Deux frères taureaux tentent de convaincre l’autre d’entrer dans l’étable. Aucun des deux ne veut y aller, sachant que leur vie est en jeu. Ils se flattent, se défient et se défient l’un l’autre, jusqu’à ce qu’un défi à la course règle finalement le problème : le premier à entrer dans l’étable gagne. En quelque sorte.

Avertissement de contenu : maladie, mort, colonisation

Facing South is inspired by the life story of American Arctic explorer, Rear Admiral Robert Edwin Peary, and his contested discovery of the North Pole in 1909. The opera takes place in the inner landscape of Peary’s mind during the last hours of his life in February 1920, as he lies dying of pernic...

Charlie et Robert se tiennent au-dessus des toilettes, examinant le caca de Charlie et réfléchissant à leurs êtres chers disparus.

Avertissement de contenu : violence sexuelle, incarcération, abus religieux, homophobie, thérapie de conversion

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...

Singer-songwriter Josie works on a song in her shared Portland apartment, a girl-at-the-guitar on the cusp of leaving for New York City and a long-anticipated big break. Though her luggage is packed and she’s almost out the door, her boyfriend interjects with objections—he’ll miss her. Josie’s reassurances, dreams of him visiting her on the East...

Avertissement de contenu : maladie en phase terminale

This is not a biographical opera, it is an exploration of an emotional journey. At age 5, Jacqueline has instant chemistry and sparks fly when she meets her cello. Their relationship grows stronger and closer, and Jacqueline matures into a charismatic and likeable teen, powerful on major stages. Soon she is a...

Avertissement de contenu: xénophobie, emigration

Un jeune enfant se réveille seul sur la plage. Il cherche sa mère. Le bruit des vagues étouffe les voix des gens qui s’inquiètent des nouveaux arrivants et de l’effet qu’ils auront sur leur société. D’autres voix prennent le relais : d’autres enfants disent que sa place est avec eux maintenant.

Inspired by ...

Avertissement de contenu: mort, capacitisme

Le vieux Merk sent son âge. Il va bientôt mourir. Il essaie de préparer Pauline, sa fille adulte handicapée mentale, à l'inévitable. De quoi, le cas échéant, se souviendra-t-elle de lui ? De la maison qu'ils partagent ? De leur vie commune ? Se souviendra-t-elle de l'amour de son père ? Se souviendra-t-elle de l'étreinte de la maison ? Est-ce qu'elle comprendra...

Un Iranien, assis dans une chambre d’hôtel au Canada, écrit ses prières du matin.

Avertissement de contenu : mort

Juste avant d’atteindre le sommet du Mont Everest, sur la crête sud du sommet, Jackie et son partenaire Pasang célèbrent le fait qu’elle est la première femme à atteindre le sommet sans oxygène. Puis quelque chose change. Serait-ce Mère Everest qui punit les alpinistes ?

Dans un jeu vidéo, deux souris se déplacent dans une maison lorsque, soudainement, elles rencontrent un chat.

"Détestez vos stupides boucles d'oreilles, détestez vos chaussures laides." Stéphanie se prépare à sortir avec un rendez-vous, mais elle commence à s'effondrer lorsqu'elle se regarde dans le miroir. Les voix qu’elle entend dans sa tête sont des variations de sa propre voix critique. Elle se voit comme elle imagine que son rendez-vous la verra. Rien ne va – tout va mal. C'est un...

Partition in 1947 drives Naila’s family to the new country of Pakistan while her best friend Lolo must remain in India. In a child’s-eye view of this world event, the significant concerns for these two nine-year-olds are custody of a tin box with important valuables (“marbles and flowers and keys and rings”), and the care and feeding of a pet ra...

Une femme et un homme au lit. Nus. Ou presque. L’homme lit à la femme. Des poèmes d’Irving Layton. Ils ont la maison pour eux seuls. Ils se retrouvent enfin suite au départ de leur enfant benjamin à l’université. C’est une nuit parfaite. Jusqu’à ce que le moustique se pointe.

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...

Avertissement de contenu : naissance

Une famille nucléaire à la dérive dans l’ère atomique. Depuis que Prométhée a volé le feu aux dieux, l’humanité joue avec la dangereuse beauté de la science. Dans cette fable caricaturée, un père protège sa famille à tout prix.

Thomas and Claire fall madly in love at a fundraising party. Thomas has decided to “find a wife, get a life,” whi...

Tard dans la nuit, Allie se fait hanter par sa meilleure amie décédée, Karen.

Avertissement de contenu: abus sexuel d'un enfant, inceste, meutre, mort

Judith et Daniel, frère et sœur séparés depuis longtemps, sont réunis par le décès de leur père. Après tout ce temps passé, il semblerait que Judith n’ait pas changé du tout. Daniel tue sa sœur alors qu'elle veut reprendre leur relation sexuelle d'enfance.

Un fermier prend affectueusement soin de sa vache brune, sans savoir que lui et la vache se sont déjà rencontrés dans des vies antérieures, une fois au XVIIIe siècle et une autre fois au XXe.

