All artwork by Jonathan Wood
We’re delighted to announce our 2025/2026 season, featuring a playful and fresh lineup of productions! Curated by a committee made up of faculty, staff, and students, this year’s shows invite audiences on imaginative journeys that explore identity, cultural memory, and the values we choose to carry forward.
Leading the season is a special guest presentation of Women of the Fur Trade by Frances Koncan, Assistant Professor in UBC Creative Writing. Presented in association with Vancouver’s Touchstone Theatre, this vibrant satire re-imagines history by centering the perspectives, agency, and solidarity of three women during the turbulent Canadian fur trade era. We’re excited to accompany this presentation with a series of community engagement events that offer students and the wider UBC community the opportunity to connect with the production and with a professional theatre company.
“When planning the 2025/2026 season, the committee was interested in the power of re-imagining and adapting,” says our Department Head, Kirsty Johnston. “Both of our student productions allow us to reframe familiar stories and engage with our changing world. As humans, we imagine, re-imagine, and adapt constantly. Theatre helps us do that with laughter, meaning, and connection. We hope you’ll join us.”
This year, our two mainstage student productions will run for an extra week, giving audiences more time and flexibility to attend. We’re excited to offer this extended run and hope it makes it even easier for folks to join us at the theatre.
2025/2026 Season at a Glance:
Women of the Fur Trade
Photo by Fred Cattroll
By Frances Koncan
Directed by Renae Morrisseau
Sept 24–Oct 4, 2025
Frederic Wood Theatre
An NAC Indigenous, GCTC, NEPA production, presented by Touchstone Theatre in association with Western Canada Theatre and UBC Theatre and Film
In eighteen hundred and something-something, somewhere upon the banks of a Reddish River in Treaty One Territory, three very different women with a preference for twenty-first century slang sit in a fort sharing their views on life, love, and the hot nerd Louis Riel. This lively historical satire of survival and cultural inheritance shifts perspectives from the male gaze onto women’s power in the past and present through the lens of the rapidly changing world of the Canadian fur trade.
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
Artwork by Jonathan Wood
by Anne Washburn
Score by Michael Friedman
Lyrics by Anne Washburn
Directed by Larisse Campbell (MFA Candidate)
November 19–December 6, 2025
Frederic Wood Theatre
In the near future, after the collapse of society as we know it, survivors gather around a campfire, trying to recall the Simpsons episode “Cape Feare”, seeking solace and entertainment. As time passes, that half-remembered episode, plus other fragments of pop culture, becomes the unlikely foundation for new forms of performance and a means of preserving the memory of a world long gone. Blending dark comedy, music, and theatrical experimentation, Mr. Burns, a post-electric play is a uniquely imaginative exploration of pop culture, storytelling, and what endures.
Peer Gynt
Artwork by Jonathan Wood
by David Henry Hwang and Stephan Muller
Based on the play by Henrik Ibsen
Directed by Christopher Lam (MFA Candidate)
March 11–28, 2026
Frederic Wood Theatre
Meet Peer Gynt: dreamer, freeloader, and eternal runaway on a lifelong quest for fame, purpose, and desire. This bold, contemporary adaptation of Ibsen’s classic plunges audiences into an epic journey across the mountains of Norway and the deserts of North Africa. Along the way, Peer encounters trolls, flying reindeer, and shipwrecks. Steeped in folkloric fantasy, self-reflection, and sharp metaphors, Peer Gynt explores the nature of identity, love, and the contradictions of being human.
