Welcome to Touchstone Theatre 2026-2027.  Join us for a fabulous season of theatre productions, play readings, and meet-the-playwright events. In these times of global precarity, uncertainty and rapid change we need stories. We need stories to understand ourselves. Character, plot, dialogue, rhythm, humour — these are the playwright’s tools, and as Artistic Director of Touchstone Theatre I am drawn to plays that are ready to talk, that are screaming to be heard, that are bursting off the stage. 

This year we are thrilled to offer a bundle of plays and events that consider the theme of what it is to be human in times of great pressure. Our playwrights this season bring humour, playfulness, exceptional craft and theatrical experimentation to the forefront, tackling questions of how we as a species might re-root ourselves in community, grounded in respect for each other and for the planet. Spring 2027 we invite you to join Musqueam multi-disciplinary artist Quelemia Sparrow as she offers a talk on Land Reclamation and her artistic practice. Quelemia’s theatre practice is Land-based and has been driven by a deep desire to reclaim Musqueam placenames, language and history. Touchstone looks forward to partnering with VPL to host this talk. We acknowledge that as guests living and working on Coast Salish territory it is our responsibility to learn the true history and stories of these Lands and to listen to the original care-takers and stewards.

Fall 2026, we are thrilled to open our season with the Vascular Necrosis, a zombie, queer love story by playwright Jordyn Wood. Jordyn has spent several years developing the play through Touchstone’s Flying Start emerging playwright’s program, with director Daniela Atiencia. Vascular Necrosis invites audiences into a conversation on life itself: why we are here, and why we might choose to stay or not to stay. The play considers hope, mental health and zombie lore, and has an extraordinary depth of emotion and humour. We are pleased to partner with Glitch Theatre for Vascular Necrosis. 

In January 2027, we present Nervous Hunter’s production of Bonnes Bonnes, co-written by Tamara Nguyen and director Sophie Gee which uses Jean Genet’s classic 20th-century drama Les Bonnes (The Maids) as a jumping-off point for three Canadian women’s reflections on their relationship to their Chinese heritage, cultural identity and migration. In this wildly theatrical and spicy exploration the three women discuss personal childhood memories, shared cultural touch points, and even global economics while chopping and preparing chili sauce onstage. Touchstone is pleased to partner with vAct and Théâtre la Seizième for Bonnes Bonnes.

We are thrilled to remount Touchstone’s 2026 award-winning sold-out production of Anosh Irani’s Behind The Moon at the Arts Club Theatre in February 2027. Set in a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto, Behind The Moon considers migration and loss, freedom and faith, the meaning of brotherhood, and what it means to search for a better life in Canada. Touchstone’s production picked up multiple Jessie Richardson Awards for Best Actors, Best Production, Best Design and Best Direction.

Next up is Niall McNeil’s gorgeous piece Beauty and the Beast: My life. Niall creates a beautiful, imaginary world peopled by characters from Beauty and the Beast in which he instructs the raging Beast in social behaviour and offers lessons that he has learnt across his life as an artist living with Down’s Syndrome. Produced by Niall McNeil Productions, written and directed by Niall McNeil, presented by The Shadbolt Center in association with Touchstone Theatre.

Spring 2027, we invite you to an evening with the Siminovitch Prize nominated Quebecois playwright Mishka Lavigne to hear the new translation of her play Granite, translated into English by David Gagnon Walker. From a rickety old house where a multigenerational line of women live, a father and daughter at a lakeside fire tower, to a botanist in a northern research station – the fires burn, the past haunts, and the early winter darkness threatens to bury it all under the snow. Touchstone is pleased to partner with New Translation Canada and VPL for this event.

“I want the humans in the audience to recognize what is human on stage because it is by accessing this humanity that the audience experiences a transformation.”

 – Mishka Lavigne

This season is peppered with hope — hard hope in times of uncertainty. But hope, nonetheless. I believe that all of the playwrights you will encounter this season are offering an invitation — to re-root ourselves through story, humour and gatherings. This season is an invitation to consider what makes us human and what reciprocity looks like in our human relationships and between ourselves and this planet. Each of Touchstone’s offerings this season will occur in small to mid-sized theatre spaces – The Nest, BMO, The Shadbolt Center, Studio 16, VPL – we believe that gathering together, to hear a story, in a small space is always an invitation to build community and connect.