Nominé pour le prix Dora Mavor Moore 2009 de la meilleure nouvelle comédie musicale ou opéra, cette tragi-comédie de 40 minutes sur l’intégrité créative, l’autonomie et l’ajustement est un conte allégorique qui démonte les ironies du capitalisme ; une parodie des relations transfrontalières ; un récit romantique.

Due to the all-powerful Ford selecting the American Phillips screw for...

A man at a restaurant thinks he recognizes a woman seated alone at the next table. Could she be a famous author he just read? As the pieces of this miscalculation come together for the woman, we find that she is surprised to be noticed, and taken aback that she’s assumed to be a string theory expert. The scene flips an expected script of expecta...

La société technologique fictive RUR, fondée par le couple Helena et Dom, domine le marché des logiciels d'IA et alimente les androïdes désormais omniprésents au service de leurs propriétaires humains.

As Dom becomes more focused on growing R.U.R’s profits, Helena’s creative research leads to an unexpected technological breakthrough that pits the couples’ visions square...

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...

The story of two clans of little violinists, one that plays only in pizzicato and the other one only with the bow. They each claim to make the most beautiful music, so they argue and try separately to summon the Goddess of Music. She appears only when they play together, and reconciles the two clans, explaining that there is no such thing as the...

Content warning: gun violence, strong language, terminal illness, attempted assisted suicide

A father and son argue in a dark alley.  The father, sick with a tumour "the size of a fig" in his brain, begs his son to end his life.  When the gun they're using fails and the son panics, the father offers comfort and encouragement in the form of a ...

Content warning: war, death, gun violence

A young mother with her infant daughter is threatened by an armed military officer escorting prisoners. She wants to wait for her husband, but the officer tells her he is probably already dead. The woman sings a lament to her baby, then pleads with the officer to take her baby and raise her as his own.

Content warning: infidelity

An ambitious politician gleefully shares with his mistress the news that his party may soon be back in power.  The mistress shares her own news: she is pregnant.

Avertissement de contenu : maladie, décès

Charlotte works to prepare a Thanksgiving meal while her sister Margaret, who is ill, rests. When Margaret drops some china, the sisters are forced to confront the fact that Margaret's illness is likely terminal, and they will soon be separated. They sing a heartfelt duet, vowing to say hello to a new closeness...

Mark stands with his friends Maryanne and Bob, ready to play a game of baseball. They see their other friend, Kenny, and Carley, Mark's ex-girlfriend, in the distance. Kenny proposes to Carley, and runs to the group to announce triumphantly "She said yes!" Inspired by Maryanne's encouragement, Mark calls his estranged son, who lives far away wit...

Svadba explores a "wedding theme, especially the night before the ceremony, when we are privy to private and ancient rituals between the bride and her girlfriends. The text is taken from original Serbian poetry but given a new context for our contemporary culture... A wedding is an important turning point in every woman’s life, usually steeped i...

Love Songs is an intimate story about love in five “thematic” movements: pure love, tender love, children’s love, mature love and love for a person who has been lost. The lyrics are sung in five languages: English, French, Serbian, Irish and Latin. There are interludes between the movements in which the phrase “I Love You” is delivered in 100 di...

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 ...

As a teenager in the 1920s, my grandmother Gladys played piano for silent films in the remote New Zealand town of Takaka. She still recalls a film which was shot nearby at Pohara beach. Although Glad has never seen the film, I found out later that it was the underwater spectacular Venus of the South Seas, starring Australian diver Annette Keller...

Slip is a site-specific performance for a swimming pool or bath house fusing sound, movement and light. Each production of Slip is unique, but builds on previous performances. Cultures with distinct architectures and social rituals of bathing are juxtaposed to increase awareness of our own histories. As humans we are bound together by the intima...

From the abuse of the sweatshop to the fantasy of costume and the empowerment of sewing-it-yourself, the sewing machine has been a force for liberation and exploitation since its invention in the 19th century. Hemmed in by the language of sewing and the inexorable rhythm of the machine, three women fight to find space for imagination and individ...

A multicultural retelling of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale.

"The jealous king Leontes’ wife, Hermione, is accused of committing adultery with his best friend, Polixenes, and Hermione is jailed. Soon after, Leontes and Hermione’s young son dies before she gives birth to a daughter Perdita who is smuggled out of the country after Hermione’s s...

Boots invites you into a boudoir full of guilty pleasures. The performer presents a cast of more than thirty pairs of boots, procured over the last decade from secondhand stores, online auctions and retail outlets. She adds to her obsessive collection weekly. When will it stop?

Lyrics are taken from Emily Dickinson and Gertrude Stein, with ad...

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.

“Made in Bangladesh, Vietnam, Italy, China, India…the U.S.A.”  Who sews our clothes, who makes our shoes? Where do they live? How much are they paid? What would you dream of, sewing sleeves all day? Is life better in the village you left behind? Sweat is a kaleidoscope of characters and stories collected from factories around the world. Plunging...

A not-so-pure Maiden is sent to marry a not-so-manly Lord, who is advised by a not-so-celibate Priest, and protected by a not-so-insensitive Thug in an England ruled by a King who won’t get out of bed. Based on the award winning play by Moira Buffini.

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 ...