Tarragon Theatre's mission is to create, develop and produce new plays and to provide the conditions for new work to thrive. To that end, the theatre engages the best theatre artists and craftspeople to interpret new work; presents each new work with high quality production values; provides an administrative structure to support new work; develops marketing strategies to promote new work; and continually generates an audience for new work. As a complement to the new work created here, Tarragon presents new plays from all parts of the country, revives significant Canadian plays and produces international work, contemporary and classical. Long-term dramaturgy, tailored to the play and playwright, is a priority at Tarragon. Programs for play development are various and flexible ranging from Resident Playwrights to Playwrights Unit to WorkSpacemore...See more text
The Canadian art community was caught up in a nationalist fever back in 1970, when Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre was established. And for good reason – almost all theatre produced in Canada at that time were classical or modern European plays. The Tarragon not only staged new theatrical works by Canadians, but also established a playwriting program. Dramatists were granted a creative partnership with the theatre that produced their works – the type of partnership that continues to this day.
Artistic director Richard Rose feels that developing plays in-house is a unique advantage for the Tarragon Theatre. He describes the playwriting program as “the heartbeat of our theatre.”
“The play is the hardest thing to do,” he says. “Our playwrights have the biggest challenge in terms of coming up with material, so you simply have to invest in it. Our audience is interested in coming to see a play that will speak about their lives.”
Part of the annual Fringe Festival, "Ze: Queer as f*ck!" is an autobiographical comedy theatre performance not to be missed. “Ze” (a gender neutral pronoun) explores intersections of identity and what it means to belong in a diverse and ever-changing LGBTQI community. The play was even nominated for Best Comedy at Fringe World 2016; get your tickets early because this is a hot one.