It’s a big year for the Great Canadian Theatre Company (GCTC) — they’re celebrating their 50th season of groundbreaking Canadian theatre, with this year promising so much more.
Artistic Director at the GCTC, Sarah Kitz, says that the company was one of a number of organizations that came to be on a wave of cultural nationalism in Canada in the 70s. It was something of a revolutionary move, bringing Canadian stories to the centre of Canadian lives.
Photo by Curtis Perry.
“And this year, because it’s our 50th, it’s going to be a party,” says Kitz. “This season is all about celebration and joy, and there’s lots of comedy—we really want people to feel like this is a place they can come and reflect on what it’s like to be a part of a community.”
On Sept. 24–Oct. 6, the GCTC’s first performance of the season is The Anger in Ernest and Ernestine which follows a loved-up couple as they move into a tiny basement apartment together.
“The show is deeply pleasurable to watch,” says Kitz. “And after all of us living through lockdown and the pandemic, that’s highly relatable—how can you stay sane in a small place with someone that you love without killing them?”
From Nov. 12–24, the GCTC is proud to welcome the world premiere of Beowulf in Afghanistan, which tells the story of a Canadian soldier stuck in a dream world where he ultimately believes he is the English hero Beowulf.
Kitz explains that the main character, Grant Cleary, is a Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan in the early 2000s. He gets knocked out in combat, and the play takes on dream logic, as Grant merges the world of the Afghan desert with the medieval text of Beowulf.
“He [Grant] sees himself as Beowulf…as this epic hero on an epic adventure,” says Kitz. “Audience members will get to hear some of the text of Beowulf, which is really muscular sounding—but the audience does not need to either understand medieval old English to follow the show or even to know what goes on in this medieval classic text.”
For the holiday season, from Dec. 10–22, Flop! An Improvised Musical Fiasco will take the stage, and this is definitely something Kitz says you don’t want to miss.
“It is honestly one of the funniest, most skillful, most awe-inspiring and extraordinary things I’ve ever seen in the theatre,” says Kitz.
An incredible work in improv, a new musical is created every night.
“When I saw them do it a few years ago, I laughed so hard—there were embarrassing, high-pitched, wheezy sounds that I couldn’t stop coming out of me,” says Kitz. “They were able to create characters and relationships and stories that carry through two acts in musical form, rhyming and making it up. It’s unbelievable what these people can do.”
Their penultimate show, Why It’s imPossible: A Play About Parenting in Precarious Times performs from Jan. 21–Feb. 2. It tells the story of a mom trying to navigate her child’s gender expression, and ultimately the relationship between growing pains.
Speaking of growing pains, the GCTC’s final show of the season is Vierge, a co-production with Black Theatre Workshop. Kitz says that the piece is full of heart and laughter, but that it’s also deeply real.
“It’s about these four Congolese-Canadian teenagers in a church basement, and the purpose for their presence in the church basement is Bible study, but that’s not what really happens,” says Kitz. “They’re all part of a self-identifying Congolese Christian community, but they’re also a bunch of hormonal teenagers who are just trying to figure out how to be humans.”
This season features performances that centre relationships at their core, and ask questions about coexistence, not only between others in community, but between ourselves and our surroundings.
“One of the biggest and most fundamental questions that all theatre asks is, ‘How can we live together?’ I think that’s one of the greatest things that we gather in theatre to understand,” says Kitz. “We are always in flux, and the conditions of the world are always in flux.
From the deserts of Afghanistan, to the basement of a church, the GCTC’s 50th season seeks different, and sometimes unexpected perspectives—something that Kitz hopes for in theatre generally.
“We are constantly, as a cultural sector, opening and opening and opening to more people and more stories and more forms,” says Kitz. “And that also can mean more audiences seeking themselves and their stories on stage.”
Reflecting on 50 years of Canadian theatre, Kitz says that something the GCTC is really proud of is the way that they’ve made theatre accessible to these wider audiences.
Photo by Curtis Perry.
“I know people frequently feel like theatre is expensive, but we actually have so many highly accessible options,” says Kitz. “We have $15 tickets, we have a pay-what-you-decide performance in each run on a Sunday, and for this season, because it’s our 50th, we’re doing a fun thing called ‘1975 pricing.’”
GCTC’s 1975 pricing will replace the pay-what-you-decide option this season and reflects the price of admission when GCTC first opened that year. It’ll run you $3.50 a ticket to come and see a show with this perk.
“We want people to know this is a space for them,” says Kitz. “There’s a lot of work to be done around breaking down the idea that theatre and culture are a type of elite pastime—that’s not true here.”
For more information about the GCTC’s 50th season performances, check out their website. For information on ticket prices and season ticket packages, you can click here. You can also check out when shows with 1975 pricing will be performing by clicking here.
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