violence, war

Still the Night tells the fictional story of two Jewish Polish cousins, both named Bryna, who have escaped from the Nazis and joined the Partisans. Along the way they are hung on crosses, raped, almost shot and forced to tu...

As the waves crash against the shore, two religious brothers go for a walk. The conversation is dominated by the older brother, and heavy with implication. The younger one announces his wish to leave the order, and is asked if his father’s death has something to do with this decision. The younger brother is furious; he could have spoken to his f...

Content warning: death, incarceration, interrogation, suicide, torture

A translator at a secret prison for suspected terrorists witnesses extreme torture and death of detainees. She leaks the information to news broadcasters, but the government covers it up as a hoax. Her supervisor begs her to say nothing more about the things she has seen -...

The night before her birthday, an aging Queen Elizabeth I catches an intruder in her boudoir. It turns out to be none other than her arch-nemesis Grace O’Malley, Irish pirate and chieftain, come to reclaim her seized ship and her trampled rights. A comedic opera about power and politics, destiny and desire, and how hard it is to be a woman at th...

Content warning: captivity, memory loss

Laura has been forcibly confined in a basement for years until she frees herself. She approaches a stranger on the street, wondering if the stranger remembers her, and discovers that she barely remembers herself.

Content warning: descriptions of enslavement, violence, sexual violence, death

A father will do anything to save his daughter. Of the Sea follows the story of Maduka, his daughter Binyelum, and fellow Africans thrown overboard during the Middle Passage who now populate mythical underwater kingdoms that span the ocean floor. Amidst the waves, ...

Content warning: death, suicide

Dragon’s Tale is the story of a young Chinese-Canadian woman (Xiao Lian) and her ailing father, both living in Toronto. Xiao Lian wakes up in the ancient past and witnesses the last days of one of China’s greatest poets, Qu Yuan. In doing so, she begins to understand her father and herself as she returns to a c...

On a fateful school trip to the ruins of Pompeii, the fantasies of smitten teenagers Suzie and Cass are ignited. They are transported from 1977 to 79 AD, where they discover romantic freedom in the looming shadow of Mount Vesuvius – but not for long. The timeline shifts to 1981 and the Fly by Night, a Toronto lesbian bar, in the aftermath of the...

Content warning: ableism, institutionalization, medical abuse, mental illness, sanism, sexual violence

10 Days in a Madhouse is a psychological opera that plays with notions of madness, inspired by the life of Nellie Bly, a trailblazing reporter who in 1887 faked madness in order to be admitted to Blackwell’s Asylum for the Insane and report ...

Unwilling to marry a woman, a man fashions a lover from his own left side. He’s enraptured by her perfect beauty – a mirror of his own – until he discovers that this new woman longs for freedom and wildly desires another.

Naomi’s Road, which details a young Japanese-Canadian girl’s experiences as her family is interned during World War II, is a coming-of-age story that celebrates the power of hope, cultural understanding and compassion. This compelling and emotional story is taken from one of our country’s most painful and complex social periods, a time that for ...

Winston Smith helps Julia after she trips. This seemingly mundane interaction upends Smith’s world when he reads the note Julia slips into his hand. The words carry so much promise- and so much danger, in the context of an authoritarian government.

Democracy lies dead in a coffin, mourned by two citizens...

"She lies silently in a coffin of ice, arms bound by a flag, eyes sewn together, mouth wired shut...”

But slowly Democracy raises her weak head and begs the two citizens to keep her alive by executing a difficult but necessary task.

Content warning: sexual violence, incarceration, religious abuse, homophobia, conversion therapy

Through several vignettes, Forbidden examines the idea of rules and taboos. Do they protect people, or do they control them? Are they of any value, or do they simply exploit the powerless?

A young girl, punished with repetition of religious tex...